[Ads-l] the platypus of languages

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
> a friend quotes this to me on Facebook:
>   French was the swan, German the beaver, and thus English is the platypus of languages.
> new to me.  i did find
>   https://www.nerdonomy.com/the-platypus-of-languages/
>   the Nerdonomy site, with a podcast "The Platypus of Languages" (not dated)
> this has probably been investigated here, but in case not...

Here is a different match for the same figure of speech.

Year: 2010
Book: The Pleasures of Contamination: Evidence, Text, and Voice in
Textual Studies
Author: David C. Greetham
Quote Page 159
Publisher: Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana

[Begin excerpt]
Germanic is, in stemmatic terms, unmappable with any consistency,
since different features would place it in different positions: it is
the duck-billed platypus of languages.
[End excerpt]

Garson

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