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What Is Anglish?

anglish.org

241–250 of 363 posts

Re: What Is Anglish?

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yorkshuhman here… we say “ta” (tak) for thanks. We also say “cheers” (tschuss) for goodbye. Going a bit deeper, “dale” (daal - Dutch), “beck” (beek - Dutch). Having learnt (not learned) in Amsterdam, it’s very, very like the dialects of the north east of Yorkshuh. So much so, it’s rather a surprise.

Are you familiar with the Danelaw, and with Danegeld? I think that knowing "Danes" ruled much of mainland Britain for hundreds of years and provided kings of a unified-ish (pre-Norman) England (Cnut [Canute]) makes it less surprising?

The pronunciation of words between English and Dutch make them appear to be quite different. Once you’re used to hearing Dutch, which most British won’t be, the differences are much, much less than one might imagine.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yorkshuhman here… we say “ta” (tak) for thanks. We also say “cheers” (tschuss) for goodbye. Going a bit deeper, “dale” (daal - Dutch), “beck” (beek - Dutch). Having learnt (not learned) in Amsterdam, it’s very, very like the dialects of the north east of Yorkshuh. So much so, it’s rather a surprise.

Are you sure that "cheers" and "tschuss" are etymologically related? I would love that. Everything I could find points to a Latin cognate, "cara".

Might be a common origin from Latin.

It does appear to be more than a coincidence that my dialect and the modern German usage share a word that sounds the same and means the same.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#245
post #237
post #107

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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…

A related one I like is “vonundzu” which I guess you’d have to spell as “fanencú?” I’ve never seen it spelled, but it’s dismissive slang for aristocrats both real and self-appointed.

It has the same meaning in German.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#246
post #84

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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 la…

Agreed. English is not the only language deeply influenced by other languages. The other "Germanic" languages aren't necessarily any more "pure" than English. The other day I came across an article (unfortunately I can't find the link) which talked about how the Scandinavian languages were forever changed by the contact with the Hansa trade union, some 40% of Norwegian vocabulary, for example, is from Low Middle German. The article showed example sentences where every single word was from LMG, but at the same time perfectly fine Norwegian.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Same with English, but not only European languages. Just yesterday I was listening to a woman speaking Tagalog and quite a few words almost certainly came from English.

Well, weren't they colonized by the Americans for a while, too?

Re: What Is Anglish?

#248

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Opinion of a Polish guy: In my eyes, English is pretty bloated, when seemingly almost every concept can have three or more alternative words, each from a different source. It is all matter of perspective, I suppose. :) I think such feeling can be caused by languages that rely strongly on creating compound words rather than borrowing a new ones (example from the site: Dictionary > Wordbook).

The counterargument is that lots of words allow for precise concision. wordbook can be ambiguous, as almost all books are filled with words. Is wordbook specifying that this book is a word book as opposed to a picture book? wordkenbook might be less ambiguous, but maybe this referring to all nonfiction books using words? all that being said, I think uncleftish[0] beholding is an amazing piece of text and a good exerc…

In Slavic languages it's even simpler, it's "slovár" or "slóvnik", meaning something like "worder".

Re: What Is Anglish?

#249

"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

It’s interesting to me how comparatively impoverished Anglish seems. Here’s to promiscuity!

Compared to what? German is a rich language with a wealth of literature from novels to philosophy and science/technology, utilizing a much smaller set of root words.

English is a very bloated language compared to its European neighbours - it's almost two languages in one. That doesn't make English bad per se, but it makes it more challenging for foreigners to learn.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting to me how comparatively impoverished Anglish seems. Here’s to promiscuity!

Opinion of a Polish guy: In my eyes, English is pretty bloated, when seemingly almost every concept can have three or more alternative words, each from a different source. It is all matter of perspective, I suppose. :) I think such feeling can be caused by languages that rely strongly on creating compound words rather than borrowing a new ones (example from the site: Dictionary > Wordbook).

Depends on what part of vocabulary you look at. Some words, on the contrary, have many names: "nut", "beam", "housing", "tell", "well", etc. I used to think it's the contrary to Slavic languages, where borrowed words in professions get exact meaning (marine industry, or IT).
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