Em Timor fala-se muito sobre a língua inglesa. Mas o que é afinal o inglês? No sítio
Essentialist Explanations encontramos uma longa lista de definições sobre este e outros idiomas.
Eis algumas:
English is essentially Low German plus even lower French minus any sense of culture.
--Danny Weir
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 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 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 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 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 French converted to 7-bit ASCII.
--Christophe Pierret [for Alain LaBonté]
English is essentially a whore.
--Lars Hendrik Mathiesen
English is essentially a French menu stuttered by a fish-and-chips dealer.
--Kala Tunu
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
Inglish iz issenshali a langwidje dhat, wen rittun fonetkli, iz ilejibul tu netiv spikerz.
--Peter Bleackley
English is essentially all exceptions and no rules.
--Jonathan Bettencourt
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 tale told by an extremely clever and inventive idiot.
--John M. Ford
Australian English is essentially an Irishman bitten by a Tasmanian Devil while chasing a kangaroo.
--Fumiko Amaya
Australian English is essentially Cockney without the refinement.
--Öjevind Lång
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
Broken English is the language of international trade.
--John Naisbitt (via Daniel E. Huston)
Sobre outras línguas:
Conversely, Indonesian is essentially Malay as spoken by Dutchmen.
--Amber Adams
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
