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Old 05-07-2007, 03:46 AM   #1
xoxoxoBruce
The future is unwritten
 
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English

I lost the address of the site where I found this.
•English is essentially bad Dutch with outrageously pronounced French and Latin vocabulary. --Eugene Holman
•English is essentially Norse as spoken by a gang of French thugs. --Benct Philip Jonsson
•English is essentially a bizarre dialect of Chinese, pronounced entirely in the first tone. --John Cowan
•English is essentially any other language spoken with a very hot potato in one's mouth. --Ivan Derzhanski (based on Alain LaBonté on Swiss French)
•English is essentially the language you speak without moving your mouth. --Marianne Cowan
•English is essentially a language that uses vowels no other language would accept. --Luís Henrique
•English is essentially degenerate Welsh steeped in Latin, Dutch and Franco-Scandinavian Norman. --Mike Taylor
•English is essentially German spoken in the mouth rather than the throat. --jmallett
•English is essentially Low German plus even lower French minus any sense of culture. --Danny Weir
•English is essentially Anglo-Saxon with all the cool bits taken out. --Thomas Leigh
•English is essentially a dialect of French. --Alain LaBonté
•...spoken by Germanic barbarians. --Fragano Ledgister
•English is what you get from Normans trying to pick up Saxon girls. --Bryan Maloney
•Written English is essentially a variety of Old French invented by somebody who spoke only Saxon and read only Latin. --Basilius
•English is essentially an imprecise dialect of Java, without the object orientation. --Julian Morrison
•English is essentially a language that no one speaks in France. --Dan Seriff
•English is essentially French converted to 7-bit ASCII. --Christophe Pierret [for Alain LaBonté]
•English is essentially a whore. --Lars Hendrik Mathiesen
•English is essentially a French menu stuttered by a fish-and-chips dealer. --Kala Tunu
•English is essentially the Borg. --Muke Tever
•Men efter all Englisk äre basiklig Svensk förpoisonat of Frensk (ellor skould dat be Danisk?). --Jonathan Knibb
•English is essentially Dutch but it doesn't want to admit it. --Danny Wier
•English is essentially a West Germanic language that's trying very hard to look like a Romance one. --Andreas Johansson
•English is essentially language's equivalent to a transvestite. --Andreas Johansson
•Modern English read phonetically is essentially Middle English as no Middle Englishman would have spoken it. --Jake X
•According to generative linguists, all languages are essentially English. --Arnt Richard Johansen
•English is essentially the devil's attempt to reverse the curse of Babel by making a world language from the most difficult language in the world. --qaya
•English is essentially Pictish that was attacked out of nowhere by Angles cohabiting with Teutons who were done in by a drunk bunch of Vikings masquerading as Frenchmen who insisted they spoke Latin and Greek but lacked the Arabic in which to convey that. --Bill Hammel
•English is essentially Plattdeutsch as spoken by a Frisian pretending to be French. --Andreas Johansson
•English is essentially a stripped-down Germanic lang with Baroque-style Norman French ornamentation glued on at odd angles. --Adam Walker
•English is essentially a language that doesn't care where syllable boundaries are. --Peter Bleackley
•Inglish iz issenshali a langwidje dhat, wen rittun fonetkli, iz ilejibul tu netiv spikerz. --Peter Bleackley
•English is essentially the language of people who think that everybody else speaks their language. French is essentially the language of people who think that everybody else should speak theirs. --Peter Bleackley
•English is essentially bad Frisian, old French, Latin, and Greek, with a grammar that pretends to be like Latin but is really like Chinese or very dumbed-down Germanic (depending on how you look at it). --Trebor Jung
•English is essentially all exceptions and no rules. --Jonathan Bettencourt
•English is essentially the works of Joyce with the hard bits taken out. --Jon Hanna
•In English, all foreign languages are essentially French. --Tristan Mc Leay
•English is essentially Hindi (cot, jungle, shampoo), with a heck of a lot of loanwords from Anglo-Saxon, French, and Latin. --Sean B. Palmer
•English is essentially a Germanic language that has eaten far too many French dishes for its own good. --John Cowan
•English is a structurally Semiticized, lexically Romanized German dialect. --Theo Venneman
•English is essentially the noise made by people who don't believe you can use language but want your stuff handed over politely. --John M. Ford
