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What Is Anglish?

anglish.org

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Re: What Is Anglish?

#81

Post by avgcorrection »

bloppe wrote: post #14

This is a fun way to speak English, but this notion of "native" vs. "borrowed" words is incredibly slippery. For instance, the example replaces "union" with "oneship", but these words share a common Proto-Indo-European root and can reasonably be interpreted as the same word; the same goes for most other Norman words "borrowed" into English after the conquest. The page advocates the use of "Old English words ... reviv…

Tired point to make. Languages are cousins, either first or fifteenth. (Or maybe they have no known cousins, but whatever… English certainly does.) Anglish proposes more Germanic words. It doesn’t propose to find words which cannot be traced back to a common Indo-European root word…

> Not to over-charge this conversation, but it reminds me of anti-race-mixing ideologies. Race is also a much more slippery concept than some people would care to admit; we're all related if you go back far enough.

First of all, “race” is pseudo-science. Language research is not. Second of all, try to make an argument for “race mixing” which isn’t racist.

In contrast, Anglish is more of an aesthetic approach to language, one which doesn’t threaten to marginalize any groups of people. Frankly, I suspect that the reason why this offensive comparison is even brought up is becaue of the Germanic assocation, which some people might not find aesthetic for historical reasons.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#82

Post by everybodyknows »

triyambakam wrote: post #15
zabzonk wrote: post #10

> Anglish is a kind of English which prefers native words over those borrowed from foreign languages. does not make sense - english is a language sythesised from huge borrowings from other languages, over time. what is the "native" language supposed to be?

If you wind back when the borrowings started happening in great number, you get to a time when English was mostly "purely" Germanic. That's what this project is - as if Old English had continued on without being influenced from French etc.

Don't the Celtic or other pre-Saxon dialects have the better claim to seniority, rather than the tongue of the Saxon invaders?

https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom/Anglo-Saxon-...

Re: What Is Anglish?

#83

Post by kzrdude »

nikolay wrote: post #67

Isn't "book" borrowed from German ("buch")?

Probably common origin - i.e came to english before German as it is today existed.

Supposedly cognate with Beech (the tree) which is called bok (sv) and Buche (de)

Re: What Is Anglish?

#84

Post by lisper »

triyambakam wrote: post #16
bloppe wrote: post #14

This is a fun way to speak English, but this notion of "native" vs. "borrowed" words is incredibly slippery. For instance, the example replaces "union" with "oneship", but these words share a common Proto-Indo-European root and can reasonably be interpreted as the same word; the same goes for most other Norman words "borrowed" into English after the conquest. The page advocates the use of "Old English words ... reviv…

Yes, you could go back and back and back. But the point of this project is to see what a modern "pure" Germanic English would be like.

> the point of this project is to see what a modern "pure" Germanic English would be like.

The absurdity of this is manifest in the name: "pure Germanic English". That's like "pure California Champaign" or "pure Wisconsin Parmesan". There is no such thing as "pure English", Germanic or otherwise, because one of the defining characteristics of English is that it is, and always has been, an amalgam of many different languages accrued over time. Even Old English had four different dialects. And certainly a "pure modern English" is the very paragon of an oxymoron. If it's "pure", it's not English.

There's nothing wrong with playing around with language. There is something wrong with calling the result "pure" because it casts negative aspersions on everything else as "impure", which is a word that carries a lot of disparaging implications.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#85

Post by CommieBobDole »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #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 "so…

"Nor are stuff and work unakin. Rather, they are groundwise the same, and one can be shifted into the other. The kinship between them is that work is like unto weight manifolded by the fourside of the haste of light."

Re: What Is Anglish?

#86

Post by philwelch »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #58
triyambakam wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

This is what happened to the English under French-speaking dominion in the Middle Ages.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#87

Post by IncRnd » 

  If certain people had their wish,
  with the language being Anglish,
  then Anglish wouldn't be a word.
  You'd need an English noun or verb.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#88

Post by kazinator »

The concept behind Anglish is poorly founded because English is built on Latin just as much as on Germanic roots, if not more.

What do they do with grammatical constructions like non+ meaning "not a and non+ meaning "not ". English just isn't English without non-.

ex- is another one.

What do Anglish speakers breathe and push out of their lips when speaking Anglish words? It better not be air which is from French, Latin and ultimately Greek. Indeed, I see they replace that with lift. If you know a bit of German, it's not far off from luft, but calling the air lift screws up English, rather than purifying it. lift meaning air is a dead word that disappeared in Middle English.

I suspect purification attempts will produce better results for languages that have a less diverse, more linear (and perhaps shorter, in some sense) history and are spoken by a relatively small number of people concentrated in a particular area.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#89

Post by TimTheTinker »

avgcorrection wrote: post #81
bloppe wrote: post #14

This is a fun way to speak English, but this notion of "native" vs. "borrowed" words is incredibly slippery. For instance, the example replaces "union" with "oneship", but these words share a common Proto-Indo-European root and can reasonably be interpreted as the same word; the same goes for most other Norman words "borrowed" into English after the conquest. The page advocates the use of "Old English words ... reviv…

Tired point to make. Languages are cousins, either first or fifteenth. (Or maybe they have no known cousins, but whatever… English certainly does.) Anglish proposes more Germanic words. It doesn’t propose to find words which cannot be traced back to a common Indo-European root word… > Not to over-charge this conversation, but it reminds me of anti-race-mixing ideologies. Race is also a much more slippery concept than…

> First of all, “race” is pseudo-science.

Thank you. That is all.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#90

Post by forgotusername6 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #57
triyambakam wrote: post #20

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.

Perhaps the word bairns for children could have been used instead of the word offspring. The word is pretty similar to the Scandinavian words for children
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