Dutch! Not Deutsch!

I was reading Julie D.'s fine food blog and read a comment that corrected her spelling of "Manhatten." She was using a poor authority (yours truly) and thus spelled it that way and not "Manhattan", the correct spelling. As I pointed out in my mea culpa on her blog, I do not speak Dutch. I assumed that it was spelled as it would be in hoch deutsch, at least if it were pronounced the way we pronounce it.

I offer this solution to the problem (and myriad other problems of Germanic dialects): abandon these silly swamp deutsch variants and use proper German! This goes to the islanders as well, although after the thwacking that the Normans gave to Englisch, it probably really should be seen as a distinct language at this point.

In many ways I am grateful that I do not have to write in deutsch all the time. Englisch really has a better structure, although it lacks some of the great sounds of German (the "ch" in "hoch" for example. The "ch" in the Scottish "loch" is good, but is not nearly as poetic as it would be pronounced with the German "ch"). And as far as I am concerned, if no one ever writes another opera in any Germanic tongue, the world will not be any worse off. Italian is meant for singing, neither German nor Englisch (nor French, for that matter) come even close. One time I heard a Swedish opera. It was quite good, but hearing THAT language sung in an operatic context is painful.

So, I'll take Manhattan, then.