2007-04-14

Essentialist Explanations, 12th edition

I've finally caught up with the incoming entries, and published the 12th edition of my page Essentialist Explanations, a list of "simplistic and often humorous" (Langmaker) explanations of the form "Language X is essentially language Y under conditions Z." There are now 876 of them; new entries are always solicited, though it takes time for me to post them.

Read and enjoy.

2 comments:

pilgrim said...

I've come very late to this party, I see.

Your own quotation in the English section, "English is essentially a bizarre dialect of Chinese, pronounced entirely in the first tone" caught my eye.

I'm sure you must have written more on this, maybe here. I've tried Blogger's search box without success (as is usually the case with Blogger's search box, I find)

Is there a linkable lump of supporting context?

best,

John Cowan said...

Pilgrim: Actually no, I haven't written more than that. I sometimes put my own name on things that I've read somewhere but can't remember the source of. (This whole weblog is like that, in fact.)