Essentialist Explanations 16th edition

This page comprises a list of 1080 "essentialist explanations" of the form "Language X is essentially language Y under conditions Z". I have edited some entries for uniformity, clarity, or good English. The entries are grouped for convenience rather than correctness. In particular, fictional languages belonging to actual language families are grouped with their natural language relatives. New contributions are solicited, especially for American and African languages. No flames, please.

Note: Entries attributed to me (John Cowan) are often ones that I have heard or read somewhere, or ones that were suggested by other people's contributions but heavily modified by me.

"[We] do but jest, poison in jest, no offence in the world." --Hamlet

Index

English (67 entries)

English (Specific Varieties) (74 entries)

North Germanic (45 entries)

West Germanic (High) (40 entries)

West Germanic (Low) (55 entries)

Spanish (41 entries)

Austronesian (19 entries)

Latin and Italian (35 entries)

French (37 entries)

Portuguese (36 entries)

Other Romance (47 entries)

Slavic (58 entries)

Celtic (29 entries)

Greek (13 entries)

Baltic, Indo-Iranian, Dravidian (42 entries)

Uralic (32 entries)

Afroasiatic (47 entries)

Afroasiatic, Ancient (20 entries)

Sino-Tibetan, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese (48 entries)

Altaic (35 entries)

Eskimo-Aleut (7 entries)

Miscellaneous (42 entries)

Esperanto (15 entries)

Other International Auxiliary Languages (16 entries)

Other Artificial Languages (A-M) (54 entries)

Other Artificial Languages (N-Z) (46 entries)

Tolkien Languages (13 entries)

Animal Languages (5 entries)

Writing Systems (34 entries)

Basque (8 entries)

Meta (20 entries)

