Drab as a fool, aloof as a bard

Now that I’ve had my little fun with “Frengleutschesianish”, I thought I’d write something with a bit more linguistic value. I wanted to find a sentence that would show the fluidity of languages and how English speakers frequently use non-English words without noticing. As English has so many borrowed words from other languages, I knew it wouldn’t be difficult to find enough words for a sentence, but after finding a site with a very detailed list, I realised the problem would actually be in the selection of the words. To simplify things, I decided to not limit myself to just one sentence, and then to take the two best words from each EU language, unless the choice of words was particularly limited, in which case I would only take one. Unfortunately the site did not list any Bulgarian, Estonian, Irish, Maltese, Slovak or Slovene words, but I think the finished result does give a nice pan-European flavour.

Well, this is May (still, technically), the month of Europe Day. Naturally I celebrated with the flag, the anthem, (the day,) the motto, the currency, the free movement of goods, that sort of thing. One symbol of Europe we don’t really have, though, is a common language. I have blogged in the past about Ido, which I think is the perfect candidate for the job, but recently I have also considered another way of looking at language, especially language in Europe.