Has anyone come across “Anglish”? Anglish or Saxon is described as “…a form of English linguistic purism, which favours words of native (Germanic) origin over those of foreign (mainly Romance and Greek) origin.”
Does anybody have an opinion or thoughts on “Anglish”…
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Shouldn’t that be “a of English, which words of over those of and”?
Since “form” is Latin, “linguistic” and “purism” are both Latin-Greek hybrids, “favor” is French, “native” is Latin, “origin” is Latin, and “foreign” and “mainly” are French.
More seriously: very loosely speaking, English has three levels of discourse: a colloquial level using words of Saxon origin, a sophisticated or poetic level using words of French origin, and a formal level using words of Latin origin. E.g. “wrong” (Saxon), “false” (French) and “incorrect” (Latin). But there is a lot of mixing between levels and etymology should always be the last consideration in choosing the proper word for any given place.
Actually “wrong” was borrowed from Old Norse.
I don’t think there’s such a thing as a “pure” language. Even Anglo-Saxon isn’t pure. Anglo-Saxon is descended from Proto-Germanic, and many Proto-Germanic words are descended from Proto-Indo-European, but many aren’t – they were presumably borrowed from other now extinct languages.
When I read about “Anglish” I thought about the poverty of words without non-Germanic words. I don’t know how pendantic these people are – they seem to be mostly in England. It could be as simple as picking the Anglo-Saxon word over another non-Anglo-Saxon word when possible. There are many English words that have fallen from common usage over the centuries. However, I can’t see a return to Chaucerian English in the cards!
We ain’t ever gonna go back to chaucer’s English. But we CAN sway the current norm of English towards the common speech, and slowly, ever so slowly, beat out BS words like “consanguinuity” in favor of words like “samebloodedness” which even a 3-year-old can understand. All it takes is using simpler words when possible, avoiding “high words” even though they sound “grand”. That’s why I get mad at the KJV, so many latin and outdated english words… I don’t say “carnal” i say “fleshly” and i don’t “thou” i say “you”.
“Does anybody have an opinion or thoughts on “Anglish”…”
Yes, it’s a ridiculous idea.
“Samebloodedness”? Get a life.
“The Anglish Moot,” a website devoted to Anglish, defines it as “a kind of English, but without those words which have been borrowed from other languages.” The site describes the purpose of Anglish:
“The purpose of Anglish differs from person to person, but mostly it is to explore and experiment with the English language . . . By stripping away the layers of borrowed words, Anglish allows us to better appreciate that core and the role it plays in our language.”
This sounds like an interesting academic exercise. The problem is that English has always had “borrowed words” in its lexicon. Nearly two hundred Latin borrowings—that we know of—were brought to England from the Continent by the Anglo-Saxons. Another 350 or so Latin words were added to Old English prior to the Norman Invasion. Other words found their way into Old English from Old Norse. Shall we discard these?
“The Anglish Moot,” gives this reason for the existence of Anglish:
“English words taken from Latin, French, and Greek are made up of parts whose meanings are on the whole unknown or at least unclear to the English speaker.”
Indeed. Do they include words like butter, cup, kitchen, mile, pepper, plant, pound and street, all of which are Latin-based, and all of which were brought by the Anglo-Saxons when they crossed the Channel? Quoth the Moot: “So extreme is this beclouding of so much of the English wordstock, that we get severely hard-to-make-out-the-meaning-of words like “inebriate”, completely incomprehensible to the English speaker from its wordbits, since it contains the wodbit ‘ebri’, from the latin ‘ebrius’, meaning drunk.” (I have kept the spelling and punctuation intact.) Unless one is inebriated, and very much so, the meaning of “butter” is hardly incomprehensible. And is “hard-to-make-out-the-meaning-of” better than “incomprehensible?”
The more I look at Anglish the less I like it. It is not scholarly, and has an odor of xenophobia about it.
