This page comprises a list of 1009 “essentialist explanations” of the form “Language X is essentially language Y under conditions Z”. I have edited some entries for uniformity, clarity, or good English. The entries are grouped for convenience rather than correctness. In particular, fictional languages belonging to actual language families are grouped with their natural language relatives. New contributions are solicited, especially for American and African languages. No flames, please.
Note: Entries attributed to me (John Cowan) are often ones that I have heard or read somewhere, or ones that were suggested by other people’s contributions but heavily modified by me.
“[We] do but jest, poison in jest, no offence in the world.” –Hamlet