English 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 Henrik 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 is essentially Teletubby as reinterpreted by Frank Sinatra and passed through a used coffee filter. --George Spiggott (in the mood of irony) Australian English is essentially what happens to you after living in isolation for too long. --Fumiko Amaya Australian English is essentially an Irishman bitten by a Tasmanian Devil while chasing a kangaroo. --Fumiko Amaya American English is essentially what British English would sound like with better oral hygiene. --Xander American English originated from English immigrants who lost their tongues because of lack of vitamin C during their sea voyage. --Kees van den Berg New Zealand English is Cockney spoken by a Scotsman who's watched to many Australian soap operas. --Ken Westmoreland South African English is Dick Van Dyke trying to put on an Australian accent. --Ken Westmoreland Canadian English is American English spoken by a Scotsman who's trying to console a bereaved Frenchman. --Ken Westmoreland English speakers are essentially French speakers, all the superior attitude, and all the bluntness. (French & American tourists are about equally hated around the world!) --Bill Van English is essentially the most Latin Germanic language. Conversely, French is essentially the most Germanic Romance language. --Bill Van English is German with a license to kill. --Leonard Cohen (via Douglas Owen Baker) 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 the result of Normans trying to date Anglo-Saxon barmaids. --H. Beam Piper (via Brian Maloney and Peter Funch) English is essentially a constructed language. That is, a language constructed over centuries by a succession of drunken mobs. --Javier Candeira 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 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 Ulster Scots is English as spoken by a Northern Ireland Protestant who doesn't want money spent on the Irish language. --Ken Westmoreland American English is essentially the language nobody speaks well, but everybody seems to understand. --Ivan C. Amaya Southern American English is a language where all the monophthongs are diphthongs and all the diphthongs are monophthongs, ah thaink. --Rodger Cunningham Australian English is essentially British English spoken with the mouth wide open. --Bernard Abramson Southern American Hillbilly English is essentially the King's English, sequestered and inbred. --Elise Trucks Indian English is essentially what you get if you pronounce English like a Spaniard but with Welsh intonation. --Javier Candeira Proper English is normal English spoken with a very wide mouth. --Curt Fenz American English is British English, without all the high-class references and with a more familiar spelling. --Chrysaor Jordan British English is essentially an upper class version of American, even if they won't admit it. --Chrysaor Jordan Australian English is essentially a cross between Cockney and cowboy, with unique slang we must admire. We Americans love the Aussies. They remind us of when our nation was also young. --Chrysaor Jordan Gullah is essentially a Southern accent, written exactly the way we talk, and flavoured with Kikongo seasonings. --Chrysaor Jordan North Germanic Norwegian is essentially Danish spoken with a Swedish accent. --Eugene Holman (and many others) Danish is essentially Norwegian spoken with a sore throat. --Kaare Albert Lie Danish is essentially Norwegian (or Swedish) spoken while eating a hot potato. --Eugene Holman/Benct Philip Jonsson Danish is essentially Swedish spoken while eating porridge. --Peter Landgren Danish is essentially Swedish while swallowing yogurt. --Mike Taylor Norwegian is essentially Swedish spoken by eunuchs with false teeth. --Peter Landgren Swedish is essentially Norwegian spoken by Finns. --Benct Philip Jonsson Swedish is what happened when a Nordic-speaking people got angry at all the other Nordic-speaking peoples and decided to deliberately alter their language to make it look more German. --Peter Ravn Rassmussen Swedish essentially is a very well camouflaged dialect of Chinese. --Andreas Johansson Danish is essentially Swedish run backwards at half speed. --Tommy Tyrberg Danish is essentially Swedish after running over all consonants that didn't get out of the way fast enough. --Tommy Tyrberg Swedish is essentially Norwegian spoken while trying to maintain a stiff upper lip. --Sten E. Moe Danish is essentially Norwegian spoken without a tongue. --Sten E. Moe Danish is essentially Swedish with the ends of syllables mangled. --Lars Mathiesen Conversely, Swedish is essentially Danish with the onsets of syllables mangled. --Lars Mathiesen Swedish is essentially perfected Danish. --Aleks Dubh A Gothenburg accent is essentially Swedish with all vowels reduced to "ö". --Benct Philip Jonsson Norse is essentially Gothic as spoken by seasick vikings. --Benct Philip Jonsson New Norwegian (Nynorsk) is essentially the speech of Norwegian peasants as mutilated by a schoolteacher with a poor understanding of Icelandic. --Halldór Laxness, via Benct Philip Jonsson Danish is essentially Swedish minus articulation. --Andreas Johansson Danish is essentially [ə::::::::::::::::]. --Andreas Johansson Danish is essentially Swedish with a sense of humor. --Anders Engwall Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are actually the same language. It's just that the Norwegians can't spell it, and the Danes can't pronounce it. --Chlewey Faroese is essentially bad Icelandic. --Eugene Holman Icelandic is essentially bad Old Norse. --Thomas Leigh Danish is essentially Norwegian, only you drop out all the consonants, skip all the vowels and then mispronounce the rest. --David Oftedal Nynorsk (or Redneck, as I call it) is essentially Swedish with a bad accent. --David Oftedal Swedish is essentially the language of Inscrutable Nordics who decided to make their language even more inscrutable than before. --John Cowan Swedo-Norwegian is essentially a dialect continuum, divided vertically in writing but horizontally in speech. --John Cowan Icelandic is essentially Norwegian spoken with an American accent. --James Worlton Swedish is essentially the strangest dialect of Dutch I ever heard. --Christophe Grandsire Swedish is essentially Spanish with the verbs conjugated backwards. --Mark J. Reed Swedish is essentially Norwegian plus vowels with tremas. --Trebor Jung Hungarian is essentially Norwegian spelled backwards, with a lot of ö's. --Nils Wærstad Swedish is essentially English spoken backwards. --Dave Yarwood My ex brother-in-law, who is essentially an ass, once told me that Danish is essentially a "throw-up" language since you feel like you're retching when you pronounce it. That's essentially his opinion. --Sally Caves Icelandic is essentially Björk for those who don't know where Iceland even is. --Sally Caves Gøtudanskt is essentially Danish spoken the way it is spelled. --Philip Newton Bokmål is essentially Danish with Swedish phonemes and hippie intonation. --Andreas Johansson Norwegian is essentially Japanese as spoken by Germans. --The Multilingual Kitten To a western Norwegian, East Norwegian is essentially Danish. --Benct Philip Jonsson Swedish is German spoken in English word order with a singsong accent. --Unknown, via John "Serge" Beeler Danish is essentially Norwegian spoken when drunk. --John Cowan Icelandic is Faroese for Danes who want to live in a timewarp. --Ken Westmoreland Danish is essentially drunken Norwegian. --John Cowan West Germanic (High) German is essentially a philosophical cough. --Luís Henrique 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. --Jeff Lowery German is essentially a guttural dialect of French with more fs and aus. --jmallett Germann ist eßentially Dutsch and Englisch with a few Tschanges. --Danny Wier Germänn ist eßëntiälly Ënglisch mit ein few Tschängen und das käpitäal Lëtteren und Lötten von Dötten. --Nik Taylor German is essentially a language that had a lot of future up until about 60 years ago. --Ivan C. Amaya Yiddish is essentially bad German mixed with worse Hebrew and execrable Russian. --John Cowan Yiddish is essentially a Slavic language where most of the words just happen to be German. --John Cowan Conversely, German is essentially a parody of Yiddish. --Anonymous, via Jörg Rhiemeier Standard German is essentially southern grammar and lexis with northern phonology. --John Cowan Bavarian and Austrian are essentially Real German spoken with a mouth full of spaetzle. -- David Bell German is essentially a form of assembly language consisting entirely of far calls heavily accented with throaty guttural sounds. --ilvi Transylvanian Saxon (Saksesh) is essentially a Luxembourg Yiddish spoken by old-German Protestants with a Romanian-Hungarian accent. --Alfred W. Tüting (.aulun.) Proto-Germanic was essentially Proto-Latin spoken with a Proto-Basque accent. --Marco Cimarosti German is essentially English as spoken by a drunken, slurring nuclear-plant technician desperately trying, and failing, to get a date by expounding on "The Sorrows of Young Werther" and, then, logically enough, committing suicide. --Thomas Wier German essentially Gothic with Latin syntax is. --John Hudson Yiddish is essentially the modern descendant of a koine of Middle High German dialects, mixed with Slavic and Hebrew. --John Cowan Austrian German is essentially Berliner German without all the spitting. --Bill Hammel Yiddish is essentially the Ebonics of German. --submanifold German is essentially English spoken with a head cold. --Orson Scott Card The -le of Schwäbisch clearly demonstrates how it is essentially Swiss German ashamed of itself. --Christian Thalmann Essentially is German a verb-second language. --Sally Caves It is essential, that You the german Syntax and Punctuation right get must. --Sally Caves German is essentially Yiddish without the Hebrew. --Tom Arnold Yiddish and Romanian are aberrant dialects of German and Italian with some Slavic modifications. --Brian Swiss German is essentially Standard German spoken with laryngitis. --Dreas German is essentially bastardized Yiddish. --Zackary Sholem Berger German is essentially Dutch with a gay lisp --Heinz Hummer Swiss German is essentially German spoken while eating crunchy crackers. --Jörg Rhiemeier Swiss German is German spoken with a Swedish accent. --Frann Michel Luxembourgish is Swiss German spoken by a demented Dutchman with a French accent. --Ken Westmoreland Lëtzebuergesch is essentially German reinvented by speakers or southern Dutch dialects. --Ruben German is essentially the crossroads between Latin and Slavic languages with some cold herring from the Northern Sea. --Ivan Amaya German dialect is essentially High German with the vowels wrong. --Nick Nicholas Swiss German is essentially High German with the vowels and the consonants wrong. --Nick Nicholas Yiddish is essentially German without an army or a navy. --Ari Krupnik Hebrew is essentially Yiddish with an army and an air force --Ari Krupnik German is essentially Attila's attempt to speak French. --Ivan C. Amaya Luxembourgish is essentially what a German speaks who has been hit on the head. --Matthew Wolf German is the only language in which "I love you" sounds threatening. --Michel Clasquin West Germanic (Low) Northern German is essentially Dog spoken in a guttural accent. --jmallett Dutch is essentially English spoken with a French accent by a German. --jmallett Dutch is essentially German written with English spelling. --Luís Henrique Dutch is essentially German as spoken by the members of a conspiracy who pretend not to speak German. --John Cowan Dutsj is essensjullie a Loo Sjurmennik lenkwitsj wis det vunkie letter (det riepleezes Y) plus a serieuslie koel ortografie. --several members of Conlang Dutch is essentially German spoken by someone with a sore throat (or: by someone clearing his throat while speaking). --Philip Newton Written Dutch is essentially German with misspellings one would expect from small German children. --Terrence Griffin Dutch is essentially what you know to be English, only heard through lots of loud background noise. --Dan Seriff Dutch is essentially English with all the vowels doubled. --Keith Gaughan Dutch is essentially English spoken whilst stoned, which pretty much explains all the double vowels ;-) --Keith Gaughan I prefer to think of English as being essentially Dutch with all double vowels halved. --Maarten van Beek Afrikaans is essentially Dutch baby talk. --John Cowan Conversely, Dutch is essentially Afrikaans as spoken by a corpse. --John Cowan Flemish is essentially Dutch dumbed down for use by Francophones. --Zoe Mulford Flemish is, as its name phonetically suggests, essentially Dutch while vomiting. --Mike Taylor Frisian is essentially (Middle) English as spoken by the Dutch. --John Cowan Conversely, English