JJM says: “Does anybody have an opinion or thoughts on “Anglish”…”
Yes, it’s a ridiculous idea. “Samebloodedness”? Get a life.”
Perhaps instead of being rude and insulting you could explain your point of view. A good English word is “prat”.
Actually, I’m quite curious. If you really and truly strip out every single borrowed word (and don’t substitute any archaic ones), and only leave modern words that are directly descended from, oh, I dunno, Proto-Indo-European, just how many words would be left? I could be wrong, but I suspect that most of the words that the Anglish fans espouse are still borrowed, however long ago.
You know, ther are a lot of haters of this anglish stuff. I for one have taken a liking to it. There seems to be no lack of misconception about it either. Supporters of anglish do not simply wish to purge the language of latin, greek and french and leave it at that. No, they very often innovate, propose replacement words, words that don’t already exist in english. Like ‘bookery’ for ‘library’, or how about is-hood for ‘existence.’ God that last one is great– do you see the beauty of it though, the meaning behind the word ‘ishood’ is clear from its parts ‘is’ + ‘hood,’ ‘is-hood is the quality of being, expressed by ‘is’, by parallel with sisterhood or brotherhood. So it is not at all evident that these anglish guys are out to impoverish the language-for the words they remove, they give what they feel are better ones, ones more in keeping with the core of english, because in a way this makes english easier, and more beautiful too, since it connects meaning to word-structure, word-composition. And in many cases, supporters of english do not seek to do away with latin, greek, and french words, they’re fine with them, they just want there to be a choice, they want there to be the option of choosing native words over “foreign” ones. As for simple, every-day words like butter, and cup, pointing to those and saying the purpose of anglish is to purge english of those words is very misleading– if you read up on anglish, you see that most of the backers of anglish are fine with those small, simple words–its words like rectify and inebriate, and consanguinity that seem to tick them off. And look they have a point, consanguinity is pretty incomprehensible to the native english speaker without a dictionary, I’m sorry it just is, just ask a four year old what consanguinity means and you’ll see, they’ll be clueless. Then ask them what samebloodedness means and you’ll more than likely get an answer. And after all, what’s so bad about the good old Anglo-Saxon word “samebloodedness” anyway?
Jm:
I hope you’re not counting me among the “haters.” I should clarify my comment about xenophobia. That should not have been directed against Anglish in general. Rather, I sense on the “Anglish Moot” website—which is a Wiki, and open to editing—the idea that English has been polluted by outside influences. For example:
“English (Inglish) is the theidish speech of the English (Inglish) folk wherever they be found in the world. Hence it should be made up mostly of words which were in English (Inglish) before 1066 and have theidish (germanic) roots.”
I take issue with that. English has not been the sole property of “the English folk” for quite some time. Far more English speakers are non-English than English.
English is a great language partly because it adopts foreign words gladly. English has more lexemes than any other language. This gives it a subtlety that is hard to beat. That English has words that are not understood by toddlers is not a bad thing. (And I’m not convinced a four-year-old child would understand “samebloodedness” any more than “consanguinity.” My guess is that both would be incomprehensible.)
As I said, Anglish seems at first blush an interesting exercise. But on closer inspection it seems more a parlor game. For example: what are “uncleftish springballs?” (This is a word taken from the “Moot.”) Give up? Atom bombs. Consanguinity is crystal in comparison.
But you see atom bomb is in no way better than uncleftish springball. Of course it is the word that is in use, accepted by all english speakers. But then, what’s so bad with proposing a little change?, after all that’s how the english you and I know came about: through radical change. So hey, if ‘uncleftish springballs’ enters the language, cool, I’m all for it. Shouldn’t you be too?, who praise english for its variety. Well then bring these words on, bring them all on. Remember, new words enter the langugae every day, some transiently, while some stick around, so I don’t see what’s all that bad with anglish words.
