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At last, the time of reckoning is at hand!
What Is Anglish?
91–100 of 363 posts
Re: What Is Anglish?
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, I just think it would make more sense to pick a real date then. No words that would be unrecognizable to a typical English speaker before 1066? Sure. You'd still have to define "typical" because even modern English speakers do not all speak an identical language, and this notion of "updating to modern spelling and phonology" becomes a strange exercise. All I'm saying is, the word "pure" doesn't make sense to me…
It's also not like Norman French was a "pure" offshoot of Latin either. It was heavily influenced by the languages of the Franks and Gauls. That said, what I find really interesting here is that William The Conqueror was only something like 4 generations removed from people whose "French" was more or less still a dialect of Latin.
And that’s not to mention that William’s great-great-great grandfather Rollo was a Norseman who himself conquered part of northern France, and was allowed to keep his conquests in exchange for swearing allegiance to the French king and converting to Christianity. I think the term “Norman” is actually related to “Norseman”, in fact. (“Rollo” was, incidentally, probably not his real name.)
Re: What Is Anglish?
#93I 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,…
What is the "Anglish project"? Do you mean people who write in it for fun, as one might write a short story in Klingon? Or are there people advocating that we should adopt it, by avoiding romance-language words? Something else?
Re: What Is Anglish?
#94This 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.
Which is all a fun linguistic ‘what-if’ game - but when you start posting ideas online about ‘pure Germanic heritage’ you might find you attract an audience who are not just interested in word games.
Re: What Is Anglish?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It is a pretty well known fact. The concept of human race is developed by racist ideologies (obviously), see for instance [1], and is as such a banned concept in many countries.
[1] https://bioanth.org/about/position-statements/aapa-statement...
Re: What Is Anglish?
#96I 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,…
I think it depends on what region of England or the UK at large you want to consider. If you're NE England into Scotland, yeah, Scandinavian languages had influence and that's is reflected in their current vocab. Other areas may have retained more of the original dialect with fewer Scandinavian influences initially though those would return via the Norman invasion with added French vocabulary.
Re: What Is Anglish?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That's a horrible position to take
Re: What Is Anglish?
#98I 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,…
What is the "Anglish project"? Do you mean people who write in it for fun, as one might write a short story in Klingon? Or are there people advocating that we should adopt it, by avoiding romance-language words? Something else?
Sorry, by project I mean community, i.e. yes the people who use it for fun
Re: What Is Anglish?
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"race science" may be pseudo science, but race is not == science. in a linguistic context, people mean something when they talk about something. you may not like what they mean, or even what they talk about, but that doesn't mean they aren't thinking something and are talking about nothing.
Re: What Is Anglish?
#100I 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,…
Do you have any examples of an English / Scandinavian hybrid? Also, I wonder if such a thing might actually arise in the Scandinavian countries in the future?
not a direct answer to your question, but there is a great youtube video explaining the reasons why English may be more Scandinavian in origin than we thought. has to do with... can't remember gotta search, brb
How the Vikings Changed the English Language https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZV1BOcGiV0
this is lifted from the google closed caption "transcript":
The argument was put forward by Jan Terje Faarlund, professor of linguistics at the University of Oslo. This is what he says:
There are many English words that resemble ours, but there is something more. Its fundamental structure is strikingly similar to Norwegian. We avoid many of the usual mistakes because the grammar is more or less the same. Norwegians find it easy to learn English because of the similarities to their language. We often find that when grammar in modern English is different from other West Germanic languages such as Frisian, Our supposed closest cousin or Dutch is the same as in the Scandinavian language. It's very unusual for a language to borrow syntax from another language.
For example, word order. In English and Scandinavian, the object is placed after the verb.
I have read the book.
Eg har lese boka
German and Dutch and old English put the verb at the end.
Ich habe das Buch gelesen
English and Scandinavian can have a preposition at the end of the sentence.
This we talked about
Dette har vi snakka om
English and Scandinavian can have a split infinitive. That is when we insert a word between the infinitive marker and the verb.
I promise to never do it again.
Eg lovar å ikkje gjera det igjen
Group genitive.
The Queen of England's hands.
Dronninga av Englands hatt.
All of this is impossible in German or Dutch.
And these kind of structures are very unlikely to change within a language. The only reasonable explanation, then, is that English is in fact a Scandinavian language, and the continuation of the Norwegian Danish language, which was used in England during the Middle Ages.
But why the inhabitants of the British Isles chose the Scandinavian grammar is something we can only speculate on.