is essentially the Old Frisian of a sea-sick Old Saxon speaker, as mangled by an obtuse Francophonified Danish mercenary who took Latin and Greek in school and is currently on an around-the-world cruise. --Benct Philip Jonsson/Matt Pearson Low German is essentially Dutch with an identity problem. --Danny Weir Dutch is essentially Low German with an army and a navy. --Andreas Johansson The Dutch are actually Anglophones pretending to be Germans. --Andreas Johansson Afrikaans is essentially Dutch with English grammar. --Jan van Steenbergen Dutch is essentially English spoken while yawning (therefore the extra vowels). --Ivan C. Amaya Frisian is essentially Old English spoken by Anglo-Saxons who got lost on their way from Schleswig-Holstein. --Andrew Johnson Dutch sounds like a drunk Englishman speaking German. --Warren Dumke (via Daniel E. Huston) Dutch is essentially a mix of German, Swedish and English, but tries to hide it by having a lot of unnecessary double vowels and 'oe's everywhere. --Andreas Johansson Dutch is essentially a mixture of German and English spoken in a Swedish accent. --Estel Telcontar Dutch is essentially swish German. --Anon. Walloon essentially is bad French spoken by a Dutch person who wants to impress the Germans. --Hanbing Feng Luxembourgish essentially is worse German spoken by another Dutch person who wants to impress the French. --Hanbing Feng Dutch is essentially German as spoken by a group of people who decided to start their own literary tradition several hundred years ago. --Philip Newton Dutch is English spelt funny and spoken in a Klingon accent. --Javier Candeira Dutch is essentially the only langage in the world that sounds as if its phonology had been originally devised as a German creole by some Asian people that nonetheless can only have learned it after they were colonized by already Dutch-speaking Europeans. --Guillaume Thomas Low German is essentially Germanic that stayed at home. --Jörg Rhiemeier Lippisches Platt is essentially bad Dutch with the diphthongs all spoken backwards. --Jörg Rhiemeier Hutterisch is essentially Plattdeutsch smeared in cowshit. --Ebeneezer Afrikaans is Dutch spoken by a Malay slave with plenty of rythym but not enough saliva. --Ken Westmoreland Dutch is just funny German, and Norwegian is just funny Dutch. --Jory Dutch is essentially German with Welsh pronunciation. --Sam Aaron Dutch is essentially English words in a German word order. --Bill Van Sometimes Dutch looks remarkably like English as typed by the guys at the Computer Center. --Geoffrey K. Pullum Dutch is essentially not a language but a disease of the throat. --Tom Meijer Dutch is essentially English spoken with the mouth full of pebbles. --Bernard Abramson Afrikaans is Dutch spoken while trying to expectorate two inhaled bluebottles. --Paul Rodman Dutch is essentially German, as pronounced by a horse. (see Jonathan Swift) --Michel Clasquin English is essentially BASIC for humanities students. --Michel Clasquin Afrikaans is essentially Dutch ... No it isn't. Ask any Dutchman. --Michel Clasquin Dutch is essentially Afrikaans as spoken by preachers, doctors and other establishment types trying to pass for civilized. --Michel Clasquin Frisian is essentially Dutch with a bad hangover. --Michel Clasquin Who cares what Dutch essentially is? The Dutch all speak English now. --Michel Clasquin Dutch is essentially German spoken with an English accent. --Lisa Lambert Dutch is essentially Old English and German, which remains modern, and is known to English speakers for that sentences often wrong order are, and for the long words. --Chrysaor Jordan Frisian is about 50% similar to Dutch, 25% like English, and 25% just that way. The accent sounds melodic, and the language sounds as if we ought to understand it. --Chrysaor Jordan Afrikaans is essentially countrified Dutch, with old-fashioned expressions and an influence from that English. --Chrysaor Jordan Flemish is essentially Dutch, but with antique words still in use and with a French accent. --Chrysaor Jordan Dutch is essentially a language that has not decided to be English nor German. --Ivan C. Amaya Spanish Spanish is essentially Italian spoken by Arabs. --Benct Philip Jonsson Castilian Spanish is mostly your average Spanish spoken while gagging on paella rice. --Javier de la Rosa 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 Andalusian Spanish is essentially Castilian with needless syllabic appendages circumcised. --Javier de la Rosa Puerto Rican is just Spanish as hurriedly spoken in substandard housing in the Bronx. --ilvi Cuban Spanish is essentially Spanish as spoken on the express train. --Angel Ortiz Argentinean is essentially Italian spoken so that other South Americans can catch on. --ilvi Spanish is essentially a dialect of Californian English used for increasing the value of real estate. (Gee, wouldn't this faux Spanish strip mall be worth $200,000 more if it was called Plaza del Mucho Dinero?) --Jeffrey Henning Mexican is essentially Castilian Spanish as spoken while excreting hot peppers, therefore without the superiority complex. --ilvi & Ivan C. Amaya Mexican essentially sounds like Japanese pronounced with a strong Irish brogue. --Heather Grove Conversely, Japanese sounds like Mexican with all the vowels removed. --Heather Grove On the other hand, Mexican is essentially Nahuatl with enough Spanish and English borrowings to keep from scaring off tourists (ask anyone from Spain, it certainly isn't Spanish). --Heather Grove Ladino is essentially Spanish as spoken while haggling at overseas markets. --Jay Bowks Judeo-Spanish is essentially the perfect auxiliary language squelched by Arabic and Hebrew. --Javier de la Rosa Silbo is essentially Spanish as blown through the lips. --ilvi Papiamento is essentially Dutch Spanish. --John Cowan Papiamento is essentially Spanish as spoken after one too many shots of Captain Jack. --Javier de la Rosa Mexican Spanish is essentially all consonants. --John Cowan Caribbean Spanish is essentially all vowels. --John Cowan Ladino is essentially Spanish vowels with Portuguese consonants written in Hebrew by people living in the Netherlands and Turkey. --Steg Belsky Spanish is essentially Japanese with a few consonant clusters added to fool you into thinking it's Romance. --Steg Belsky Spanish is essentially the English of the future (it is now the second most spoken first language). --Danny Wier Spanish is essentially Latin spoken by Iberians, with Basque phonetics. --Javier Candeira Spanish is basically just a crude form of Vulgar Latin jazzed up with a little Basque and Arabic. --Brian Spanish is essentially a five-vowel variant of standard Italian, but with no gemination, except ll and rr, which have become qualitatively different. --John Cowan Spanish is what happened when Moors tried to learn Latin and said "screw it." --Charles Lavergne Spanish is essentially a language that should be called Castilian, for the relief of Basques, Gallegos and Catalans. --Humberto Ribeiro Criollo is essentially a stew made with potatoes, onions and tomatoes with a touch of cilantro, but people think it is a language. --Ivan C. Amaya Llanito in Gibraltar is Andalucian Spanish spoken by a Genoese with a Yorkshire accent. --Ken Westmoreland Spanish is essentially the new "Vida Loca" Latin. --Ivan C. Amaya Castillian Spanish is essentially a Colombian speaking while trying to swallow a very hot paella, thus the ZZZZs. --Ivan C. Amaya Mexican is essentially to Mariachi what Scottish is to bag pipes, go figure. --Ivan C. Amaya Argentinian is essentially the language spoken by Italians immigrants trying to dance "La Cumparsita". --Ivan C. Amaya Spanish is essentially tropical Italian. --Ivan Amaya Castilian Spanish is essentially Colombian spoken with bad teeth, which is why so many Spaniards come to Costa Rica for dental work. --Dennis Rogers The Spanish language is a dialect of Catalan, pronounced by Basque people and with a considerable amount of Arabic words in it. --Darius Ruda Latin American Spanish is essentially Castillian minus the fat parts. --Ivan C. Amaya Castilian is essentially Spanish spoken by Sylvester the cat. --Ivan C. Amaya Mexican is essentially a concoction made of tacos, burritos and enchiladas, mixed with strident trumpets, one or two thick moustaches, a bright sombrero, and just a few Spanish words to spruce it all up. --Ivan C. Amaya Argentinian is essentially Spanish after drinking too much "Yerba Mate" tea. --Ivan C. Amaya Cuban is essentially Andalusian at sea. --Ivan C. Amaya Austronesian Hawaiian is essentially ... vowels. --Lauren M. Squires Hawaiian is a cousin of Indonesian with a fear of consonants. --Danny Weir Bislama is essentially an Austronesian language with English vocabulary. --Jacques Guy Tok Pisin is essentially bad English mixed with even worse Melanesian, decorated with a few German swearwords and strung together by somebody who had never heard of grammar or syntax. --Tommy Tyrberg Samoan/Hawaiian/Maori is essentially bad Hawaiian/Maori/Samoan. --John Cowan Police-Motu is essentially canine elocution as emulated by (in)human beings. --ilvi Bahasa Indonesia is essentially a constructed language designed to fool foreigners into thinking Indonesia is a monoculture. --John Cowan ...and the same is true of Tagalog/Pilipino, mutatis mutandis. --John Cowan Indonesian and Tagalog are essentially flowing water -- Indonesian a swiftly flowing brook and Tagalog water going over rapids. --Adam Walker Ilocano sounds essentially like Tagalog spoken by a Balikbayan from Indo-China. --Kristian Jensen Malay is essentially Indonesian as spoken by Englishmen. --Amber Adams Conversely, Indonesian is essentially Malay as spoken by Dutchmen. --Amber Adams Tagalog is essentially Spanish. --Anonymous, via Nate Tagalog is essentially Visayan spoken by Kapampangans. --goodboi Tetum in East Timor is Austronesian that slept around with Portuguese before being given a bit of rough by Indonesian. --Ken Westmoreland Tagalog (or Filipino) is Austronesian that grew up in a Spanish convent before marrying an American GI. --Ken Westmoreland Maori is Malay sung by a Welsh male voice choir. --Ken Westmoreland Austronesian is essentially a language family in which the vowels are everything and the consonants nothing. --John Cowan Tagalog is essentially Malay with all the vowels changed to 'a' and all the endings changed to 'ng'. --Chris Guillen Latin and Italian Oscan is Latin with every other consonant changed to f. --Justin Mansfield Classical Latin is essentially an artificial language devised to make the vulgar Roman aristocracy sound intelligent. --Javier de la Rosa Latin is essentially what you have if you read a satanist mass backwards. (tse assim, eti!) --Luís Henrique Latin is essentially Greek with all of the interesting bits dropped into the Adriatic. --Dan Seriff Classical Latin is essentially Liturgical Latin with correct pronunciation. --Dan Seriff Conversely, Liturgical Latin is essentially Classical Latin with all initial consonants pronounced as affricates. --Dan Seriff Modern Latin is essentially Classical Latin full of neologisms that end in -trum. --Justin Mansfield Church Latin is essentially reverse-engineered Italian. --Justin Mansfield Erasmian Latin is essentially Church Latin as spoken by Germans. --Justin Mansfield Italian is essentially bad Latin. --Eugene Holman Spanish is essentially bad Italian. --Eugene Holman Italian is essentially Latin as spoken by people who were shouting at their slaves all the time. --Benct Philip Jonsson Italian is essentially machine gun fire heard from a long way off. --Dan Seriff Italian is essentially Tuscan dialect as spoken by a Lombard. --Luca Mangiat Italian is essentially Latin in a leather factory. --Mike Taylor Venetian is essentially Spanish as spoken by people not smart enough to discover America. --Marco Cimarosti Lombard is essentially Italian spoken with German accent and English grammar. --Marco Cimarosti Lombard is essentially French as spoken by Italians who don't know French. --Marco Cimarosti Piedmontese is essentially French as spoken by Italians who only know French a little bit. --Marco Cimarosti Ligurian is essentially Sicilian spoken with a Portuguese accent. --Marco Cimarosti Corsican is essentially Ligurian spoken with a Sardinian accent and some French words. --Marco Cimarosti Romanesque is essentially Tuscan spoken with a Neapolitan accent. --Marco Cimarosti Tuscan is essentially Italian with all consonants aspirated. --Marco Cimarosti Neapolitan is essentially a sign language. The loud sounds that Neapolitans emit are just music to accompany the gestures. --Marco Cimarosti Bolognese is essentially Lombard spoken with a English accent. --Marco Cimarosti Sicilian is essentially ancient Tuscan spoken with an English accent. --Marco Cimarosti Italian is essentially English with vowels added to the ends of words.