As for purity of language, consider this:
Some times we’re so concerned with being all-accepting of ‘otherness’, difference, (lest we seem racist or bigoted or whatever) that we do away with what is ours in favour of foreigness. But accepting foreigness does not require rejecting nativeness. Look at Icelanders for example– they cherish the purity of thier language, and go to some lengths to ensure that no non-native words come into it. And why shouln’t they , heck they speak the language of the vikings virtually unchanged, God unchanged, how amazing is that? Are they to be called bigoted? Foreigness for the sake of diversity is great, but so is preservation of what you have.
“But then, what’s so bad with proposing a little change?, after all that’s how the english you and I know came about: through radical change.”
The difference is that Old English didn’t become Middle English because people consciously proposed the introduction of French words into English based on some argument that it would make the language better. But that’s what the Anglish people are doing. They’re trying to change the language by decree based on their specific idea of “better”. But no language is intrinsically better than any other. And an attempt to change English by decree will never work anyway.
I don’t know about that–I would say that decree had something to do with OE becoming ME, at least a self imposed one (based on the idea of the superiority of french and latin), and for sure this ‘self-imposed’ decree played a role in the transition from middle english to modern english, with a lot of native words being lost in favour of french or latin ones, precisely because these were thought of as being better. And look, whether it be by ‘decree’ or by the natural happening of things, whatever, change is change. And remember, it’s not so much a decree as it is a proposal–noone can force english speakers to take on anglish words.
“Perhaps instead of being rude and insulting you could explain your point of view. A good English word is ‘prat’.”
Now who’s being insulting? The idea of a “pure” English language is silly and, as one poster noted, smacks of more than a little xenophobia.
It’s the sort of thing that once had an appeal among certain people with dodgy views on ethnicity and race.
In response to Goofy’s assertion that “an attempt to change English by decree will never work anyway,” Jm writes:
“I don’t know about that–I would say that decree had something to do with OE becoming ME, at least a self imposed one (based on the idea of the superiority of french and latin), and for sure this ’self-imposed’ decree played a role in the transition from middle english to modern english, with a lot of native words being lost in favour of french or latin ones, precisely because these were thought of as being better. …”
But history shows that a different dynamic was behind the transition from Old English to Modern English, what we call Middle English. During the period when French was the language of government—from the Norman invasion of 1066 to the opening of Parliament in 1362—the English nation was trilingual, but it’s people largely were not. French became the language of government and the royal court, Latin remained the language of education and the Church, but the vast majority of English people spoke only their native tongue.
It was during this period that the shift from Old English began, not by decree, either imposed or self-imposed, but as a natural process. The fact that the people spoke a different tongue than the isolated elites meant that their language was free to change unchecked by any authority. There are many causes of the change, such as the increase in regional dialects during the Middle English period, but none resemble a “decree.” It could be argued that the end of Middle English was induced, at least in part, by forces of authority, such as the return of English to government use at the end of the 14th century and the introduction of the printing press at the end of the 15th; both would have strong stabilizing effect on the language.
As for “a lot of native words being lost in favour of french or latin ones” (Jn again), this is simply not what happened. French and Latin words were indeed added to the language, but they coexisted with English ones; they did not supplant them. This is reflected in our legal language today, in which couplets like “breaking and entering,” where an English word was paired with a French borrowing so that monolingual defendants could understand what they were being charged with.
Let me remind you that 80% of native english words were lost, that’s 80%, that’s a huge amount, –these were replaced by latin and french ones, which means these were favoured, and that they did indeed supplant the english ones. Look I don’t want to discuss the semantics of ‘decree’ and ‘favour’, the fact is that most of the english wordstock was lost.
The 80% figure you cite (from Wikipedia?) is at the high end of what linguists estimate were lost from Old English. Yes, some have been supplanted by words of French or Latin origin. But others were synonyms for other Old English words that lost popularity and fell into disuse. It cannot be said that 80% of OE words were replaced by French or Latin ones, though I concede that some were. But 20,000 or so French-speakers were insufficient to supplant the language of England, which had 1.5 million inhabitants when the Normans arrived, and three million when English re-asserted itself as the sole language. The rise to dominance of the dialect of London over other regional dialects probably killed off more words than the Normans ever did.
