Re: OT: Official language post

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andreas Johansson" <andjo@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 8:15 PM
Subject: Re: OT: Official language post


> Quoting John Cowan <cowan@...>:
>
> > Jan van Steenbergen scripsit:
> >
> > > Andreas, I see that you master the List's official language to a
> > very
> > > acceptable degree. I doubt whether I would have done equally well with
> > a text
> > > in Swedish.
> >
> > That's because Dutch is simple, easy, and obvious (until you get kicked
> > in
> > the head by some lexeme like "opstanding", the meaning of which nobody
> > would
> > ever guess), whereas Swedish is the province of Inscrutable Nordics
> > who
> > decided to make themselves even more inscrutable than before.  Face
> > it,
> > North Germanic is *weird*.
>
> Says the speaker of a West Germanic language that's trying very hard to
look
> like a Romance one. English is essentially Language's equivalent to a
> transvestite.
>

Minor nitpick:  It should be 'equivalent of', when you're using it as a
noun.  'equivalent to' is an adjective.

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