Re: CHAT: Multi-Lingos

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

 > I say we should make everyone in the world learn Icelandic and make that the
> > "official Germanic language of the world" ;-)
>
> Any particular reason for Icelandic?
Because *all* the other Germanic languages think of it (if they think of it
at all) as mediaevaloid gobbledygook.  Icelandic preserves intact in
lexis, morphology, and syntax (but not phonology) the Old Norse of the
first millennium.

> I think I remember one of Mario Pei's books stating that Danish was very
> easy to learn to pronounce for an English speaker, but I won't swear to
> it...and from hearing a Dane at my HS read the names in the Norse
> creation myth (while the rest of us mangled 'em), I wouldn't bet on it.
> Actually, philosophy of religion was quite, quite interesting.  We had a
> Greek who laughed at us trying to pronounce the Greek gods' names, and....
Yeah, well, they mangle them too.  Which is better, an English mangling of
a reconstructed ancient pronunciation, or an inherited modern pronunciation
from a descendant language?

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