It is important to note that half of the thousand most commonly used words in Old English survive in Modern English, and 80% of the thousand most commonly used words in Modern English derive from Old English. And fully a third of the 10,000 most common words in Modern English derive from OE. The frequency of use of words is as important as the mere quantity, if not more so. For example, the word “consanguinity” has probably been used more in this discussion than most people use it in a lifetime. It would not surprise me if most of the words used in this discussion are from Old English.
LOL at the cries of racism and xenophobia. Here’s one for you: you’re supporting the genocide of a native tongue by Roman imperialism. Supporters of Anglish aren’t saying you’re not allowed to use foreign words. This isn’t something to be offended by. People who support this movement (bloggers, novelists perhaps), could start using Anglo-Saxon words; maybe a few words will gain momentum and become commonplace.
“The 80% figure you cite (from Wikipedia?) is at the high end of what linguists estimate were lost from Old English. Yes, some have been supplanted by words of French or Latin origin. But others were synonyms for other Old English words that lost”:
figure, cite, linguists, estimate, supplanted, synonyms, popularity, disuse, replace, origin, insufficient, inhabitants, arrived, reasserted, sole, dominance, dialect, important, commonly, survive, derive, frequency, quantity,probably, discussion, people, surprise– the words of latin/french outspring that you used in 2 paragraphs. That’s a lot.
And as for:
“But 20,000 or so French-speakers were insufficient to supplant the language of England, which had 1.5 million inhabitants when the Normans arrived, and three million when English re-asserted itself as the sole language”
This IS in large part what happened– open up any modern english dictinary, and the first random word you’ll land on will probably be from latin/french. Then have a look at an old english text or an OE dictionary, do you recognize most of the words?, some , yes, most. no!
I originally asked the question about “Anglish” to garner opinions. I do not think that the promoters of Anglish are xenophobic, they merely prefer to use an Anglo-Saxon word where possible. Someone also mentioned the loss of words due to the prevalence of London English. My understanding is that West Saxon (Wessex) evolved into modern English. The people in the area that would become London probably spoke Kentish.
In the West County of England, some small portion of West Saxon survives in the West Country dialect of Somerset, Devon and Dorset. I spent the first 7 years of my life in Somerset and was surprised to find that words I had taken for granted had no currency outside of the West Country. I be, she be, gurt, grockle, (f)varmer, hark at ee, wacker, smooth the dog, etc. I never saw a non-English person until I was 7 years old at Heathrow Airport in London. Of course with modern communications this relic of West Saxon is all but vanished.
Curiously, when we emigrated to Canada, I found myself in southwestern Ontario. The names in the southwest of Ontario hark back to the West Country – Exeter, Wellington, Tavistock, Weston, etc. The accent of SW Ont is heavily rhotic like the West Country. Travelling between family in Somerset and Ontario it is easy to hear the similarities.
Shaun C:
West Saxon was dominant from the eighth to the eleventh century, but it was not the progenitor of Modern English. Sorry. London, the seat of government, and Cambridge and Oxford, homes of the preeminent universities, proved stronger. As for xenophobia, I revised my comment to apply only to the “Moot” website, and only to portions of that. Frankly, I’m sorry I brought it up. It distracts from what has been a mostly constructive conversation.
Jm:
It is true that Modern English has a great many words of French or Latin origin: each comprises nearly a third of the lexicon—wordstock, if you insist—according to some sources. But the story of the entry of these words into English is more complex than your account of it. And more interesting.
You say: “Then have a look at an old english text or an OE dictionary, do you recognize most of the words?, some , yes, most. no!” Well, of course. Words change. Spellings change. The structure of the language has changed from Old English to now. Old English used inflectional endings to signal grammatical structure. Modern English uses word order instead of inflection.
