Die Essenz der Sprachen

Vielleicht schon ein alter Hut, aber ich finds trotzdem nett, John Cowans Essentialist Explanations, essentially[sic!] eine Sammlung von Bemerkungen, dass Sprache X im wesentlichen Sprache Y ist, nur leicht verändert.

Ein paar Beispiele:

"English is essentially Norse as spoken by a gang of French thugs."
"English is essentially the works of Joyce with the hard bits taken out."
"Francophones are essentially Germans speaking the bad Latin they were taught by Gauls."
"French is essentially a language that elides everything that doesn't get out of the way fast enough, and nasalises everything else."
"I have long maintained that Japanese grammar is essentially Spanish done in reverse Polish notation."
"Latin is essentially what you have if you read a satanist mass backwards. (tse assim, eti!)"
"Conversely, Liturgical Latin is essentially Classical Latin with all initial consonants pronounced as affricates."
"German is essentially a language developed by a group of Teutons who gathered in the forest one day to come up with a language that their enemies would have no chance of grasping."
"Essentially is German a verb-second language."

(via Languagehat, und dort gibt es auch Ergänzungen in den Kommentaren, wie z.B. "English is l33t with the numbers replaced by letters")