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What Is Anglish?

anglish.org

281–290 of 363 posts

Re: What Is Anglish?

#281

That's basically what the Academie Francaise have been doing all along for French and why we have words like "courriel" instead of email in the dictionary despite the fact most people never use them.

A bit of consistency is good, I find, but not actually in actual words.

The real consistency you should aim for is pronunciation. Especially for loanwords. Yes, the first time you encounter "CD" spelled out in your native language, it's jarring, but over time the benefits of this add up.

Both English and French fail miserably at pronunciation consistency. See this for English: https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html

If you aim to make your language as phonetic as possible, suddenly acquiring the language is much easier. Still very hard, but a degree of difficulty easier.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#282
post #262

Earlier 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…

Races exist. I can't believe that I'm even saying that. They're not a social construct. Nor are the sexes. Human beings are a single species with a large number of branches allowing them to survive localised environmental niches. Sometimes the edges are blurry, sometimes not. But to pretend that races aren't real just because of an interlink between the study of race and racist ideologies is fucking ridiculous.

ehhh....

You have genes. Certain genes are well adapted to certain environments, for example hi/low melanin to protect from UV radiation. In environments where people don't move a lot, such as the Earth 5000 years ago, genes will tend to cluster together, and if you have someone's genetic makeup you can make informed guesses about their phenotype.

The problem, imo with 'races' is that the modern world has created too many hybrids to be able to accurately guess much information about someone's genetic makeup from their phenotype.

Blue eyes for example, which maybe 5000 years ago were only found in one small corner of the globe, are common in many different places, and associated with many other types of genes. You can no longer reliably predict that someone with blue eyes will have blonde hair for example. Or that they won't also have say sickle cell anemia when in the past those two traits were probably never found in the same person.

Like for example when in the US someone marks their race as "Black" in some census form, that tells you almost nothing besides maybe that they likely have elevated levels of skin pigmentation.

You have some genetic clusters, such as those found in the Kenyan Rift Valley, where they have good genes for long distance running, and others, such as those found in Jamacia and West Africa, better suited for explosive sprinting. Both of which tend to be associated with high levels of skin pigmentation.

Operating at the level of 'races', which, from what I can tell, basically means 'skin color', completely misses this sort of detail, and is, in my opinion, a mental model that is so crude, and so lacking in granularity as to be basically worthless.

Genes exist. Races... if you're using that term to mean "certain groupings of genes which are often found together, usually in groups of people that have spent a long time living together in the same environment", then yes, they exist, but then you have many people that you'd not be able to fit into a 'race' - basically every stereotypical American who is "one eighth Irish, one eighth Italian, one eighth Swedish, one eighth Chinese...." is going to have a set of genes that is not associated with any "race".

Re: What Is Anglish?

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the premise of Anglish can be summed up as: No, we don't need latin, or greek roots, to enjoy our language, and there's just as much if not more of a reason to use roots natural to our language, and no you aren't smarter or wiser, more scholarly or intellectual, because you use big long fancy sounding latin or greek based words. maybe the reason a lot of english doesn't make sense (in contrast to german) is b…

English is French! (lingua franca) The reason for that is because English is considered relatively easy to communicate with as a second language. English has quite happily built upon its roots and is able to grab "foreign" words and take them on board, without fear, favour or rancour. Why not? Modern English takes advantage of a vast vocabulary, much of which is not natively derived or generated but is still cherishe…

> The reason for that is because English is considered relatively easy to communicate with as a second language.

English is a horrible second language. It's learned through brute forcing the horrid irregularity of grammar (10%) and especially vocabulary/pronunciation (90%), by listening to the ever-present songs in English, watching American TV series/shows, movies, reading English-speaking media, interacting with un-localized websites and mobile apps, etc.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#284
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about the Zeug, I think it’s great to have the flexibility — “Zeug” is also just “thing” sometimes — but I find Fahrzeug and Flugzeug just as intuitive as Werkzeug and Feuerzeug. Now relating them to the various meanings of “zeugen” might be tricky but I think I get that too. In many languages the airplane is a “flying machine” and that makes way more sense than “flat thing in the air” if you think about i…

> find Fahrzeug and Flugzeug just as intuitive There is a certain logic to German. How about: Wheel -> das Rad Wheels -> die Räder Bicycle -> das Fahrrad Bicycles -> die Fahrräder Cyclist -> der Radfahrer / die Radfahrerin Cyclists -> die Radfahrer / die Radfahrerinnen

Except for the genders, which are completely arbitrary and very annoying to a learner.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#285
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean Rome came first everywhere, William the conqueror came from Norsemen, which means Normandy was where the Vikings settled there. Pretty much all of Europe has had this kind of multiple conquests different language groups percolating everywhere - but English is the one that chose this model of how to handle it.

Which model?

the model laid out in the quote:

"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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34960928

Re: What Is Anglish?

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say borrow from latin and greek: bi- from latin bi- meaning twice [0] cycle from greek kyklos meaning wheel [1] [0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/bi-?ref=etymonline_crossrefe... [1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/bicycle

But that’s only because French (but also English) coin words by mixing latin and greek (and making the spelling more French). The modern Greek word is completely different.

Many languages in Europe derive from Latin and ancient Greek, that does not mean that the english bicycle derives from the French word.

Also there were no bicycles in ancient Grece, that's why the word is different in modern Greek, but kyklos is still a greek word with the same meaning.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#287
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which model?

the model laid out in the quote: "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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34960928

Ah, English is not exclusive in that. It's the language acquisition model of all languages from what I can tell.

What English had and still has, and say, Romanian, doesn't, is the wide exposure.

Romanian was traditionally spoken in the region of Romania, so Eastern Europe, with some interaction with Central Europe, Southern Europe, Even-More-Eastern Europe, the Middle East. So those are the influences, plus some recent additions from international languages such as French or English.

English, on the other hand, was needed to describe and interact with Western Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Souther Europeans, Native North Americans, Pygmys, Indians, Native Australians, Chinese, Japanese, Incas, Ethiopians, etc and their associated environments and lifestyles.

If you saw curry, you needed to either come up with a word or adopt theirs. Or avocado. Avocado wasn't even a word in Romanian until 2000-something, I'm quite sure.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jus…

I don't know any English people who think that Scotland or Wales are countries. Most people understand that the four nations compete separately in football because the game was invented here, and the first ever international match was between England and Scotland. A great distinction I once heard was that the US is a nation made up of states, the UK is a state made up of nations.

Pleased to meet you. I'm English. Scotland and Wales are countries. There can't be a concept of a "Union" if there are no components to unite.

Scotland has its own Parliament, Legal System and even bank notes, for example.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cheers means goodbye in Yorkshire? In Lancashire (and elsewhere in the UK) I’ve never heard it mean anything other than “thank you” or the thing you say after clinking glasses the only time I’ve ever heard anything different is from foreigners learning English

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheers “goodbye” https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheerio 1. “Goodbye”, 2. “Hello” https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheero “A friendly greeting”

yes I’m aware of the dictionary definitions, that’s why foreigners say it, but not once have I ever heard an actual Brit use it like that. it’s a definition that has pretty much passed out of common usage, if it was ever in it

Re: What Is Anglish?

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cheers means goodbye in Yorkshire? In Lancashire (and elsewhere in the UK) I’ve never heard it mean anything other than “thank you” or the thing you say after clinking glasses the only time I’ve ever heard anything different is from foreigners learning English

It’s also used in Bristol. “Cheers Drive” is a good-bye to a bus driver.

is that “bye” or is it “thanks”?
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