Anglish attempts to graft pseudo-Anglo-Saxon words onto the structure of Modern English. This is why it is a parlor game, not much different from speaking Klingon at a costume party. If I am wrong, if there is a credible source or website to prove me so, I would be glad to hear of it.
Nick (needed)
Mail (will stay hidden) (needed)
That’s the best I can try.
“Anglish attempts to graft pseudo-Anglo-Saxon words onto the structure of Modern English. This is why it is a parlor game, not much different from speaking Klingon at a costume party. If I am wrong, if there is a credible source or website to prove me so, I would be glad to hear of it.”:
Let’s cut the crap, I’m well aware that the grammar of the english language was highly simplified with the doing away of inflection and such. But that’s not what I was referring to, I think that’s pretty obvious. Grammar change is one thing, wordstock change is another. Take italian for example– it lost the bulk of its inflection, but it kept its words, and didn’t take on many foreing ones. Just because grammar changes, that doesn’t mean we should say, “oh, grammar changed, to hell with it then, let’s change the words, too.”
Anglish words that are “ressurections” of lost OE words are the products of an attempt to show what these words would be like, had they overlived. There’s nothing illogical about it– if these words had made it through the centuries, they would look something like these updated-into-modern english forms. The way these words are updated is by applying to them the phonological changes that english went through. It’s not that hard. If you want an example of a germanic language that underwent huge grammatical change but kept most of its vocab, then take swedish, heck look at Norwegian, it lost virtually all of its inflection, but not its wordstock.
“Let’s cut the crap”
Wonderful. I have been insulted in Old French by an advocate for Anglish. Let me think: what would be the Anglish word for “irony?”
“oh, grammar changed, to hell with it then, let’s change the words, too.”
What does that mean? It bears no relation to any argument I have made. I have tried to explain the development of English into its modern form. I have argued that the mere substitution of mock-Anglo-Saxon neologisms for established English words does not result in ““ressurections” [sic] of lost OE words,” as you assert, but in awkward replacements for well-understood English words, and in words which lack the nuance of their English forebears.
I have tried to stick to historical facts. Insofar as I have expressed an opinion it is this: adherents of “Anglish” debase history, picking and choosing where it is convenient, ignoring or inventing it where it is not. Let me reiterate: at the core of Anglish is an interesting academic exercise which seeks the Anglo-Saxon roots of Modern English. But closer examination reveals it to be, in practice, a simple word game.
“What does that mean? It bears no relation to any argument I have made. “:
Sure it does– I pointed to most OE words being unrecognizable by modern englsish speakers. You then said this was because of inflection being lost (this is simply not true, inflectin and wods themselves are two different things), which seems to suggest that you are of the opinion that because grammar erodes, loss of words themselves is made acceptable, hence my ironic statement ““oh, grammar changed, to hell with it then, let’s change the words, too.”
“adherents of “Anglish” debase history, picking and choosing where it is convenient, ignoring or inventing it where it is not”:
well I don’t see how this is the case. How is it that forseeking (oops, sorry, attempting), to relifen (sorry, I meant ressurect) OE words, and shaping new ones from already is-some (forgive me, existing) english roots beneathens (debases) english yorelore (damn, should’ve said history)? I just don’t see the connection (there’s a nice french word for you). Please don’t heen (humiliate, from OE hienan) yourself by pointing to the latin ‘re’ in relifen, as being foreing– remember, most anglishers are not bent on fullthrough and utter cleansing of english from foreigness.
Look man we anglishers just love the core of english, a core we feel is germanic, (I’m of italian forekinship (ancestory), so this has nothing to do with race– language provides identity beyond race). We’re fore sure not all scholars, and our think-ups of new english words might not be perfect, but we’re not saying they are, and I don’t think you would think that being imperfect is the same thing as beneathening, or showing disrespect for english. Let me tell you a lot english words of latin outspring come from the past participle of the latin verb. This makes the past tense of these english verbs pretty illogical (eg. the verb expose, from the pp. of the latin exponere. So exposed is sort of like exposed-ed, when you think about), and yet we use these verbs daily without complaint, even though they’re illogical and thus arguably imperfect.
