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What Is Anglish?

anglish.org

101–110 of 363 posts

Re: What Is Anglish?

#101
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it as a fun way to see how english would work when it is delatinized / degallicized. Most other influences are a detail.

Although it seems intended as fun I’m always a little nervous of things like this because it also denies the power relationships that led to those borrowings. Degallicized English is kind of erasing the relationship between England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and even Cornwall. I’d be much more comfortable if I didn’t have to explain to so many Americans that Scotland is not a part of England, that it isn’t a separate…

While I understand and appreciate these distinctions, I think a lot of Brits can get a little precious about the idea that England, Scotland, etc. are different “countries”, to the degree that they even e.g. field competing teams in the World Cup. I understand that there’s a nuanced narrative in which the UK consists of four different countries that share a monarch and a government, but from the outside y’all are just one country. I’m a little more sympathetic to pedantry about not calling that country “England”, but people do the same thing with the Netherlands and Holland. (There are apparently twelve Netherlands, with Holland only consisting of two of them!)

Re: What Is Anglish?

#102

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James D. Nicoll

Related to that, it's interesting how many European languages have heavily borrowed from French in the last 2-3 centuries, especially what I would call "technical" terms.

I was watching the subtitled video of a speech made by a Hungarian minister recently and the few words that I could make sense of were all similar to the their French counter-parts (or how I would think a French technical word loaned into Hungarian would sound like). Ditto for German, even more so, I'd say. Russian, too.

In fact even a word that we've now stopped regarding as "technical", such as bicycle [1], comes in English via modern French (so not via the French spoken by the Normans back in the day):

> Borrowed from French bicycle (modern bicyclette), from bi- (“bi-”) + cycle (“cycle”). First attested in English in 1868, and in French in 1847.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

I actually look at it in the opposite way. There actually are modern English purists. We sometimes call them grammar nazis. Its not usually the result of some overtly oppressive ideology. They just mistakenly believe that there is a "correct" way to speak English. However, the net result of it is the stigmatization of people from poor communities.

This project very clearly shows how silly English purity is in a clever way: that the "correct" English of day may very well have been considered "incorrect" by the purists of yesteryear. Language evolves.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#106

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,…

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?

A møøse once bit my sister... No realli!

Re: What Is Anglish?

#107

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James D. Nicoll

Related to that, it's interesting how many European languages have heavily borrowed from French in the last 2-3 centuries, especially what I would call "technical" terms. I was watching the subtitled video of a speech made by a Hungarian minister recently and the few words that I could make sense of were all similar to the their French counter-parts (or how I would think a French technical word loaned into Hungarian…

Hungarian actually had a language reform in the late 1800s to remove foreign words and replace them with pure Hungarian equivalents. These days though, quite a few loanwords have crept back in. I'm not sure if the Latin-based words actually came via French or via English. And there are very many Slavic loan words in Hungarian too, and some Germanic ones. My favorite loan word in Hungarian is "vásziszdász" from German "Was ist das?", it's used to mean deal, as in "not a big deal", "nem egy nagy vásziszdász".

Re: What Is Anglish?

#108
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…

[dead]

Re: What Is Anglish?

#109

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James D. Nicoll

Related to that, it's interesting how many European languages have heavily borrowed from French in the last 2-3 centuries, especially what I would call "technical" terms. I was watching the subtitled video of a speech made by a Hungarian minister recently and the few words that I could make sense of were all similar to the their French counter-parts (or how I would think a French technical word loaned into Hungarian…

English also seams to borrow heavily from latin for anything medical. The words in Spanish for your bones, bacteria, etc would all be recognizable to your doctor.
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