Live data from Hacker News

What Is Anglish?

anglish.org

61–70 of 363 posts

Re: What Is Anglish?

#61
post #2

Reminded of the Japanese native words known as "wago" or "yamato kotoba"[0]: "Wago...are native Japanese words, meaning those words in Japanese that have been inherited from Old Japanese, rather than being borrowed at some stage. Together with kango (漢語) and gairaigo (外来語), they form one of the three main sources of Japanese words (there is also elaborate Japanese sound symbolism, of mimetic origin). They are also kn…

Japanese came to mind for me as having borrowed plenty of words from English (often modifying them simply to ensure a vowel between each consonant sound, as two adjacent consonants would be too foreign) as my contrarian reaction to

> "... [English] ever borowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt."

Re: What Is Anglish?

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Anglish community isn't ideologically motivated. It's a fun conlang (constructed language) project from language nerds.

[flagged]

We would always be too close, then. The Anglish project is more than 20 years old. It could be older, but I've been familiar with it for at least that long.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#63

I have had a lot of fun with Anglish in the past, composing poetry and even attempting to write school assignments in it. However as I've grown as a linguist, I now disagree with the direction that they've taken it, but I understand why. That is, the Anglish project uses cognates and sometimes inventions from Old English, Dutch and German because most linguists (and people) consider English a West Germanic language,…

They'd probably get some of that for free if they leant on Scottish and Northern dialect words, like they give the example of Famous > Nameknown is one of the examples, but perhaps Wellkent would work better if they're otherwise using ken for knowledge.

That's true! I forgot about Scots

Re: What Is Anglish?

#64
I have first seen this idea in the short piece "Uncleftish Beholding" (Atomic Theory)

"For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding

It makes some sense, e.g "sourstuff" for "oxygen" - which in German is "Sauerstoff", in Dutch "zuurstof".

Re: What Is Anglish?

#65

Weird that they remove Latin from the language but not Anglo-Saxon, even though the Latin influence was earlier.

Anglo-Saxon is the original language of English. The grammar and base vocabulary is Germanic. English picked up little vocabulary from Brithonic it replaced. Latin was gone from Britain by Anglo-Saxon invasion. Then some words came from Old Norse.

Next was French, providing majority of vocabulary but not the most frequent words. Latin provides a lot of vocabulary but it came later, it is mostly scientific and technical terms.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

We would always be too close, then. The Anglish project is more than 20 years old. It could be older, but I've been familiar with it for at least that long.

Maybe. But just because the time will never be right doesn't mean now is the time either.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#69
post #41
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, the French „Académie française“ banned the term „computer“ and established „l‘ordinateur“ instead to keep the language pure. :)

The reason "ordinateur" is used in French, is that IBM coined that word because "calculateur" (the regular modern French translation of "computer") sounded too mundane. "Ordinateur" suggests sorting, rather than just making simple calculations. It has nothing at all with "keeping the language pure" (which seems kind of a meme in the English speaking world, but really couldn't be further from truth) and it was origina…

Ok, sorry, I did not fact check my comment. I just remembered my French teacher from school making fun about L‘Académie with regard to this and other weird French terms like „baladeur“ instead of Walkman (tm).
Post reply on HN