Linguistic Fun

Essentialist Explanations is a link that came to my attention by the fellow "language geek" at A conservative blog for peace, always a source of interesting links. Here are some of my favorites:

(Caveat lector: Do not proceed reading if your sense of national or linguistic pride is so malformed that it is easily wounded by good-natured humor.)

English is essentially bad Dutch with outrageously pronounced French and Latin vocabulary.
--Eugene Holman

English is essentially a bizarre dialect of Chinese, pronounced entirely in the first tone.
--John Cowan

English is essentially a language that uses vowels no other language would accept.
--Luís Henrique

American English is essentially British English without the redundancies, including the monarchy.
--Ivan C. Amaya

American English is essentially your Queen's English as bastardized by colonists, or is it as colonized by bastards?
--ilvi

American English is essentially Irish English as spoken by non-native speakers.
--Benct Philip Jonsson

American English is essentially English after having been wiped off with a dirty sponge.
--J.R.R. Tolkien

Australian English is essentially Cockney without the refinement.
--Öjevind Lång

The Queen's English is essentially Modern Anglo-Saxon as passed on by generation after generation of stiff necked Norman nobles with their noses in the air.
--ilvi

Men efter all Englisk äre basiklig Svensk förpoisonat of Frensk (ellor skould dat be Danisk?).
--Jonathan Knibb

Inglish iz issenshali a langwidje dhat, wen rittun fonetkli, iz ilejibul tu netiv spikerz.
--Peter Bleackley

Spanish is essentially Italian spoken by Arabs.
--Benct Philip Jonsson

Castilian Romance is nothing but Latin spoken by Basque lips and transformed by evolution in an environment of Basque habits and of Basque phonetic tradition.
--P. Ormaechevarria, via David Mediavilla Ezquibela

Argentinean is essentially Italian spoken so that other South Americans can catch on.
--ilvi

Mandarin is essentially Chinese as spoken by Mongols.
--Daniel von Brighoff

Korean is essentially bad Japanese, also as spoken by Mongols.
--Daniel von Brighoff

Conversely, Japanese is essentially Korean in the mouths of little children.
--Daniel von Brighoff

Korean is essentially being caught in a syllable-diagraming exercise gone horribly, horribly wrong.
--David Boshko

Korean is essentially Mongolian with a Chinese vocabulary.
--Danny Wier

Japanese is essentially Tagalog spoken by Koreans trying to do an impression of Americans from the point of view of Chinese people.
--Andrew Johnson

Cantonese is essentially what everyone else in China calls swearing.
--Kiri Aradia Morgan

Vietnamese is essentially Chinese spoken as fast as you can.
--Alex Stanich

Spoken Vietnamese is essentially Chinese with 6 tones, unpronounceable consonants, and sounds you have to say while inhaling.
--Jonathan Walton

Written Vietnamese is essentially Wade-Giles as invented by an opium-smoking Frenchman.
--Jonathan Walton

Nativeamericanlanguagesessentiallycramlotsofideasintooneword.
--Clint Jackson Baker