Lombard is essentially Italian with vowels removed from the ends of words.

Ergo, Lombard is essentially English. --And Rosta/Marco Cimarosti Ecclesiastical Latin is essentially Classical Latin with a "pick your pronunciation" sign over every phoneme. --Harald Stoiber Italian is essentially Latin that stayed at home. --Jörg Rhiemeier Italian is essentially the feminine side of Spanish. Conversely Spanish is essentially Italian for "Men". --Ivan C. Amaya Italian is what happened when Romans tried to learn Latin and said "screw it." --Charles Lavergne Italian is Latin that's had a bottle of wine. --John "Serge" Beeler Italian is Portuguese spoken by someone on acid. --Ken Westmoreland Italian is essentially tropical Romanian. --Ivan Amaya Latin is essentially the mother language of languages that do not communicate with each other. --Ivan C. Amaya French French is essentially the first syllables of Latin words spoken with a headcold. --Eugene Holman French is essentially Latin spoken by a drunken Roman soldier. --Elliotte Rusty Harold French is essentially the language that Americans don't learn before travelling abroad. --Dan Seriff French is essentially English spoken while eating a very big piece of Brie cheese. --Ivan C. Amaya French is essentially Latin on a catwalk. --Mike Taylor Franche est essentialement englaishe ouithe les endinges funnies et lottes de vowelles et les adjectifs en alle les places ronges. --Clint Jackson Baker Belgian is essentially French spoken as a tonal language. --Zoe Mulford Wallon is essentially French as spoken by Spanish soldiers occupying Belgium. --Zoe Mulford Francophones are essentially Germans speaking the bad Latin they were taught by Gauls. --Daniel von Brighoff Swiss French is essentially French spoken with a very hot potato in one's mouth. --Alain LaBonté Canadian French is essentially bad English as spoken by a Belgian with an inferiority complex. --Ivan C. Amaya French is essentially German with messed-up pronunciation and spelling. --Robert B Wilson French vocabulary is essentially English minus a few obvious germanicisms. --Andreas Johansson All Romance languages are essentially the same. Except French. --Andreas Johansson French is essentially Latin forced to comply with destructive sound changes and German influence. --Trebor Jung French is essentially an attempt by the Dutch to speak a Romance language. --Danny Wier French is essentially a language that elides everything that doesn't get out of the way fast enough, and nasalises everything else. --Peter Bleackley French is essentially Inuktitut disguised as Latin. --Christophe Grandsire French is essentially a Romance language with Algonquian verb grammar. --Danny Wier French is essentially je ne sais quoi. --Sally Caves Swiss French is essentially French "uptalk." --Sally Caves French is essentially the linguistic equivalent of a really bad tailgating accident in which all the final consonants either are lost or stuck on the windshield of the next car. --Hanbing Feng French is essentially Latin spoken by Germans (with their mouths full). --Mukund Marathe French is essentially the quintessence of every kind of Romance language, disguised over centuries by its inspired creators into some Germanic stepbrother out of sheer modesty. --Guillaume Thomas French is essentially the pidgin Latin that Caesar's army used to solicit German whores. --Tom Arnold French is just Celtic with a heavy overlay of Vulgar Latin. --Brian If Quebecois is to French what American is to English, French is essentially an extinct language. --Ivan C. Amaya French is essentially bad Latin as spoken by Bretons and Gauls who are insecure about their ancestry. --Xander French is what happened when Germans tried to learn Latin and said "screw it." --Charles Lavergne French is essentially Latin as spoken by rowdy drunken Gauls mocking the Roman legions in their own language. --Xander Pasqueretta French is essentially the only language worth speaking -- according to the French. --Ivan C. Amaya French is essentially an accordion, where the final letters of words are either smeared into the next words, or squashed out of existence entirely. --Bill Van French is essentially the language you think you can speak until you arrive in France. --Ivan C. Amaya Kreyol is essentially French pwonounced wike a wittu girw and spewwed aww kwazie. --Elise Trucks French is essentially less than what French speakers think it is and more than the rest of us think it is. --Ivan C. Amaya Creole French is essentially French from which all the needless complications have been removed: no irregular verbs, no genders, no subjunctive, no pronouns that vary by case, no hard-to-pronounce "u" or "r" sounds... (In fact almost the only thing they forgot to fix were those silly numbers, such as quatre-vingt-quatorze...) --Paul Berry French is essentially refined Catalan. --Ivan C. Amaya Portuguese Portuguese is essentially bad Spanish, mumbled. --Eugene Holman Portuguese is essentially Spanish spoken through ill-fitting dentures. --Not Roger Mills Portuguese is essentially the language spoken by Gallegos who decided to have their own independent country. --Ivan C. Amaya Portuguese is essentially Spanish while eating a hot potato. --Mike Taylor Ergo Portuguese is essentially Danish posing as a Romance language. --Benct Philip Jonsson Portuguese is essentially Spanish spoken while on Viagra™. --Danny Wier Brazilian is essentially Latin without consonants. --Paulo Rónai (via Luís Henrique) Portuguese is essentially Brazilian without vowels. --Luís Henrique Portuguese is essentially Spanish as spoken by a Russian. --Peter Clark Azorean Portuguese is essentially your Mainland Portuguese as spoken with puckered lips. --ilvi Portuguese is nothing more than Spanish as spoken by people who wannabe French. --Javier de la Rosa Gallego is essentially Portuguese as suppressed by Francisco Franco (a wannabe Castilian). --Javier de la Rosa Brazilian is essentially Spanish spoken by Portuguese hot babes with rhythm. --Javier de la Rosa Brazilian is essentially a conlang created by people who wanted to have sex all the time, but still be able to talk about everyday things. --alleszermalmer Portuguese and Galician are hayseed dialects of Spanish. --Brian They say if you're speaking bad Spanish, you're speaking Portuguese but I didn't find that to be true! --Brian Portuguese is Spanish spoken with a French accent. (Not really true since the nasals in Portuguese are different than those in French.) --Brian Portuguese is essentially a kind of contact language formed from Spanish and... more Spanish! --Maria To a Galician speaker, Portuguese sounds like a kind of Galician with most vowels left out, whereas to a Portuguese speaker Galician may sometimes sound like Portuguese with a Spanish accent. --Anonymous Portuguese is Spanish spoken by a drunken Frenchman. --vacapinta Portuguese (Brazilian) is Spanish without bones. --Carlos Quevedo To a Galician speaker, Portuguese sounds like a kind of Galician with most vowels left out, whereas to a Portuguese speaker Galician may sometimes sound like Portuguese with a Spanish accent. --John Cowan Portuguese is essentially bad Latin that Spaniards cannot understand. --Humberto Ribeiro Portuguese is Italian spoken by someone on sedatives. --Ken Westmoreland Portuguese is essentially like a kind of Galician with most vowels left out. --Anonymous Wikipedian Contrariwise, Galician is essentially Portuguese with a Spanish accent. --Anonymous Wikipedian Portuguese is essentially hard core Galician. --Ivan C. Amaya Brazilian is essentially Portuguese with bossa rhythm. --Ivan C. Amaya Portuguese is essentially Spanish that's ashamed of its heritage, so it passes itself off as a Slavic language. --Bill Van Portuguese is essentially a dialect of Spanish that managed to score an army and a navy. --Leonardo Boiko Portuguese is essentially heavily mutated vulgar soldier's Latin, as spoken by prescriptive purists obsessed with "preserving the correct language". --Leonardo Boiko Portuguese is essentially Spanish. --Leonardo Boiko Brazilian Portuguese is essentially Spanish. --Sili Portuguese is essentially Spanish that's been left out in the rain all night. --Paul Clarke Portuguese is essentially Castilian without bones. --Miguel de Unamuno (via Guilherme Azevedo) Portuguese is essentially the language Gallegos do not know they already speak. --Ivan C. Amaya Other Romance Provençal is essentially Medieval French as uttered during lovemaking. --Javier de la Rosa Catalan is essentially bad Spanish mixed with even worse French. --Eugene Holman Catalan is essentially Spanish and French spoken at the same time. --Michael Everson Catalan is essentially Spanish when you're not paying attention. --Mike Taylor Catalan is essentially bad Spanish and bad French mixed by somebody who did not speak either one of them. --Ivan C. Amaya Catalan is essentially Castilian spoken by a dyslexic Frenchman. --Ivan C. Amaya Catalan, as everyone knows, is essentially Spanish spoken by Poles. --John Fisher Catalan is essentially Spanish with the last letter removed from each word. --Ged Lewis Catalan is essentially Castilian spoken by people who don't want to speak Castilian. --Luís Henrique Catalan is essentially French spoken with a Portuguese accent. --Luís Henrique Catalan is essentially Provençal spoken by Spaniards. --Thomas Leigh Occitan is essentially Catalan spoken by the French. --Thomas Leigh Rumantsch is essentially Vulgar Latin of old as cryogenized in the Swiss Alps. --ilvi Brithenig is essentially bad Italian spoken by Welsh who swallow the final syllables. --Andrew Smith Wenedyk is essentially Latin written by someone who fell asleep on the keyboard. --Jan van Steenbergen Romanian is essentially a Romance language trying really hard to blend in with the Slavic languages around it. --Jesse S. Bangs Romanian is essentially an exiled, forever-homesick 'Ovidiu' writing his stanzas from an immense vocabulary of slavic-turkish-hungarian-greek-french-german-yiddish-kaldarash Latin, and -- unlike all of his far-living lazy and vulgarized brothers, sisters and cousins -- still cherishes a faint idea and longing for his classical mother's so-noble traits. --Alfred W. Tüting (.aulun.) Reman is essentially the prodigal son of Latin. --Christophe Grandsire Narbonósc is essentially French spoken by a Provençal who drank too much Pastis. --Christophe Grandsire Romanian is essentially Italian with unintelligible endings. --Primo Levi Rumantsch is essentially Gaelic with an Italian accent. --Eamon Graham Catalan is essentially Spanish with the accents slanted the other way. --Adam Walker Judajca is essentially Latin that's been circumcised. --Steg Belsky Romanian is essentially Dracula in Gucci underwear. --Ivan C. Amaya Catalan was invented by horny Spanish guys who tried to sound French so they could pick up Northern European girls who could only speak French as a foreign tongue. --Andrew Johnson Catalan is essentially the secret passwords needed to get into places half-price in Barcelona. --Peter Bleackley Catalan has more of a frantaliano feel to it, whereas Portuguese is more esfrañol. --Mark J. Reed Portuguese is essentially the language of angry Spaniards. --Bill Hammel Romanian is essentially Latin spoken by Slavs. --Trebor Jung Portuguese is essentially Spanish disguised as French. --Danny Wier Catalan is a complicated mixture of Spanish and French: sometimes it appears to be the intersection, sometimes the union, sometimes it is weirdly unique. --Javier Candeira Catalan is essentially German read in Spanish by a French speaker. --Clint Jackson Baker Romanian is essentially French pronounced as written. --Christian