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What Is Anglish?

anglish.org

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Re: What Is Anglish?

#311

Post by hgomersall »

nine_k wrote: post #309
hgomersall wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

Oh those things are certainly true, but the genders are not consistent across Indo-European languages. In learning a language they act as a thing to get stuck on. It's an unpleasant feeling to know you are constantly getting genders wrong, even if you are understood (though seemingly in France, getting genders wrong is sufficient to be not understood).

Re: What Is Anglish?

#312

Post by ta1243 »

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.

Indeed, for a native English person who doesn't have genders for inanimate objects (I'm sure someone will come up with an exception) they don't seem to add any benefit. La chaise vs Le chaise. It's a chair, you sit on it. Someone articistic might decide that a chair has a masculine form, but another chair could be feminine, but that doesn't change the "le" vs "la" part.

Do non-european languages have genders?

Re: What Is Anglish?

#313

Post by oblio »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #301
oblio wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Something like "mesmerizing" coming from the German person named Mesmer?

That also happens in other languages, too, but English has a great affinity.

I think that's just drive by English having, what, 40-50 sounds? Which is quite a lot for a language, and English speakers having a huge aversion towards words with many syllables. 1 is perfect, 2 is okish, 3 is a lot, 4+ is an abomination.

So they tend to import anything they can pronounce and is under 3 syllables.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#314

Post by memsom »

timeon wrote: post #224
triyambakam wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any natural or constructed English/Scandinavian pidgins/creoles, but that sure would be fun. The conventional wisdom is that it's easier for an English speaker to learn Swedish than it is to learn German. Regarding if that would arise in the Scandinavian countries in the future - it actually seems more likely in German speaking countries. There is actually a word for it now - Denglisch (Deutsch Engli…

> The conventional wisdom is that it's easier for an English speaker to learn Swedish than it is to learn German. If we consider pronunciation then closest is probably Danish. As English pronunciation seems to be alien to most European languages.

Not Danish. Danish is pretty alien. Norwegian is quite easy for an English speaker, plus all the dialects mean that even technicalities such as the tone accent can be "worked around". Swedish and Norwegian are both pretty easy to pronounce and pretty easy to learn as an English speaker. Most of the problem is vocabulary, not really so much the grammar.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#315

Post by ZeroGravitas »

permo-w wrote: post #308
ArteEtMarte wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The phrase "Cheers for now" is less ambigous as a sign off or goodbye than cheers on its own.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#316

Post by pwpw »

paganel wrote: post #102
squiffsquiff wrote: post #7

"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…

> it's interesting how many European languages have heavily borrowed from French in the last 2-3 centuries

You see this a lot with modern Greek. As an example, appointment is ραντεβού, and elevator is ασανσέρ.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#317

Post by jonnycomputer »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #126

What a quaint 20th century-sort of ethno-nationalist notion that is.

I think the downvoters must really not know much about 19th and 20th century European ethno-nationalism, or how cultural movements centered around language, religion and myth, were particularly instrumental in the formation of ethnic national identities, and what that inevitably entailed for those not in the hegemonic majorities. Nor how the invention of the past, construction of new "ancient" traditions, and a nostalgic longing for an imagined more pure mythic past served nationalist agendas among competing European states. And of course, all of this is still going on, in all sorts of places other than Europe (e.g. Africa, Asia).

But I won't complain about downvotes without an attempt to actually give people the opportunity to learn something.

Ethnonationalism, Nationalism, Empire

- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/11287462.2006.10...

Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe - Language Chapter

- https://ernie.uva.nl/viewer.p/21/56/object/122-159898

Linguistic Purism in the History of the German Language

- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291539411_Linguisti...

Revisiting Key Debates in the Study of Nationalism

- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01432-w

Re: What Is Anglish?

#319

Post by jonnycomputer »

This is very reminiscent of 19th and 20th century European ethno-nationalism, or how cultural movements centered around language, religion and myth, were particularly instrumental in the formation of ethnic national identities, and what that inevitably entailed for those not in the hegemonic majorities. Nor how the invention of the past, construction of new "ancient" traditions, and a nostalgic longing for an imagined more pure mythic past served nationalist agendas among competing European states. And of course, all of this is still going on, in all sorts of places other than Europe (e.g. Africa, Asia).

Ethnonationalism, Nationalism, Empire

- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/11287462.2006.10...

Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe - Language Chapter

- https://ernie.uva.nl/viewer.p/21/56/object/122-159898

Linguistic Purism in the History of the German Language

- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291539411_Linguisti...

Revisiting Key Debates in the Study of Nationalism

- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01432-w

Re: What Is Anglish?

#320

Post by jagaerglad »

nine_k wrote: post #309
hgomersall wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

Although vaguely off topic, one thing that grinds my gears is calling Persian "Farsi". Nobody goes around saying "hello I speak Español" but for some reason, rather recently, it has become popular to use the endonym for Persian in place of the already well established "Persian". I've more than once met people not knowing they are the same thing which is sad because using the new word loses well-rooted associations like with famous authors and other cultural elements etc
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