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What Is Anglish?

anglish.org

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Re: What Is Anglish?

#301

Post by bryanrasmussen »

oblio wrote: post #287
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rece…

ok most languages do that, take another language word in, but I think English has the habit of turning things into metaphorical phrases, adjectives, adverbs and the like for the things it imports.

Admit I can't come up with an example at the moment though.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#302

Post by kseistrup »

deafpolygon wrote: post #199
tomxor wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that mainly due to it being based upon a historical snapshot of English? that by definition never evolved further. If it had the same huge population of English speakers over hundreds of years (i.e was a living language) then it may also have evolved a diverse range of words without the need to absorb other languages - not that I care for it. On a slight tangent, I've noticed when translating from English to Chine…

In Dutch, as an example we have a word called zoetwater - which if you translate it literally, is "sweet water". But it is the word for 'freshwater' in English [as opposed to saltwater], not some kind of sweet water. Even though zoetwater could be literally translated, no one really knows it means freshwater in English. There is advertisement for 'fris water' or 'vers water', which means fresh water correctly.

Fun fact: If you follow an extreme lowcarb diet (e.g., Atkinson, where you aim at getting 25g of carbs or less daily) for a long time, some things that didn't have a sweet taste before get a sweet tinge. One of them is water. I remember thinking “Oh, that's why it's called ‘zoetwater’ in Dutch!”

Re: What Is Anglish?

#303

Post by MrsPeaches »

MrJohz wrote: post #268
biztos wrote: 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…

But the key point here is that "fire stuff" is still a pretty ambiguous term. Sure, it does describe a lighter, but it also describes lots of other things pretty well. The compound parts give some clues as to the nature of the object in question (a Feuerzeug does have something to do with fire), but fundamentally you still need to know what the word means. So I don't think compound words magically remove ambiguity, a…

As far as I understand it, Zeug means thing in this context.

Stuff is “Stoff” as in Brennstoff.

Fire-thing and burning-stuff.

Lighter is “Zünder“ in German.

Feuerzeug vs Zünder

To close to call regarding which is clearer.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#304

Post by vitno »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #112
vitno wrote: post #19

Before anyone gets too worried, the Anglish community in my (limited) experience has been incredibly anti-racism/Nazi/etc. They are just a bunch of linguistics nerds who are having fun imagining what English would have been without a Norman invasion. In the same spirit, I'd recommend checking out the Uncleftish Beholding. Although I think it predates the modern Anglish community, it's an attempt to describe Quantum M…

> The Anglish project is intended as a means of recovering the Englishness of English and of restoring ownership of the language to the English people. https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/What_is_Anglish%3F When I first came across Anglish I thought it was a really fun linguistic idea. Then last week I came across the above. Fuck no.

The fandom is an unmoderated site and does not reflect the general community. Racists have edit buttons too unfortunately. If you look at the edit history of the page it'll tell a story of far-right trolls attempting to rebrand it in recent years.

https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/What_is_Anglish%3F?type=revi...

Re: What Is Anglish?

#305

Post by ArteEtMarte »

permo-w wrote: post #289
plugin-baby wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Cheers is used as goodbye here in the East Midlands. If you were here, you'd hear plenty of Brits use it on a daily basis.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#308

Post by permo-w »

ArteEtMarte wrote: post #305
permo-w wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Cheers is used as goodbye here in the East Midlands. If you were here, you'd hear plenty of Brits use it on a daily basis.

in what context?

I could be wrong about this of course, but I suspect what you’re observing is people saying thank you as they’re leaving: e.g. getting off the bus, or after buying something, or after receiving directions

Re: What Is Anglish?

#309

Post by nine_k »

hgomersall wrote: post #284
logifail wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is because English has lost most of its Indo-European heritage (except lexical), and looks much more similar to Chinese that to an IE language like German, Spanish, Russian, Greek, Hindi / Urdu, or even Farsi (though Farsi has also lost grammatical gender).

* English has no inflections; nouns and adjectives stay the same no matter what role in a sentence do they have.

* English has no noun-adjective agreement, and a very rudimentary verb-noun agreement (only third person singular).

* English words have unpredictable pronunciation: like in Chinese, there are some hints and rules, but they are full of exceptions. Try to find a pattern: "busy" / "Suzy" / "circusy", "corps" / "thorps", etc. No way to predict the sound without knowing both the etymology and tradition.

* English has no grammatical gender.

* Though unlike Chinese, English has a sharp distinction between singular and plural.

No wonder even German looks somehow distant from English :)

Re: What Is Anglish?

#310

Post by permo-w »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #206
permo-w wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> … English is unmistakably North Germanic and not West Germanic … that’s exactly what they were saying. English is traditionally described as West Germanic with German, Frisian and Dutch, but as a creole with Old Norse it could be instead described as North Germanic

The link says that Old English is not an ancestor of modern English. triyambakam says that it is. A creole would be neither West Germanic nor North Germanic; creoles are new. The grammatical structures of a creole are, in general, not inherited from any of the "parent" languages.

it’s a synecdoche. the link is saying it didn’t solely develop from Old English, not that it didn’t at all
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