Thalmann Romanian is essentially Latin spoken by people who prefer to live in cold lands instead of Mediterranean basin and prefer to drink vodka instead of wine. --Fatih Yuksel Romanian is essentially Russian pretending to be a Romance language. --Keith Gaughan Moldavian is essentially a Romanian dialect which spurted out of Russian imperialism, except that some angry men and women who found themselves on the bad side of the border decided to pick up all the broken pieces of their cultural identity and to call their dialect with the name of their nation, which is touching but still linguistically misleading. --Guillaume Thomas Romanian is essentially the expression of the stunning ability of a Roman soldier to keep his linguistic roots alive when he switched to shepherding in a hostile Dacian environment. --Guillaume Thomas Yiddish and Romanian are aberrant dialects of German and Italian with some Slavic modifications. --Brian Romanian is essentially Latin spoken with an Albanian accent. --Brian Joseph Romanian is essentially Italian stirred in a blender. --Anonymous Catalan is essentially Portuguese migrated to the other side of the Iberian peninsula and spoken with an outrageous French accent. --Theresa Ann Wymer Romanian is essentially the German of the Romance languages for three reasons: Like German, it has fricatives and affricates practically everywhere, an unintuitively conservative grammar, and a stubborn cockiness regarding the latter, often expressed while unintentionally spitting because of the former. --Xander Pasqueretta Catalan is essentially the language used by Spaniards to communicate with French people who speak some Spanish. --Ivan C. Amaya Rumantsch is essentially German idiom and syntax disguised with Romance words and inflections. --Philip Newton Catalan is just an Occitan dialect, the only difference is that it's still alive. --Darius Ruda Catalan is essentially Castilian spoken under Ibiza's sun --Ivan C. Amaya Catalan is essentially "the missing link" between Spanish and French. --Ivan C. Amaya Slavic Bulgarian is essentially Russian pronounced as it is spelled and using English grammar. --Eugene Holman Bulgarian is essentially Romanian with Russian vocabulary. --Danny Wier Slovenian is essentially Russian with an Italian accent. --Egbert Lenderink This [Russian with an Italian accent] is actually how I tend to view Bulgarian. --Daniel von Brighoff This description fits Serbo-Croat much better. --Ivan Derzhanski Serbo-Croatian is essentially an auxiliary language devised so that different ethnic groups can understand each other as they swear at one another. --Javier de la Rosa Serbian and Croatian are essentially different languages merged by mutual hatred. --Jay Bowks Bosnian is essentially a dead language, shot dead in no man's land. --Javier de la Rosa Croatian is essentially Serbo-Croatian written in the alphabet used in Catholic Gospels. --Marco Cimarosti Serbian is essentially Serbo-Croatian written in the alphabet used in Orthodox Gospels. --Marco Cimarosti Bosnian is essentially Serbo-Croatian curiously not written in the alphabet used in the Koran. --Marco Cimarosti Bosnian is essentially what Serbs and Croats prefer to communicate with each other in. --Danny Weir Polish is essentially Russian spoken by a Frenchman. --Daniel von Brighoff Polish is essentially a light form of Russian that even Germans can master. --Jay Bowks Polish is essentially any other Slavic language with 70% of its consonants randomly shuffled. --Basilius Polish is essentially Czech spoken under the shower by a couple that is unable to choose between fighting and making love. --Jan van Steenbergen Russian is essentially Church Slavonic with a strong Mordvin accent. --Basilius Russian is essentially Englishovat'. --David Peterson Russian is essentially an articulated wail. --Dan Seriff Russian is essentially a language invented by Poles who couldn't spell. --Dan Sikorski Ukrainian is essentially Russian spoken by people with cleft palates. --John Cowan Ukrainian is essentially an East Slavic relexification of Polish. --Basilius Written Belarusian is essentially Russian with misspellings one would expect from small Russian children. --Ivan Derzhanski (based on Terrence Griffin on Dutch) Czech is essentially Slovak as spoken by a German. --John Cowan Conversely, Slovak is essentially Czech as spoken by a Hungarian. --John Cowan (Modern) Church Slavonic is essentially a Slavic relexification of New Testament Greek. --Basilius Old Church Slavonic is essentially the language that comes out when the basses sing a low C. --Dan Seriff Polish is essentially a remarkably "wet" language. --Jan van Steenbergen German and Polish are essentially the same, only there are too many "ß"s in Leftoderian writing, and too many "z"s in Rightoderian. --Andreas Johansson Trasianka is Russian as said by the Belarusian mouth, Narkamauka is Belarusian as imitated by a Russian mouth and Taraszkievica is the Belarusian mouth itself. --Pavel Iosad (on Belarusian dialects) From 15000 meters up, all Slavic languages are essentially the same. --John Cowan Belarusian is essentially Polish spoken by a Russian suffering from a severe attack of akanie. --Jan van Steenbergen Ukrainian is essentially Russian with extra letters. --Bill Hammel Polish is essentially Russian spoken by people who thought it was French and had to sound awful. --Trebor Jung Polish is essentially Portuguese when you stand 3 meters away, and Russian when you come closer. --Philippe Caquant Czech is essentially Russian with beer instead of vodka. --Andreas Johansson Russian is essentially Punjabi spoken in the throat. Contrariwise, Punjabi is essentially Russian spoken in the nose. --C. B. Wright Russian is essentially Punjabi that fell off the wagon. Contrariwise, Punjabi is essentially Russian with better spices. --C. B. Wright Rrrrussian essentially is a language that requirrres its speakerrr to have a tongue that worrrks like a vibrrratorrr. --Hanbing Feng Russian and Belarusian are essentially badly spelled Ukrainian. --Andreas Johansson Russian is essentially drunken Polish babytalk written with a Greek alphabet. --Mark Garrity Ukrainian is essentially Russian with a bad attitude. --Mark Garrity Ukrainian is essentially Indo-European that stayed at home. --Jörg Rhiemeier Bulgarian is essentially Russian with no cases, but with articles (but tacked on to the ends of nouns). --John "Serge" Beeler Polish is perfectly good Russian words effed up with redundant sh and zh sounds. --John "Serge" Beeler Belarusian is essentially Russian spelled the way it's pronounced. --John "Serge" Beeler On the other hand, Old Church Slavonic is essentially Russian pronounced the way it's spelled (and with funny archaic words in it). --John "Serge" Beeler Bulgarian is essentially Russian spoken with an Italian accent. --Thomas Topham Polish is essentially Slovak as spoken by a young Slovakian making a lot of silly, funny mistakes -- and vice versa. --Thomas Topham Russian is essentially Czech vocabulary with a Polish accent. --Jacek Kopecky Modern Bulgarian is essentially Old Church Slavic which has lost its cases. --Benct Philip Jonsson Bulgarian is essentially yet another Russian with yet another similar but a bit different grammar and lexicon. --Aleksej Saushev Slovak sounds essentially like Polish spoken with a speech impediment. --Marek Sergot, via Jacek Kopecky Bulgarian essentially would like to trade places with Portuguese. --Bill Van Russian essentially is the last few words you utter before being eaten by a polar bear. --Ivan Amaya Czech, Slovak and Slovenian are all essentially Polish child-speak. --J.P. (of "Johnson") Croatian is the result of the artificial intention to differentiate it from the rest of the Serbo-Croatian dialects by changing all the nice words by those that only the peasants of the country use. If they are the same as in Serbia, then they use Italian ones. --Darius Ruda Ukrainian is essentially Russian spoken by a Pole who knows its grammar but does not know its words. --Jan van Steenbergen Celtic Latin is essentially Gaulish, but tour guides need to say both. --Asterix Norse is essentially Gaulish with rings on top of a's and o's slashed. --Asterix Greek is essentially Gaulish with an angular version of the Latin script. --Asterix Gothic is essentially Gaulish in Fraktur. --Asterix Hebrew is essentially Gaulish. --Asterix Coptic is Gaulish that got lost in the desert. --Danny Wier Egyptian is Gaulish in pictures. --Irina Rempt Breton is essentially Welsh spoken with an aoutRAAAAgeous Franch acSANT. --Daniel von Brighoff Welsh is essentially some reasonable language that had its stock of vowels pillaged by Polynesians, yes, but which one? Irish? They really don't sound that much alike. --Daniel von Brighoff Breton is essentially Welsh with all the consonants changed to "z". --Thomas Leigh Welsh is essentially Breton spoken by Methodists (being sober, they have no problem with [T] and [D], keep their vowels and [r]'s clear, don't turn their diphthongs inside out ...). --Keith Cornish is essentially Breton spoken by lapsed Methodists (if they haven't lapsed to begin with, a few "cultural" visits to Brittany seem to do the trick). --Keith Welsh is essentially what appears on the screen after you have inadvertently been resting your elbow on the keyboard. --And Rosta Welsh is essentially the only language that can have four consecutive L's. --Danny Weir Irish is essentially an Indo-European language cunningly disguised as gibberish to perplex the English. --And Rosta Irish is essentially as many phonemes as possible written with as few letters as possible. --Danny Weir Scottish Gaelic is essentially Irish Gaelic as spoken by Britons, Picts, and Norsemen. --Thomas Leigh Manx is essentially Scottish Gaelic pronounced like Irish Gaelic and spelled like English. --Thomas Leigh All Celtic languages are essentially the same with different idioms, what. --Asterix Irish essentially sounds like a "normal" language recorded on tape and played backwards. --Christian Thalmann Gaelic sounds like Dutch on Acid. --Anonymous, via Thomas Leigh Manx is essentially Irish disguised as English gibberish. --Danny Wier Welsh is practically spoken in Swansea and essentially spoken in Aberystwyth. --Sally Caves Gaelic is essentially what would happen at the intersection of English spelling, Polish pronunciation and quite random yet strongly h-rich vocabulary. (This, however, would suggest that Gaelic is being reborn around the modern London suburbs or that it is Basque as sung by some weary Scotsmen.) --Jakub Bartoszewicz Welsh is American English spoken by an Indian rap artist trying to keep his head above water. --Ken Westmoreland Scots Gaelic is Ulster Irish as spoken by a Presbyterian minister with the hedonism squeezed out of him. --Ken Westmoreland Manx is Scottish Gaelic spoken by a Liverpudlian in a bad mood. --Ken Westmoreland Manx is essentially Welsh with the tail chopped off. --John Emerson Modern Irish is essentially a breeze compared with Old Irish. --Language Hat Greek Modern Greek is essentially Classical Greek with all vowels and diphthongs changed to "i", and all consonants pronounced as fricatives. --Egbert Lenderink/Justin Mansfield Modern Greek is essentially Classical Greek as spoken by Venetians. --Daniel von Brighoff Koine Greek is essentially Classical Greek as spoken by people who don't know any Greek. --Andreas Johansson Modern Greek is essentially Koine Greek after too much ouzo. --Danny Wier Mycenaean was essentially Greek written in katakana. (Apart from pigs and vases, which were written in kanji.) --Marco Cimarosti Ancient Greek is Proto-Indo-European pidgin with an attitude.

