Live data from Hacker News

What Is Anglish?

anglish.org

351–360 of 363 posts

Re: What Is Anglish?

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting to me how comparatively impoverished Anglish seems. Here’s to promiscuity!

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).

Having a Polish wife an knowing something about Polish through a few failed attempts to learn some, Polish is a lot more "bloated" to an English eye. The moods and aspects make learning Polish super hard. If you learn the morphology of the individual elements I guess you can guess what a verb means, but it all seems a bit alien. An needing to know if a verb is in one aspect or another, and that sometimes the aspect is "past" and sometimes "future" in tense... it is hard unless you are a native speaker or really dedicated.

As for English and bloated - I'm probably a high A2/low B1 Swedish speaker. I can read a lot better than I speak. I also dabbled in Norwegian out of fascination of how absolutely similar and yet different the two languages are. (It's like Czech and Polish.) So much looks the same, just spelt differently, but you also have a large corpus of vocabulary that is on the surface different - but in reality a native speaker would know there is a word that is equivilent (maybe just not used as much or archaic.) The one I found today, which blew my mind was "trenge". This means "need" in Norwegian. It is one of those odd "Norwegian seems to prefer another word". Swedish seems to mostly use "behöva" and Norwegian does also have "behøve", but I see trenge way more. Today I saw some Swedish song lyrics with "tränga" (which is basically a Swedish equivalent of the Norwegian spelling.) Synonyms happen in all languages. Even if languages that are purely Germanic with minimal Latin influence. Caveat: this is obviously my own observations. Not claiming any thing other than casual knowledge and no actual expertise.

More examples, from a Swedish speaking point of view, are jente/jänta (latter is archaic, flicka is more contemporary), snakke/snacka (the latter is normally tala or prata), bruke/bruka (bruka in Swedish is seeminly used to mean "usually" rather than "use", and änvenda is used for "use")... the list goes on. I find this really interesting. I think the Hanseatic league and Low German it brought explains an least some of these synonyms.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#352

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

In the context of 'cheers' being a direct one-to-one replacement of 'goodbye'. (Or more precisely 'bye'.) If, in my local usage, there is any difference between 'bye' and 'cheers', it's that the latter has a bit more bonhomie about it.

In this context, I'm afraid, you are wrong. When I'm in the office, the last thing I say to everybody else as I leave is, 'Cheers.' I'm not thanking them for letting me into office; I'm saying, 'Goodbye.'

I'm perplexed as to why you're pushing this so hard. People who have experience of this are telling you something. But you, despite clearly not having the same experience, are telling them that they are wrong. Don't mean to be snarky, but why is this so important to you?

Next up, 'Do Midlanders really call each other mardy?'

Re: What Is Anglish?

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you’re reading it too literally

You are attempting to read in a viewpoint that the book specifically says it doesn't believe.

do you genuinely think that the book is saying that English is not descended at all from Old English and is in fact solely descended from Old Norse?

based on the rest of the text which is making the argument that middle-English is a creole between Old English and Old Norse, it's very clearly a synecdoche to be read as "Middle English did not solely develop from Old English.". you're taking your attempt to be contrary a bit too far here

Re: What Is Anglish?

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 li…

There are several persian languages, so referring to the one you mean as "Farsi" makes it more clear (as opposed to "Tajiki" or "Dari" for example).

That's an afterthought, in English you say Levantine Arabic or Egyptian Arabic, or Brazilian Portuguese, Bavarian etc not "Bayrisch" or "al-lahje shamiye" or something else

Re: What Is Anglish?

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In the context of 'cheers' being a direct one-to-one replacement of 'goodbye'. (Or more precisely 'bye'.) If, in my local usage, there is any difference between 'bye' and 'cheers', it's that the latter has a bit more bonhomie about it. In this context, I'm afraid, you are wrong. When I'm in the office, the last thing I say to everybody else as I leave is, 'Cheers.' I'm not thanking them for letting me into office; I'…

yesterday after discussing this, I asked multiple people I know from across the country, including the midlands, and they all said that no, cheers is not something they've ever heard as goodbye. I stand by the fact that cheers means thank you/regards, and occasionally is used in place of or alongside goodbye when some kind of transactional behaviour has taken place

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/1gkmqj/what_exactly_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/2sjb2j/how_do_i_use_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/8tooyt/is_cheers_ins...

you're misunderstanding the nuance of it. when other people are leaving the office and they say cheers, they're saying a short form of "cheers for working with me today" more equivalent to "regards" than "goodbye"

Re: What Is Anglish?

#356
post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is an everyday meaning of “race”, yes. mostly about skin pigmentation, eye shape, bone shape. Things like that. So why do I mention the pseudo-scientific connection? Because “race-mixing” implies that different “races” breeding is bad, which must mean—beyond the completely shallow like the appearance of people who are “mixed”—that there is something substantive to the notion of races which makes mixed-race pe…

> I'm going to try in good faith to follow what you just said. Or get so far as the part that makes me stop reading. A for effort. > > Because “race-mixing” implies that different “races” breeding is bad > Why? Because a bunch of racist bullshit about the mud people? “Anti-race-mixing ideologies”. “Anti” means bad, i.e. different races breeding is bad. How could it be more straightforward? > > Not to over-charge this…

Anti does not mean, never has meant and never will mean bad.

It means against. Dys means bad.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#357

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.” ― Christoph…

that Hitchens quote is nice, but typically for him, and fittingly for the context, it’s more of an attempt to be contrary and interesting than it is to be correct. racists are accused of discriminating by race . he obviously knew this, and it’s still an interesting point, but to be annoyed by it is to be annoyed by correct usage of English

The word play here is one of nuanced diction here. Namely the secondary meaning of the word:

Meaning 2: recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another. "discrimination between right and wrong" 2a) the ability to judge what is of high quality; good judgement or taste. "those who could afford to buy showed little taste or discrimination"

I.e. the true ability to distinguish things, not simply sorting objects by color.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#358
Ænglish is the language of Ænglanders, who live on Ængland, an island with lots of Ængs. They used have trees, but fools burned them all down. Reason for this is of course that there was too many Ænglanders for normal slash and burn agriculture. And reason for this overpopulation is that they were living on remote island, so there were not enough wars.

Re: What Is Anglish?

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that Hitchens quote is nice, but typically for him, and fittingly for the context, it’s more of an attempt to be contrary and interesting than it is to be correct. racists are accused of discriminating by race . he obviously knew this, and it’s still an interesting point, but to be annoyed by it is to be annoyed by correct usage of English

The word play here is one of nuanced diction here. Namely the secondary meaning of the word: Meaning 2: recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another. "discrimination between right and wrong" 2a) the ability to judge what is of high quality; good judgement or taste. "those who could afford to buy showed little taste or discrimination" I.e. the true ability to distinguish things, not si…

this was my basic understanding of the quote. it's still correct to accuse a racist of discrimination
Post reply on HN