•English is essentially what happens when you can't decide whether the Greeks or the Romans had the better civilization, so you ask everybody they ever beat up on to sort it out. --John M. Ford
•English is essentially a language in which up has forty-seven dictionary definitions, but antidisestablishmentarianism is considered a "hard word." --John M. Ford
•English is essentially a text parser's way of getting faster processors built. --John M. Ford
•English is essentially the inevitable result of repressing the gender of nouns. --John M. Ford
•English is essentially ideographic, but it's sneaky about it. --John M. Ford
•English was essentially created to be the language of international air traffic control, but it got bored waiting. --John M. Ford
•English is essentially the "universal Martian" used for interplanetary ditching instructions. --John M. Ford
•English is essentially a tale told by an extremely clever and inventive idiot. --John M. Ford
•English is a marriage between German and French. --Brian
•English is essentially l33t with the numbers replaced by letters. --Shanth
•English is essentially a half dozen other languages locked in a small room. They fight. --M. Kehrt
•English is partly dysfunctional Scandinavian. --gooeyfruitbat
•English (Specific Varieties)
•Cockney is essentially English while haggling over prices. --Mike Taylor
•Pig Latin is essentially eulological English as spoken by Latin professors with Tourette's syndrome. --ilvi
•Basic English is essentially Rapping, but censored and without the beat. --Jay Bowks
•Australian is essentially a dialect of English as spoken by hungry Europeans pursuing a kangaroo dinner. --ilvi
•Australian English is essentially Cockney without the refinement. --Öjevind Lång
•American English is essentially English after having been wiped off with a dirty sponge. --J.R.R. Tolkien
•American English is essentially a tool to keep a person from ever being able to speak another language. --jmallett
•American English is essentially British English without the redundancies, including the monarchy. --Ivan C. Amaya
•Today's British English is what today's American English would have become if Americans hadn't had any fun either. --Glen Perkins
•American English is essentially your Queen's English as bastardized by colonists, or is it as colonized by bastards? --ilvi
•American English is essentially British English without the funny accent. [Or is that Canadian English?] --Aleks Dubh
•American English is essentially Irish English as spoken by non-native speakers. --Benct Philip Jonsson
•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
•Texan English is essentially Spanish as spoken by drunken American rebels. --Javier de la Rosa
•Yankee is essentially 18th Century English as altered by the impure thoughts of Puritans with cabin fever. --Jay Bowks
•Jamaican is essentially an African dialect with enough mispronounced English to be able to buy ganja and sing reggae. --Javier de la Rosa
•Scots is essentially English, only funnier. --Thomas Leigh
•Scots is essentially English as spoken by Robert Burns. --Zoe Mulford
•Scots is essentially English spoken as Dutch by a Dane. --Mark Odegard
•South Philadelphian is essentially Italian with the final syllables dropped off. --Zoe Mulford
•Southern US English is essentially English without monophthongs. --Danny Weir
•Yo! Ebonics is essentially Welfarese processed through a grant-seeking processor akin to a guitarist's distortion box in the hands of the psychotropic educrats, homies. --laser
•Ebonics essentially is the speech of hoods in the 'hood. --laser
•King James English is essentially the language that many Americans think Jesus spoke. "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" --Dan Seriff
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Old 05-07-2007, 03:47 AM   #2
xoxoxoBruce
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Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 71,105
•Psycho-babble is essentially Minbari spoken by seekers of tax-funded grants, power-hungry psycho-totalitarians, counsellors or other unemployables while wearing a too-tight tiara. --laser
•Galach is essentially Anglo-Slavic run through Grimm's Law and baked on the desert of Arrakis until well-dune. --laser
•Governmentese is essentially a branch of spoken and written English designed to say nothing with as many words as possible hoping that the nothing is lost in the translation. --laser
•Old English is essentially mispronounced Modern English spoken while wearing armor and carrying a roundshield and sword. --Dan Seriff
•Middele English is essencially Moderne Lowe Duchish with a heevy Scottisshe broog yspoken and with ful many fetise Frensshe loon-wordes that been ful quayntly and straungely ywritten. --Amittai Aviram