Koine Greek is Ancient Greek mangled far and wide.

Modern Greek is Koine Greek mumbled and hissed (p-ssed). ;) --Hanuman Czhang Latin is essentially bad Greek. --paiktis22 Greek essentially is a lengthy math equation with too many variables. --Hanbing Feng The Greek language is essentially the reason why the rest of Europe decided to adopt Latin instead. --Ivan C. Amaya Greek is essentially Turkish. --Anonymous, via Noetica Modern Greek is essentially encrypted Castilian Spanish. --Henrik Theiling The Book of Revelation is essentially written in Aramaic Pidgin Greek. --John Cowan Middle Greek is essentially the repeated, stuttering, yet beautiful denial of Hellenes who claim to be Roman who claim to be Christian who refuse to pretend that the Medieval World is still Classical. --Alexander Montie Baltic, Indo-Iranian, Dravidian Lithuanian is essentially bad Sanskrit. --John Cowan Proto-Sanskrit was essentially Proto-Latin spoken with a Proto-Tamil accent. --Marco Cimarosti Sanskrit is essentially PIE as spoken by people who like /a/. --Andreas Johansson Tamil is essentially Sanskrit spoken with a stutter. --Benct Philip Jonsson Conversely, Sanskrit is essentially Tamil spoken with a lisp. --Benct Philip Jonsson Urdu is essentially Hindi as spoken by Muslims. --John Cowan ...conversely, Hindi is essentially Urdu as spoken by Hindus. --John Cowan Hindi is essentially a combination of bad Persian and worse Sanskrit. --Amber Adams Bombay Hindi is essentially bad English. --Amber Adams ...conversely, Bombay English is essentially bad Hindi. --Amber Adams Bengali is essentially Hindi with all words stressed at the beginning. --John Cowan Gujarati is essentially Hindi spoken by lazy Frenchmen. --Shreyas Sampat Romany is essentially a mix of Hindi and everything else. --Danny Weir Romany is essentially Kashmiri that took a long trip. --Danny Wier Malayalam is essentially Tamil as spoken by people who like palindromes. --Amber Adams Middle Persian is essentially Aramaic as written by monolingual Iranians. --Benct Philip Jonsson Pashto is as essentially Persian as Icelandic is essentially English. --John Cowan Kurdish is essentially Persian as spoken by Klingons. --Robin Turner Tajik is essentially Farsi written in the Cyrillic alphabet, with a little Uzbek stirred in for flavor. --Andreas Johansson Estonian is essentially Finnish with more length distinctions. --Lars Henrik Mathiesen Latvian is essentially Lithuanian (or Livonian) spoken by Estonians. --Lars Henrik Mathiesen/Otto Stolz Punjabi is essentially Hindi for pop music. --Amber Adams Bengali ish esshentially the shame ash Hindi, exshept no /s/. --Amber Adams Tamil is essentially the language that makes German look logical and easy. --Amber Adams Farsi is essentially Classical Latin as spoken by an Arab first-year student. --Amber Adams Romany is essentially Hindustani that took a walkabout. --Danny Wier Bengali is essentially Hindi spoken with a rosogolla in one's mouth. --Alok Joshi Sanskrit is Tamil with aspiration and voice, with borrowings from Proto-Indo-European. --Shanth Punjabi is essentially Indo-Iranian that stayed at home. --Jörg Rhiemeier Eastern Punjabi is essentially Western Punjabi that has been pwned by Hindi. --John Cowan Lithuanian is essentially Latvian as spoken by Poles. --The Multilingual Kitten Lithuanian is essentially a Baltic language insisting really strongly that it doesn't blend in with the Slavic languages around it. --Theodore Latgalian is essentially Latvian with vowels randomly shuffled. --The Multilingual Kitten Livonian is essentially Estonian as written by Latvians who couldn't decide whether to use Latvian or Estonian orthography, so used both at the same time. --The Multilingual Kitten Livonian is actually Latvian as spoken by drunken southern Estonians. --alcarilinque Livonian essentially sounds like what a deaf man would hear in a diving bell at the bottom of the ocean. --UbuRoivas Livonian is essentially a language the sound of which nobody knows. --Not UbuRoivas Pali is essentially Sanskrit spoken with your mouth full of cotton. --Malcolm David Eckel Lithuanian is Sanskrit spoken by a Pole. --Ken Westmoreland Latvian is Russian in Roman script with a letter 's' at the end of every word. --Ken Westmoreland Tamil is Welsh spoken by a Sri Lankan auctioneer underwater. --Ken Westmoreland Lithuanian is essentially Koine Satem." --Ted Kloba Uralic Finnish is essentially Estonian spoken in the genitive case. --Eugene Holman Conversely, Estonian is essentially Finnish with most unstressed and final syllables suppressed. --Eugene Holman Finnish is essentially bastardized Hungarian. --Ferenc Valoczy Finnish is essentially Japanese spoken with an Italian accent. --John Davies Finnish is essentially Turkish in the snow. --Mike Taylor Conversely, Turkish is essentially Finnish in the sun. --Mike Taylor Sámi is essentially Finnish spoken with a lisp and a sore throat. --Benct Philip Jonsson Conversely, Finnish is essentially Sámi with a PIE substrate. --Daniel Andreasson Ffiinnnniisshh iiss eesssseennttiiaallllyy aa llaanngguuaaggee ffoorr ppeeooppllee wwiitthh ddoouubbllee vviissiioonn. --Clint Jackson Baker Hungarian is essentially Finnish spoken by Czechs. --Benct Philip Jonsson Hungarian is essentially the noise one's dad makes when he has accidentally hit his thumb with a hammer. --And Rosta Finnish is essentially Proto-Estonian. --Benct Philip Jonsson Estonian is essentially Finnish spoken by Swedes. --Benct Philip Jonsson Hungarian is essentially German with all sounds randomly shuffled. --Egbert Lenderink Hungarian is essentially a Scotch snap with double-long rounded vowels. --Dan Seriff Hungarian is essentially all counterintuitive consonant pairings. --Dan Seriff Finnish is essentially Hungarian spoken while drunk, freezing, and morose. --Dan Seriff Sámi is essentially Hungarian spoken while drunk, freezing, and standing next to a reindeer. --Dan Seriff Finnish is essentially Swedish with all sounds randomly shuffled. --Egbert Lenderink Votic is essentially Finnish with a German accent. Or perhaps with a strong Russian accent, in which case it is Estonian that is Finnish with a German accent. --Alfredo Garcia Gonzalez Votic is essentially extinct (25 speakers and falling). --John Cowan Estonian is essentially an inflecting form of Finnish whose lexicon is just Finnish mangled by syncope and apocope with a whole bunch of foreign words pretending to be native. --Trebor Jung Hungarian is essentially a mangling of Uralic, Turkic, Slavic, and German words, with a remarkably Uralic-esque grammar. --Trebor Jung Hungarian is essentially German disguised as a Uralic language with Turkic and Slavic influence. --Trebor Jung Estonian is essentially mumbled Finnish as written down by a German. --Philip Newton Hűngarian eszensialy egy langűagy dizaind all főrein tőűrisztsz tű perpleksz every aszpekt-in iz. --Hanbing Feng Mordvin is essentially Uralic that stayed at home. in: West Germanic (Low) --Jörg Rhiemeier Hungarian is essentially Finnish as spoken by Norwegians and written by Poles. --The Multilingual Kitten ...no, by anti-Poles. No self-respecting Pole would flip s and sz around. --spamsink Finnish is Estonian spoken by a Hungarian with a stutter in very cold weather. --Ken Westmoreland Finnish is essentially a language nobody really needs to learn. --Ivan Amaya Votic is essentially Finnish with a German accent. --Old Chatot Afroasiatic Hebrew is essentially Arabic mangled by Europeans. But then, so is Maltese. --John Cowan Maltese is essentially Arabic as spoken by an Italian living in England. --Fabian Modern Hebrew is the language of the Bible and the Talmud, refurbished by a mad pedant and bastardized by 5 million immigrants. --Marc Miller Modern Hebrew is essentially Biblical Hebrew with Euro-Zionist mismanagement. --Jay Bowks Berber is essentially Egyptian spoken while imitating snorting camels. --ilvi Berber is essentially a cousin of the Semitic languages with a fear of vowels. --Danny Weir Egypt, home of mystery religion, had a language with mystery vowels. --Danny Weir Coptic is essentially Egyptian spoken by Greeks. (Or Greek spoken by Egyptians?) --Thomas Leigh Egyptian is essentially Coptic with no vowels written. --Justin Mansfield Coptic is essentially Egyptian with no vowels pronounced. --Justin Mansfield Modern Hebrew is essentially bits of Ancient Hebrew from every period, spoken by an Eastern European. --Justin Mansfield Hebrew is essentially Arabic with most consonants changed to "sh" and "kh". --Danny Wier Syriac is essentially Hebrew with Georgian-like vowel placements. --Danny Wier Hausa is essentially Arabic spoken in a manner much like playing the didgeridoo. --Danny Wier Maldivian is essentially Sinhala written with Arabic-Indic digits with accents. --Marco Cimarosti Hebrew is essentially Arabic spoken with a Yiddish accent. --Christophe Pierret Arabic is essentially the result of a bottle of tabasco flushed down with a bottle of Stroh rum. --Christian Thalmann Arabic is essentially Spanish spoken backwards. --Ivan C. Amaya Al-Arabiyya al-essentialliyya al-lanqu'aj al-moor as-similar al-Hebruwwa adh-dhan al-Inqlishiyya. --Danny Wier Algerian is essentially Arabic before vowels were invented. --Christophe Pierret Egyptian is essentially Arabic spoken on top of a pyramid. --Christophe Pierret Egyptian is essentially Arabic pronounced by sphinxes (which explains why [dZ] is replaced by [g] to mystify other Arabs). --Christophe Pierret Saudi Arabian is essentially Arabic with all words meaning "sex" and "alcohol" removed. --Christophe Pierret Lebanese is essentially business Arabic. --Christophe Pierret Lebanese is essentially Arabic with a French accent. --Leo Caesius Aramaic sounds essentially like Greek, as spoken by a camel with morning sickness. --Somtow Sucharitkul Modern Hebrew is essentially Ashkenazic Hebrew as spoken by Sephardim. --Steg Belsky Modern Hebrew is essentially Sephardic Hebrew as spoken by Ashkenazim. --Steg Belsky Modern Israeli Hebrew is essentially all previous stages of Hebrew relexified into British English with all the words changed to end in "-atziya". --Steg Belsky Standard Arabic is essentially Biblical Hebrew with a few more consonants. --Steg Belsky NYC-Area Judeo-Syrian is "essentially" Arabic curses, bad Ebonics, and anglicized Hebrew religious terminology spoken with a Brooklyn accent. --Steg Belsky Moroccan Arabic is essentially Arabic pronounced as spelled -- without any vowels. --Adam Walker Arabic is essentially the Latin of the future (there will be more Muslims than Christians sometime this century). --Danny Wier Hebrew is essentially Arabic disguised as Aramaic. --Danny Wier Maltese writing is essentialy Latin with some dots on top. --anonymous Maltese is essentially the bastard child of Arabic and Italian who spent too much time hanging around with English. --Joe Aramaic is essentially Hebrew after being violated by Greeks and left by the side of the road. --Tom Arnold Modern Hebrew is essentially 11th Century Hebrew poorly pronounced by European Socialists. --Tom Arnold 11th Century Hebrew is essentially Mishnaic Hebrew after Rashi added some words. --Tom Arnold Mishnaic Hebrew is essentially Biblical Hebrew minus some confusing grammatical rules. --Tom Arnold Biblical Hebrew is essentially supposed to confuse anyone who reads it without referring to the Oral Law. --Tom Arnold Israeli (somewhat misleadingly a.k.a. "Modern Hebrew") is essentially a hybrid of "sleeping beauty"/"walking dead" Hebrew, "mame loshn" (mother tongue) Yiddish and a plethora of other contributors. --Ghil'ad Zuckermann Modern Israeli Hebrew is essentially Sephardic Hebrew as fit into