Re: “Just because grammar changes, that doesn’t mean we should say, “oh, grammar changed, to hell with it then, let’s change the words, too.”
Come on, now. French and Latin didn’t make its way into English because anyone said “Hey, look at this. Our grammar is evolving. I’ve got a great idea! Let’s make up a bunch of new words and change two thirds of our language. Let’s do it right now. That sounds like fun. Let’s form a club or something.” Nothing even remotely like that ever happened in English history. Not ever (what’s more, you already knew that). Oh, wait. Yes it has. That’s exactly what Anglish is, isn’t it?
I know, why don’t we just make Esperanto the new world language?
“Nothing even remotely like that ever happened in English history. Not ever (what’s more, you already knew that)”– that’s not at all what I was suggesting, clearly.
That was a sarcastic remark aimed at what I thought Douglas’ opinion was suggesting- it had nothing to do with english history.
Jm:
You wrote:
“. . . I pointed to most OE words being unrecognizable by modern englsish speakers. You then said this was because of inflection being lost (this is simply not true, inflectin and wods themselves are two different things), which seems to suggest that you are of the opinion that because grammar erodes, loss of words themselves is made acceptable, hence my ironic statement ““oh, grammar changed, to hell with it then, let’s change the words, too.”
Let me reiterate:
“Words change. Spellings change. The structure of the language has changed from Old English to now. Old English used inflectional endings to signal grammatical structure. Modern English uses word order instead of inflection.”
This does not imply that the loss of words is acceptable, or, for that matter, unacceptable. It addresses your complaint that most OE words are unrecognizable to modern English speakers. Of course they are. They have evolved. Modern english has jettisoned gender, eschewed inflection (by and large) and adopted the Roman alphabet. Add to this the Great Vowel Shift and Old English appears foreign to modern English speakers.
You wrote:
“. . . we anglishers just love the core of english, a core we feel is germanic, (I’m of italian forekinship (ancestory), so this has nothing to do with race– language provides identity beyond race).”
I have said nothing about race. Why do you bring it up?
If you love the core of English—and I don’t doubt that you do—then study its history. Thomas Jefferson advocated the study of Anglo Saxon as a means of understanding Modern English. But first he actually studied it. With all due respect, your comments show a lack of knowledge of history. I cannot claim to be an expert on the history of English, but I have ventured beyond Wikipedia.
As for Anglish, well, you have my opinion on that. If you wish to change anyone’s opinion of it, including mine, you will need to do better than peppering your argument with Anglish neologisms. This is merely annoying.
Right well, there’s ignoring everything I’ve said.
You seem to missing my arguments man, and then pointing to history, without going beyond that. And by the way, againstwise (contrary) to your foretruthing (assumption), I have studied Anglo-Saxon. Sorry for the anglish.
Well, for those of you who, unlike Douglas, don’t find it sinful to further the saxon side of english, may I point you to anglish.wikia.com/ (the articles written are in no way intended to be comprehensive, or reliable sources of information, the whole point of them is to provide some sort of anglish reading material). Explore the site, especially the wordbooks, where anglish word proposals are made; and add to them if you feel you have some good ideas. Also, check out ednewenglish.tripod.com– this site deals only with bringing back some of OE into modern english, and doesn’t deal with the creation of words from english roots.
As well, if any of you are bloggers or novelists, and again underhold (support) the movement, try using some of these anglish words–exposing the public to these words is really the only way make these words will catch on.
Interesting. I just found out about this concept today through random wiki-ing and happen upon a fresh thread. I heartily approve. Though I’m studying Latin now, and love the language, there is a certain robustness lacking that one finds present in Germanic vocabulary.
I agree with Jm on one point, at least: if you want to learn more about Anglish, go to anglish.wikia.com, also known as “The Anglish Moot.” I mentioned this site in an earlier posting.
