Re: CHAT: another Essentialist quote!

On Thu, 8 Jul 2004 02:37:15 -0500, Danny Wier <dawiertx@...> wrote:
> English is essentially a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other
> languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary. -- j-narrah
> (I have no idea who that is)
The original quote appears to be

" The problem with defending the purity of the English language
is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't
just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages
down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for
new vocabulary."

It's usually found on the web attributed to "James D. Nicoll" (e.g. at
the top of http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words/info.html ); the
Wikipedia article on the English language (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language ) points to a Usenet
article from 1990 as the source:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1990May15.155309.8892%40watdragon.waterloo.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain
(or see http://xrl.us/cc4k if that link wraps for you).

So IMO the Essentialist Explanation should be based on that quote, not
a form someone half-remembered and posted elsewhere such as on a
bulletin board or urbandictionary.com.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>