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What Is Anglish?

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Re: What Is Anglish?

#231

Post by [deleted] »

brenns10 wrote: post #181
tremon wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that because those are the only known words left in our time, or because the original vocabulary was rather limited?

My understanding (and take this with a grain of salt, I don't have sources) is that after the Norman conquest in 1066, the original English language was the lower class language and the Latin/French language of the conquerors became the upper class language. So the words which came to English through French/Latin tended to be considered high class, and the words from older English were considered lower class, rougher…

[deleted]

Re: What Is Anglish?

#232

Post by Someone »

MrJohz wrote: post #227
wirrbel wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

na, you are missing the point here, in German "Wörterbuch" (literally wordsbook) is the standard term for a dictionary. No ambiguity because by default a book is with words and then all composita describe some kind of deviation (Bilderbuch= picture book, Handbuch = handbook -> manual, Fahrtenbuch = drive book -> driver's log). English just draws vocabulary from many roots and attaches connotations to them which have…

You're cherry picking examples here though. How do you explain the "-zeug" words? If you think of "Zeug" more as tool then some of them kind of make more sense ("Feuerzeug", "Werkzeug", at a pinch "Spielzeug") but are you really thinking of a plane as a flying tool? And there are also cases where English has opted for a compound word and German has just invented its own: Ampel vs traffic light, for example. Personall…

> and German has just invented its own: Ampel vs traffic light, for example

That’s not an invention, but a loan word from Latin ampulla (small oil bottle), which got a meaning “hanging lamp” (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ampel)

Re: What Is Anglish?

#233

Post by biztos »

MrJohz wrote: post #227
wirrbel wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

na, you are missing the point here, in German "Wörterbuch" (literally wordsbook) is the standard term for a dictionary. No ambiguity because by default a book is with words and then all composita describe some kind of deviation (Bilderbuch= picture book, Handbuch = handbook -> manual, Fahrtenbuch = drive book -> driver's log). English just draws vocabulary from many roots and attaches connotations to them which have…

You're cherry picking examples here though. How do you explain the "-zeug" words? If you think of "Zeug" more as tool then some of them kind of make more sense ("Feuerzeug", "Werkzeug", at a pinch "Spielzeug") but are you really thinking of a plane as a flying tool? And there are also cases where English has opted for a compound word and German has just invented its own: Ampel vs traffic light, for example. Personall…

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 it.

As a foreigner trying to learn the language (not in DE anymore) I have to remind myself just how weird English is, and not to place unreasonable expectations on people doing the reverse of my journey. Having had to have, so to speak.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#234

Post by biztos »

oefnak wrote: post #222
atchoo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Synoniemenbüch, probably?

Synonymwörterbuch, apparently:

https://shop.duden.de/collections/worterbucher-und-sprache/p...

Re: What Is Anglish?

#235

Post by yosito »

riffraff wrote: post #223
yosito wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I'm not sure if the Latin-based words actually came via French or via English Or via anything else, really. E.g. the word for car "kocsi" seems oddly similar to Spanish "coche" (I think French would be voiture) and "tombola" to mean "bingo" seems Italian (french/english should be raffle, I think).

Coach/coche/kocsi all come from Hungarian. There is a Hungarian town called Kócs. Kócsi literally means "(a thing) from Kócs". Hungary used to sell some horse drawn carriages made in Kócs and from there, the word entered German and then English.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kocs

Re: What Is Anglish?

#236

Post by aden1ne »

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.

"fris" is closer to "chilly", tho.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#237

Post by biztos »

yosito wrote: post #107
paganel wrote: post #102

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…

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.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#238

Post by bravura »

The beauty of the English language always comes from picking the word with the perfect connotation.

At the most articulate, you have speakers like Christopher Hitchens: “It especially annoys me when racists are accused of 'discrimination.' The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members on one 'race' to be the same, the racist precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.”

― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

But sometimes the strongest turns-of-phrase in English can be the simplest. We were recently chatting about the Portuguese "Cansas-me a beleza". In English, if you said to someone: "You tire my beauty" with perfect delivery it would be withering.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#239

Post by deafpolygon »

aden1ne wrote: post #236
deafpolygon wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"fris" is closer to "chilly", tho.

Yea, that's true - in the sense that it's "chilled", or "cool" (i.e. a frisdrank) but not in the sense that it's cold (koud) or chilly outside.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#240

Post by walthamstow »

philwelch wrote: post #101
aardvark179 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although it seems intended as fun I’m always a little nervous of things like this because it also denies the power relationships that led to those borrowings. Degallicized English is kind of erasing the relationship between England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and even Cornwall. I’d be much more comfortable if I didn’t have to explain to so many Americans that Scotland is not a part of England, that it isn’t a separate…

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.

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