I thought only we Greeks did such stuff! :)
What Is Anglish?
211–220 of 363 posts
Re: What Is Anglish?
#212Earlier 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…
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.
Re: What Is Anglish?
#213Earlier 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. And in other areas, like the arts (from painting and photography to film and the novel), legal, and political terms. That's because France in those past 2-3 centuries was a huge power in Europe and globally, along with the UK). For France, this en…
Yup that's where the term "lingua franca" comes from.
The "Franks" in lingua franca refers to all Western Europeans collectively, it's not actually about the French.
Re: What Is Anglish?
#214 ever borowing and never paying [1500's]
English degrades gracefully, in grammar and vocabulary, enabling it to be widely used (or, conceivably, resulting from wide use).
Re: What Is Anglish?
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Almost all books have text in them, yet nobody suffers from the ambiguity of what a textbook is.
Re: What Is Anglish?
#216Reminded of the Japanese native words known as "wago" or "yamato kotoba"[0]: "Wago...are native Japanese words, meaning those words in Japanese that have been inherited from Old Japanese, rather than being borrowed at some stage. Together with kango (漢語) and gairaigo (外来語), they form one of the three main sources of Japanese words (there is also elaborate Japanese sound symbolism, of mimetic origin). They are also kn…
I'm pretty sure that there are parallels everywhere around the world. The Korean equivalent is 토박이말 Tobagimal (lit. native speak) [1].
[1] Also called 순 우리말 Soon woorimal (lit. only our speak) which is ironically not 순 우리말 itself because of a Sino-Korean morpheme "순" (純).
Re: What Is Anglish?
#217"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!
To me as a native German speaker it feels more homely, but that’s because it’s most of the time pretty much a direct translation of the German words.
Re: What Is Anglish?
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's because that _is_ the word (大腿) for thigh — native speakers don't perceive it as "big leg", which would be 大的腿 instead. This is exactly analogous to "little finger" in English.
Except we call that one Pinky
Americans do. It’s not common in the UK.
Re: What Is Anglish?
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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? Your description only applies to a word phrase "word book". The lexicalized word "wordbook" would have its own meaning (presumably one of your suggestions), just like…
I was curious about "thesaurus" given that is not a dictionary but still a "word book".
According to Google Translate, apparently Wörterbuch also means thesaurus so OP is correct, it is more ambiguous than dictionary.
The first suggested translation for thesaurus is... thesaurus... so much for compound words eh?
Re: What Is Anglish?
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>The counterargument is that lots of words allow for precise concision.
In fact, the hallmark of writing/speaking good English is conveying yourself using the least words required with the utmost precision.
Don't believe it? Watch a British politician roast someone in Parliament. That is bloody masterful English literature right there.