Ashkenazic/Yiddish Phonology. --Anonymous, via Jonathan North Washington Berber is essentially French. --Hassan Ibrahimi The Afro-Asiatic family is essentially the first language family to make grammatical use of perpetual laryngitis. --Xander .sdrwckb nttrw dn gnssm slwv ht ll htw ctms-trp ylltnss s wrbH --Christopher C. DeSantis Aramaic is essentially really informal Hebrew. --Mark Shoulson Afroasiatic, Ancient Biblical Aramaic is essentially Biblical Hebrew with a lithp. --Dan Seriff Peripheral Akkadian is essentially bad Akkadian. --John Huehnergard Amarna Akkadian is essentially Peripheral Akkadian as written by monolingual Canaanites. --John Huehnergard Canaanite is essentially bad Arabic. --John Huehnergard "Amorite" is essentially everything written in Akkadian which isn't Akkadian. --John Huehnergard Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian are essentially debased forms of Akkadian as written by monolingual Aramaeans. --Charles Häberl Akkadian is essentially East Semitic as spoken and written by Sumerians. --Charles Häberl Moabite is essentially Aramaic, concealing its roots and aspiring to be a dialect of Hebrew. --Charles Häberl The language of Deir Alla is essentially Hebrew, laying low and pretending to be a dialect of Aramaic. --Charles Häberl Biblical Hebrew is essentially Canaanite as spoken by Zoroastrians. --Charles Häberl Mandaic is essentially Aramaic as spoken by Zoroastrians. --Charles Häberl Late Biblical Hebrew is essentially Biblical Hebrew, as written by monolingual Aramaeans, without the benefit of Lambdin's grammar. --Charles Häberl Imperial Aramaic is essentially "business Aramaic" as spoken by Persian clerks and middle management. --Charles Häberl Biblical Aramaic is essentially a bad imitation of Persian Chancery Aramaic as written by a mediocre Judean novelist during the Hellenistic Era. --Charles Häberl Phoenician is essentially "business Hebrew." --Charles Häberl Punic is essentially Phoenician as spoken by Berbers. --Charles Häberl Proto-Semitic is essentially Arabic spoken by an Ethiopian. --Danny Weir Biblical Hebrew is essentially Standard Arabic with a few consonants lost at the bottom of the Reed Sea. --Steg Belsky Talmudic Aramaic is essentially Arabic at the dentist ("say 'aaaaa...'") trying to be Hebrew but dropping the wrong consonants. --Steg Belsky Ancient Egyptian is essentially a picture book. --Steg Belsky Sino-Tibetan, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese 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 Japanese is essentially tone-deaf ancient Chinese spoken backwards. --Matthew Faupel Japanese is essentially phonetic heaven. --Nik Taylor Japanese is essentially 16th-century Chinese, 17th-century Portuguese, 18th-century Dutch, 19th-century French and 20th-century English with an abhorrence of consonant clusters. --Matthew Faupel Japanese is essentially the linguistic equivalent of kicking someone's butt. --Danny Wier This is a more apt description of Korean as I heard it used by kindergarten teachers and drunk middle-aged males alike. --Brendan Wolfe Korean is essentially being caught in a syllable-diagramming exercise gone horribly, horribly wrong. --David Boshko Shanghainese is essentially Mandarin spoken with laryngitis. --John Cowan Mandarin is essentially Chinese as spoken by servants. --Yuen Ren Chao Mandarin (contrasted with Cantonese) sounds essentially like wind whistling through dry bamboo. --Adam Walker Taiwanese sounds essentially like a room full of rubber balls. --Adam Walker Cantonese is essentially Chinese as spoken by a Zhuang. --John Cowan Cantonese is essentially what everyone else in China calls swearing. --Kiri Aradia Morgan Chinese is essentially Symbolic Logic spoken as a tonal language. --Zoe Mulford Modern Tibetan is essentially Old Tibetan as spoken by people whose tongues went numb from trying to actually pronounce Old Tibetan as written. --Benct Philip Jonsson Tibetan is essentially Burmese with Georgian-like vowel placements. --Danny Wier 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 Chinese is essentially just like any other language, except that there's no tense, gender, conjugation, grammar, or logic, and all the words sound the same. --Jonathan Walton Taiwanese is essentially Mandarin (though the letter 'H' was mortally wounded during the civil war). --Jonathan Walton Chinese, as spoken by hip 20-somethings, is essentially really bad English. --Jonathan Walton Japanese, as spoken by hip 50-somethings, is essentially really bad English. --Wolcen Japanese is essentially Classical Chinese with a second helping of vowels. --Jonathan Walton Modern Chinese is essentially Classical Chinese without any manners. --Jonathan Walton Chinese is essentially a picture book drawn by people who forgot they were drawing pictures. --Steg Belsky Japanese is essentially Tagalog spoken by Koreans trying to do an impression of Americans from the point of view of Chinese people. --Andrew Johnson Classical Japanese is essentially Classical Chinese with zi4 ("z") pronounced as ji ("g"). --Benct Philip Jonsson Korean is essentially being caught in a syllable-diagraming exercise gone horribly, horribly wrong. --David Boshko I have long maintained that Japanese grammar is essentially Spanish done in reverse Polish notation. --Elyse Grasso Vietnamese is essentially Thai with a Chinese vocabulary. --Danny Wier Korean is essentially Mongolian with a Chinese vocabulary. --Danny Wier Chinese is essentially German, only more so. --John Cowan Classical Chinese is essentially verbs with optional arguments and complements. --Benct Philip Jonsson Japanese is essentially a language that adopted the world's most complicated writing system, and then made it worse. --Peter Bleackley Mandarin Chinese is essentially French spoken backwards. --Troels Busk-Jepsen Korean is essentially angry Japanese with a speech impediment. --Aeron Lempert Japanese is (of course) essentially Turkish as spoken by Hawaiians. --David Eddyshaw Japanese is essentially Korean as spoken by academics with absolutely no knowledge of Korean. --mythusmage Mandarin is essentially the French of Sinitic. --Bill Poser Tibetan is essentially the French of Tibeto-Burman. --Russell Lee-Goldman Cantonese is Hokkien spoken by a Maori doing the haka after hearing his wife's been cheating on him. --Ken Westmoreland Japanese is essentially Spanish written in Chinese characters thrown in a bag and then sorted out without any logical order. --Ivan C. Amaya Wu is essentially a discordant mélange of Mandarin and Cantonese. --Simon Winchester Modern Japanese is essentially a way for the vocabulary of other languages to skip 100 years of evolution in meaning. --Joshua Nishikawa North Korean is essentially a collection of South Korean threats and insults put together by the North while South Koreans work. --Ivan C. Amaya Altaic Turkish is essentially Arabic, Persian and French words stuck together with Mongolian grammar. --Thomas Leigh All (other) Turkic languages are essentially obsolete Turkish. --John Cowan Modern Turkish is essentially Ottoman Turkish minus the Arabic, Persian and French words. --qaya Turkish is essentially Azerbaijani spoken by would-be Europeans, so with a French, German and English accent. --qaya Tatar is essentially Azerbaijani with a strong Mordvin accent. --qaya Uzbek is essentially Azerbaijani spoken by those who gave up on its 53 verb tenses. --qaya Kalmyk is essentially Mongolian that got lost. --Danny Wier Azerbaijani is essentially Turkish spoken by Shi'as who never have had anything to do with Ataturk. --Danny Wier Uzbek is essentially Uighur which used to be spoken with a Russian accent. --Fatih Yuksel Uighur is essentially Uzbek which still is spoken with a Chinese accent. --Fatih Yuksel Karaim is essentially Turkic spoken by Lithuanian Jews with European syntax and with a few Hebrew words added -- just to make sure they are both Europeans and Jews. --Fatih Yuksel Turkish is Azerbaijani spoken while sunbathing on the coast. --Fatih Yuksel Azerbaijani is Turkish spoken while working in an oil field. --Fatih Yuksel Uighur is essentially bad Turkish mixed with worse Kazakh and execrable Chinese. --Daniel Baker Manchu was essentially Mongolian, as adapted for use by multiethnic hillbillies with a penchant for voiceless bilabials and combined arms tactics. --Kenji Schwartz Evenki is essentially Ur-Tungusic as spoken by reindeer fetishists with wanderlust. --Kenji Schwarz Negidal is essentially Evenki without the wanderlust. --Kenji Schwarz Even is essentially pharyngealized Evenki, spoken by Santa's ranchers, at the beach. --Kenji Schwarz Solon is essentially Evenki spoken by Mongol groupies. Oroqen is just Solon without horses but with Chinese passports. --Kenji Schwarz Jurchen might be, in essence, Nanai as spoken by Mongol groupies but recorded by Chinese. --Kenji Schwarz Yakut (Sakha) is essentially Old Uighur spoken by Evenkis to cattle, while trying to sound like Finns. --Kenji Schwarz Nanai is essentially Ur-Tungusic as spoken by those Tunguses who objected to reindeer, cattle, and other newfangled Turco-Samoyedic vices, and who invested in riverfront property instead. --Kenji Schwarz Oroch is essentially Nanai spoken on the tributaries. Ulcha is essentially downriver Nanai. Kur-Urmi is essentially backwater Nanai. (Nanai proper fished all the sound changes out of the river before they could reach Oroch, Ulcha, or Kur-Urmi.) --Kenji Schwarz Udihe is essentially the bastard child of trappers' and ginseng-diggers' Chinese and upriver women's Nanai. --Kenji Schwarz Goldi is essentially what the old guard called Nanai, while Hezhen is essentially what the Red Guard called Goldi. --Kenji Schwarz Orok is essentially Nanai that crossed the Tatar Straits to look for more riverfront properties. --Kenji Schwarz Kazakh is essentially Kyrgyz without affricates. --Jonathan North Washington Uzbek is essentially three major branches of Turkic as spoken by Tajiks. --Jonathan North Washington Turkish is essentially a dialect of French (restoran, omlet, garson, factura, pantolon, televizyon,...). --Siganus Sutor ...spoken by Armenian berberians. --Language Hat The Manchus are essentially Jurchen who have recast themselves as a type of Mongol. --abd ul jetnu Sakha (Yakutian) is essentially Turkish spoken by people whose lips are frozen. --Ken Dowling Tuvan is essentially Turkic as spoken by Physicists and Bluesmen. --Ted Kloba Turkish is essentially Korean that survived the sack of a gang of angry Mongols and the transliteration of several nasty rulers. --Elise Trucks Turkish is essentially Hungarian adapted by retreating Huns who hoped that curses with umlauts would really frighten the Greeks. --Uschi Müller Eskimo-Aleut Inuinnaqtun is essentially Inuktitut written in the Latin alphabet and with most /s/ replaced by /h/. --Philip Newton Conversely, Inuktitut is essentially Inuinnaqtun written in Syllabics and with /h/ replaced by /s/. --Philip Newton Greenlandic is essentially Inuktitut with all consonant clusters replaced by geminates and all diphthongs replaced by long monophthongs. --Philip Newton Nunatsiavummiutut (aka Labradorimiutut or Inuttut) is essentially Inuktitut as spoken by someone without a uvula. --Philip Newton Old Greenlandic spelling (Kleinschmidt orthography) is essentially etymological rather than phonemic. --Philip Newton New Greenlandic spelling essentially pretends that a three-vowel language actually has five vowels. --Philip Newton Inuktitut iis eesseentiiaallyy Fiinniish aas spooqqeen iin Greenlaand. --Clint Jackson Baker Miscellaneous Proto-Indo-European is essentially Latin as spoken by Klingons. --Joe Hill Etruscan is