Study this site with an open but discerning mind, and with a ear to actual history. If one plows through its drifts of Anglish neologisms a slippery revisionist history is laid bare. While there may be bare patches of truth, the puddles of half-truth are heavily salted, and slippery areas of historical inconvenience are often ignored. So watch your footing.
For a more learned and nuanced history of English, I recommend “The Stories of English,” by David Crystal.
Hi Talking to an civil engineer at the bus stop, he used the word potable instead of drinkable….reason of course all the textbooks at uni use it. Be nice if potable meant able to be potted.
Secondly I looked up decide on the anglish moot and they suggest choose instead, although I would guess it is norman french in origin. But what else? “fall upon”?
My view is it is not feasible to go back. However it would be nice to avoid Latinisms where feasible. As a practical matter I think short words of french origin don’t sound too bad eg point, choose, change. It’s the long words from latin like agglutination which still sound foreign to me. However it’s an uphill task… changing from system to framework would take a lot of pushing.
Lastly, I am so used to Latinisms, it’s difficult to think without them. Every time I need to check for foreschlage (suggestions) … oh I give up
accept it!!
the english is now a romance language, like the french or spanish languages.
every day there are less germanic words in the language.
Yes English has for sure been overrun with romance loan words. My only grouch is that latin-borrowings to me seem to have no flavor, color, or feeling. For example, “agglutination” means very little to me, but “heaping together” or “together-heaping” brings up a graphic action image. How much more colorful!
Also, latinisms are sometimes have snob value, stemming from the use of French/Latin in business and at uni. EG purchase instead of buy.
The real problem is for many common romance words there is no obvious English substitute, and the meaning would have to be clear from the outset : eg “forelay” might be nice word for suggestion but it doesn’t exist yet, though “input” might do.
However the whole notion founders for want of some means of putting it into practice.
For those only now noticing it, I point out that loan-words have been part of English since its beginnings: Google “Old Norse.”
If Latin-borrowings “have no flavor, color, or feeling” for you, perhaps the problem is not with the words but with your understanding of English, and of its history. (By the way, “agglutination” is a noun. Gerunds like “heaping together” and “together-heaping” are verbs.)
Personally, I find agglutination a colorful word, full of flavor and feeling. Not a word I’d toss on the together-heap of history. (Whatever that means.)
English will never be purged of Latinity. Words like “agglutinate” (and “lamp” and “butter” [both ultimately Greek, actually!] and “story” and “passion”) are part of the language, here to stay. We would be so much poorer without these wonderful words.
Still, “Anglish” is healthy and useful as a tendency and a touchstone. English poets have found it particularly useful. Gerard Manley Hopkins was interested in this movement back in the 19th cen., and the results for his poetry were spectacular. Seamus Heaney specializes in unearthing the Saxon roots of Ulster words he grew up with. JRR Tolkien was nostalgic for a pre-1066 English, and his prose is always mindfull of the strata of English. He was able to revive certain nifty words like “mathom”, for which I at least am grateful.
amen to GMH
although hope of purging English has indeed grown gray hairs
anglish is a font – based on accurate angles
http://www.goldenmean.info/dnaring
Methinks many have not read the entirety of the thoughts behind Anglish. I do not think that it was intended to be nit-picky about replacing or purging all non-Anglo-Saxon from English. I believe the original intent was to use the Anglo-Saxon choice where it was practicable. Some words have anglo-saxon alternates and others do not.
I do not see “April showers bring May flowers” being replaced with “Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour”…somewhat wordy, puffed up and awkward by modern standards …then again, politicians might like it.
Mind you, when listening to international football matches it seems the England fans are already yelling “Engelond” out loud..
more on agglutination….which has been bugging me.
1) respell it as: agluetination… suggesting glue
2) the “cling-on effect” (courtesy of Startrek)
3) it is the “beaver-dam” of human history which creates the pond we live in today!
etc