•New York City Syrian Jewish English is essentially Arabic curses and bad Ebonics spoken with a Brooklyn accent. --Steg Belsky
•Yeshivish is essentially English spoken by people who think they're speaking Yiddish. --Steg Belsky
•1337Speak is essentially what happens when an AOLer's keyboard breaks. --Andy Fox
•American English essentially is not English and is not American either. --Ivan C. Amaya
•Southern US English is essentially Irish English spoken through moonshine and whiskey instead of stout and ale. --Andrew Johnson
•New York English is essentially New England English with a bagel in one's throat and being mugged. --Andrew Johnson
•Liverpool English is Irish English spoken by Irishmen and Welshmen trying to bash England. --Andrew Johnson
•Birmingham English is what the world would sound like if they also snorted coke laced with ants and drank gasoline every night for 30 years like Ozzy Osbourne. --Andrew Johnson
•Midwestern US English is essentially New England English with their sinuses filled with ice. --Andrew Johnson
•American English is essentially the language that everyone understands if you speak it loudly and slowly enough. --Michael Alexander (via Daniel E. Huston)
•Broken English is the language of international trade. --John Naisbitt (via Daniel E. Huston)
•Ebonics be Shakespeare playin' da urbon Oak-lan' (Calie-forn-ah) bluz, homie. --Hanuman Zhang
•American is essentially achieved by simplifying and complexifying English at once. --Greg Johnston
•Shetlandic is essentially English taught by Lowlanders to Norwegians. --Alexander Ellis
•Newyorkese is English with a Dutch accent and a grudge. --Javier Candeira
•American English is essentially an Irish tongue in a Dutch mouth. --John Cowan
•New Zealand English is essentially the English somebody forgot to take it out of their back pocket before putting their jeans through the laundry. --Hamish Ritchie
•Lancashire is essentially English spoken properly. --Liv Bliss
•Ebonics is basically Manding-Congo/Manding Cushi African languages with English words, ancient Egyptian parents and polyrhythmic presentation. --Paul Barton
•Gullah-Geechee is basically the remnants of the ancient Egyptian syntax found in Kru, Manding and Serer brought by the Africans to the Sea Islands/Georgia region and spoken with 'chopped' English words to replace the lost African ones. --Paul Barton
•Jamaican/Caribbean English is basically a combination of Yoruba, Tiv, Manding, Kongo placed in a saladbowl, mixed and fused and spoken with English words with a juju music, reggae and calypso rhythm. --Paul Barton
•Southern 'white' English is basically the Ebonics English created by Blacks and used by former speakers of Gaelic, Welsh, English jailbird descent, French Huguenot descent and other 'poor white' ancestry Southerners who worked on Southern plantations as 'indentured laborers' alongside African slaves. --Paul Barton
•Indian English is essentially late Victorian bureaucratese as spoken by Peter Sellers. --Tommy Tyrberg
•If you wake a Britisher up at five in the morning, he'll sound like a human being. --Brian
•American is essentially British with decent cooking. --libcat
•American English is essentially what the English would be speaking had they kept up their English lessons. --Alan Kellogg
•San Diegan is essentially Iowan as spoken by people living in a geographically interesting location. --Alan Kellogg
•Surfer Speak is essentially Iowan as spoken by people who are perpetually stoned. --Alan Kellogg
•American grammar is essentially not essential --Ivan C. Amaya
•American is essentially nothing to write home about. --Ivan C. Amaya
•American English is essentially the "haiku" version of British English minus the class. --Ivan C. Amaya
•Geordies are essentially Scots speaking English with a Norwegian accent. --Daniel Carrera
•Canadian English is essentially Mid-West American English with a lot of eh's. --contrariandoer
•Essentially, Texan is fake Spanish endings tacked onto every other word, with occasional bursts of enough German to confuse people. --Bob Thornton
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Old 05-07-2007, 09:31 AM   #3
BigV
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http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/essential.html
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Old 05-10-2007, 11:56 PM   #4
Urbane Guerrilla
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Quote:
“English doesn’t borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar!”

- Author unknown
All over the Web, and nobody knows who said it first. I've always imagined a Freshman English prof. Comes variously with exclamation point or a mere period.
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