essentially mummified, dried up Modern Albanian as used by hoary Italians. --ilvi Etruscan is essentially composed of the various sounds emanated by the cartoon character Pinky from Animaniacs. --Justin Mansfield Cherokee is essentially a language written in a mixture of Latin, Coptic and Cyrillic letters with exaggerated serifs. --Danny Wier Bella Coola (Nuxalk) is essentially the linguistic equivalent of a drum solo. --Danny Wier Chechen is essentially Klingon spoken by Caucasian Muslims. --Danny Wier Swahili is essentially Bantu as spoken while haggling over prices. --Jay Bowks Gur languages are essentially typical Niger-Congo languages, only with the nouns spoken backwards. --John Cowan Wolof is essentially the announcement of African unity restricted to the northwestern part of the continent. --Guillaume Thomas Tukulor is essentially Wolof when some Fula guys tried to experiment with linguistic variation over it, and they were successful. --Guillaume Thomas Hottentot is essentially voiced rock and roll, just the beat without the music. --ilvi Xhosa is essentially a Bantu language as spoken by a Bushman. --John Cowan Zulu and Xhosa are essentially Bantu languages that dabble a little in Khoisan phonology. --Danny Wier Georgian actually does have vowels but they procrastinate. --Danny Weir Grgn s ssntlly lngg wrttn wtht ny vwls --Clint Jackson Baker Georgian spoken backwards essentially is Russian. --Danny Weir Navajo is essentially not a language: it's a cryptographic system. --Tommy Tyrberg Nativeamericanlanguagesessentiallycramlotsofideasintooneword. --Clint Jackson Baker Comanche is essentially bad Shoshoni spoken from the back of a horse. --Anon. Burushaski is essentially Basque spoken by Indians. --Amber Adams Germanic is essentially a direct descendent of an Indo-European creole. --Hanuman Zhang If Welsh is P-Celtic, Irish is Q-Celtic, and Latin is Q-Italic, then Germanic is essentially Wh-F-Celtic-Italic. --John Cowan Classical Georgian is essentially a literal translation of New Testament Greek into Kartvelian. --Jörg Rhiemeier Gothic romanization is essentially an attempt to write both Gothic and proto-Gothic at the same time. --John Cowan Khmer is essentially Pali with a few consonant clusters borrowed from Georgian. --Amber Adams Most Germanic languages are essentially English spoken by Barbarians. --Joe Georgian is essentially a hybrid of altered IE grammar and Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Russian vocabulary with a grammar that pretends to be related to IE but is actually like Basque, just more polysynthetic. --Trebor Jung and Danny Wier Shilha is essentially the Bella Coola of Afro-Asiatic. Or Bella Coola is the Shilha of Salishan. --Danny Wier Chechen is essentially a mix of Arabic and Georgian consonants and French vowels. --Danny Wier Abkhaz is essentially the Haida of the Caucasus. Sixty-odd consonants; two vowels. --Danny Wier Astrotalk is essentially Scoobytalk with a futuristic accent. --Mark Shoulson Sumerian is essentially Akkadian after being invaded by proto-Persians. --Tom Arnold Nyulnyul is essentially Bardi with no final vowels. --Claire Southeast Asian languages in general (and Cantonese, for that matter) essentially sound like cutlery being thrown down the stairs. --Anonymous, via Jonathan North Washington Carrier is essentially French. --Anonymous, via Bill Poser Wolof is essentially English. --Anonymous, via Nate Ubykh is essentially an Abkhazian impersonation of an avalanche. --ubykhlives The Northeast Caucasian family is essentially the only language family to make phonemic use of burps, hiccups, gagging, coughing, inhaling, exhaling, and a combination of all six. --Xander Pasqueretta Yoruba in Nigeria is a list of vowels uttered by a man on a pogo stick. --Ken Westmoreland Shona in Zimbabwe is what you get when you try to quote a helicopter verbatim. --Ken Westmoreland Miami-Illinois is essentially not spoken in Miami or Illinois. --Ted Kloba One language essentially turns into another when the speaker has had too much to drink! --Meramarina Esperanto Esperanto is essentially bad Romance with lots of German and some Russian stirred in. --John Cowan Esperanto is essentially French spoken by a Russian. --Benct Philip Jonsson Esperanto is essentially a crippled cross-over between Italian and Spanish. --Jan van Steenbergen Esperanto is essentially German and Latin spoken with a Yiddish accent. --Danny Wier Esperanto is essentially English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Latin, and Greek, invented by someone who speaks English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Latin, Greek...and Polish. --Kapitano Eglefino Esperanto is essentially English/Romance/Germanic as construed into purposeful orthographical inaccuracy by Polish/Russian. --Jay Bowks Esperanto is essentially Indo-European pidgin. --Roger Mills Esperanto is essentially Hebrew as ravaged by Modern Aryan in a pogrom. --ilvi So it may be, but Esperanto still essentially sounds like Italian being mugged by Polish. --Mia S. Soderquist Ido is a essentially a Jewish language spoken by an anti-Semite. --Kapitano Eglefino Ido is essentially Esperanto, as sweet wine is essentially a bunch of sour grapes. --Jay Bowks Ido is essentially the bastard offspring of Esperanto and Idiom Neutral. --Thomas Leigh Esperanto is essentially English, French, German, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, Czech, Finnish, Japanese, Mandarin, Thai, and Russian all divided by 18. --Will McGree Esperanto is colloquial Italian. --Brian Esperanto is essentially Spanish with extra 'x's and 'k's. --Amos Block Other International Auxiliary Languages Novial is essentially Esperanto, reinvented by someone who was too late to be an Idist. --Kapitano Eglefino Novial is essentially French read with a Danish pronunciation. --Benct Philip Jonsson Re-Novial is essentially Jespersen's Novial as aged in the cask, bottled and ready for uncorking. --Jay Bowks Novial is essentially Ido and Occidental as spoken by a Dane. --Thomas Leigh Interlingue is indisputably De Wahl's Occidental filtered by IALA. --Jay Bowks Volapuk, Esperanto, Occidental, Novial and Interlingua are essentially butcheries of every language found in Europe. --Thomas Kent Volapuk is essentially English as gastrically processed and passed out by a German speaker. --ilvi Latino Moderne is none other than Interlingua grammatically retrofitted. --Jay Bowks Interglossa and its descendant Glosa are essentially Basic English in Greek. --Nick Nicholas Interlingua is essentially Italian spoken by a Spaniard, or vice versa. --Bruce R. Gilson IALA Interlingua is essentially Peano's Latino sine Flexione as influenced by unruly Latin offspring. --Jay Bowks Conversely, Peano's Interlingua (Latino sine Flexione) is essentially IALA's Interlingua as a diamond in the rough. --Jay Bowks Solresol is essentially Octalcode before the advent of the computer and Net English. --ilvi World Language (WL) is essentially an anthroposophical technical draughtsman's Japanese-Californian calligraphy uttered in North American Native sign language with a Lojbanic accent. --Alfred W. Tüting Eklektu is essentially Afrikaans, Ainu, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Aztec, Bengali, Breton, Cantonese, Cherokee, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Enochian, Estonian, Finnish, French, Gamilaraay, Gashta, German, Greek, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hopi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Jirrbal, Korean, Lakota, Latin, Latvian, Lenape, Malay, Malagasy, Maya, Mbabaram, Navajo, Nepali, Norwegian, Passamaquoddy- Maliseet, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Quechua, Quenya, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Sindarin, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Tibetan, Tlingit, Turkish, Uzbek, Warungu, Warlpiri, Welsh, Yoruba, and Zulu spoken by someone who only speaks English. --Herman Miller E-prime essentially attempts eschewing essentialism. --Sally Caves Other Artificial Languages (A-M) Kizidanoce is essentially 16th century Castilian, with Hangkerimian words, Hangkerimian syntax and Latin script. --Chlewey Thompin Kizidanoce is essentially Hangkerimian as spoken with a Vulgate Bible. --Chlewey Thompin Hangkerimian is essentially Kizidanoce as spoken by that majority of American Natives that refuse to adopt the Latin alphabet. --Chlewey Thompin Criollo is essentially Castilian with tones. --Chlewey Thompin Criollo is essentially Hangkerimian as spoken by Spanish colonists that never cared to learn a word of Hangkerimian. --Chlewey Thompin Lojban is essentially English spoken by a computer. --Benct Philip Jonsson Lojban is essentially predicate calculus spoken by an Esperantist. --Kapitano Eglefino Lojban is essentially Shelta spoken by Trekkies. --Danny Wier Mungayöd is essentially German, Latin, and Greek put through a blender. --Dan Seriff Atlantean is essentially Indo-Japanese spoken when ordering a Big Mac and fries. --Danny Wier Klingon is essentially Arabic spoken by a German with a tribble caught in the back of his throat and a turtle on his head. --Peter Clark Klingon is essentially Arabic spoken through a set of bulky false teeth. --Christian Thalmann Klingon is essentially a Caucasian language with fewer consonants, but still sounds Caucasian, spoken by ugly individuals that probably never heard of the Caucasus. --Danny Wier Bajoran, Trill, Romulan, Ferengi, Vulcan and just about any language of Star Trek is essentially what you get from a random CVC syllable generator with standard Latin phonemes. --Christian Thalmann Aluric is essentially all the accented characters in the Windows character set strung together. --Thomas Leigh Chleweyish is essentially Colombian Sign Language spoken by a hearing person who never finished the lessons and threw a bunch of randomly generated words and a few borrowings into it. --Chlewey Thompin Kalini Sapak is essentially Arabic spoken by a Swede who doesn't know Arabic. --Andreas Johansson Madzhi is essentially bastardized Hungarian spoken by various North American Natives. --Ferenc Valoczy Cenlatorre is essentially what you get when a Frenchman transcribes the results of a Medieval Pope converting to Hinduism and preaching to a crowd of monolingual Greeks. --Amber Adams My as-yet-unnamed conlang is essentially a Quechua-Finnish pidgin spoken by Indonesians. --Levi Tooker Astou is essentially Greek and Latin spoken by Incas. --Christophe Grandsire Moten is essentially Basque with all the difficulties thrown out. --Christophe Grandsire Chasmäöcho is essentially a reader's nightmare. --Christophe Grandsire Megdevi is essentially Arabic as transmogrified by Dr. Zamenhof. --David Peterson Etábnanni /rɑm˩næn˩/ is essentially unreadable. --Tristan Alexander Mcleay Kîrri is a perfectly normal Semitic language with all the consonants stolen by Nrit. --Shreyas Sampat Etábnanni is essentially Tibetan done badly. --Tristan Gabwe is essentially creaky voice. --Steg Belsky Gabwe is essentially backwards English grammar and badly-disguised English morphemes written in Korean by someone who doesn't know Korean. --Steg Belsky Cruzan is essentially Swiss German with an Albanian accent. --Christian Thalmann Khangaþyagon is essentially a language that sounds like Welsh to people who don't speak Welsh. --Peter Bleackley Jarda is essentially a relexified Zireen language with a vocabulary derived from the raccoon language Kianarthal. --Herman Miller Ithkuil is essentially bad Katanda spoken by Techians, written in Klingon letters drawn with a ruler. --Jörg Rhiemeier Ithkuil is essentially an unending phonetic and grammatical n