“Anglish”

Fetching words:

fet (also means to fetch) ... piece
Webster's 1913: Fet \Fet\, n. [Cf. feat, F. fait, and It. fett? slice, G. fetzen
rag, Icel. fat garment.]
A piece. [Obs.] --Dryton.

sprack - activ, lively, alert ... put forth by Barnes for note insted of "active". (From Old Norse sprækr 'lively', from Proto-Indo-European *sp(h)er(e)g- 'to strew, sprinkle')

@Ængelfolc ... boon also means a favor or request as well as something is helpful or beneficial (OED).

I think I'v said this before. For aft-1066 latinates:
1. Is the word short? One or two syllable word fit right in with the way of English.
2. How far has it come from the true Latin meaning? There are many words ... like 'pay' from Latin 'pac' or pax' for peace that no Roman would acknow.
2. Is it found thruout the Teutonic tungs ... family.
3. Is there another short Anglo word that was bestedded?
4. Who struck the word? Electricity was struck by an Englishman! I wish that he had chose the Anglo word for amber insted of the Greek word but nonetheless, this is an "English" word as it was made by an Englishman who took a Greek word and then Latin'd it. That doesn't mean that I won't pick another Anglo word if it is better but I'm not as hard on scientific upsprings as I am on inkhorn words that were struck willy nilly.

In the Ancrene Wisse (c1200), we find many latinates that are gloss'd with Anglo words as the priest writes out the 'wissen" (guides, rules ... wisse (n.) guide, advisor, rule) for the ancorites! For byspel, the writer glosses 'temptation' with 'fondunge' (OE fandung).

"Borrowings from about years 100-1066 (a small few after 1066) are mostly good with me."

After thinking it over a little more, borrowings that came in up through 1250-1300 are mostly alright with me. After 1300 though - yikes! Only a small few....borrowings were wantonly and thoughtlessly brought in beginning about then.

@AnWulf "Why is that so many times, huru those Teutonic words that come thru French, the forefast a- or in- is always given as Latin?"

You know why. Egg-headed word-lorists would rather think that the forefast is Latin; they might be heedlessly scorning the Teutonic sway. Why would the "upper-crust" take from the "lower-crust", right? ;-) The sheer thought of it - all to dreadfully awful!

Unless it can be shown to come from Latin/French first, the best answer is to say that the Latin and the Frankish meshed together or bore on each other. If one was speaking Frankish, they might think it was Germanic. If one was a Latin-French speaker, they might think it was Latin. With "array," this match up seems to already have been in Germanic, which Latin borrowed and gave to the French. It so happened that Latin had a(d)-, which meant the same as Germanic ā-, hence the addling.

Array < ME arrayen < Anglo-French arayer < O.Fr are(y)er < V.L. *ar-redare < Frankish ā "to, toward"+ *reida "readiness, group"< UrGmc.*uz- "to, toward" + UrGmc.*raidaz/-iz, “ready” (see OE ārǣdan "to make ready" [ā- + ræde])

@jayles:

1) "while that's all right between you and me it won't wash in the real world." > Warum?

2) " "boon" is from O Fr niet wahr?" > Nein. Old Norse. Ich schrieb den Ursprung des Wortes neben dem Wort.

++ E. BOON (n.) < ME boon/ bon(e)/ben(e) < Old Norse bόn "prayer, bid for help" (akin to OE bēn "prayer, bid for help"; see also Gmc. ban(nan) "to summon") < UrGmc. *boniz "prayer, bid/ask for help"

You are thinking of boon (adj.) "good" < O.Fr bon "good" (as in bon apétit) The meaning of the word "liabilities," it seems to me, is taken more broadly. There is a word for each of the things you wrote. Take "a foresight (provision) for a lessening in worth." That's a writedown (as you wrote) or a markdown. Each setting you talk about above is an "owing" or a lessening in worth of something. All of your byspells give up worth at sundered times, but they give up worth nonetheless.

4) "I'm afraid not all debits are outlays" > How so? All "debits" mean money owed to someone or some business, right? How can any holding of worth ("asset") be a 'debit'?

Why is that so many times, huru those Teutonic words that come thru French, the forefast a- or in- is always given as Latin? In OE, these were both Teutonic forefasts ... Why not in Frankish as well?

For byspel ... array from the Oxford Online: Old French arei (noun), areer (verb), based on Latin ad- ‘toward’ + a Germanic base meaning ‘prepare’.

Why is this not Frankish a-? Liken English ashore a- (to, towards) + shore.

a- 2 |eɪ-|
prefix
to; toward: aside | ashore.
• in a specified state or manner: asleep | aloud.
• in the process of (an activity): a-hunting.
• on: afoot.
• in: nowadays.
ORIGIN Old English, unstressed form of on.

@Ængelfolc Good. I was indeed a Kostbuchhalter for several years myself in my early life. I'm afraid not all debits are outlays; they may be assets or debts owing to the firm.
I found "Soll und Haben" quite hard to instead; "leftside and rightside" seem as good as any, but while that's all right between you and me it won't wash in the real world. "Holdings" is the best word for assets, though it may easily be muddled with a holding company. "boon" is from O Fr niet wahr? "Thing" marks a "chose in possesion", but assets also inholds "choses in action" - that is paper assets like debentures. The other thing is liabilities aren't always owing - they may be but a foresight (provision) for a lessening in worth, a writedown, or (as in the insurance world) a reckoning of what might need to be paid out in the to-come. That's how I got to 'beholdens' to benote an obligation or some sort.
Mightily beholden unto you

Oddly enough....

Germanic folks said PGmc.*wreitan (Funnily whence G. reißen) to talk about Germanic writing (namely scratching out runes) and PGmc.*skrīban(an) [< L. scrībere) to talk about the Roman way of writing - "to dig or make marks with a stick (aka L. stylus).

Another good old word from about that same time is E. seine (drag-net) < OE segne < West Germanic *sagina < L. sagēna < Grk. sagḗnē "fishing net."

Chapman is another < OE cēapman (OE cēap "buying"; see E. cheap) < West Germanic *kaup- < PGmc. *kaupoz- < likely borrowed from L. caupō "inn-/shopkeeper, tradesman; akin to Dutch koopman, German Kaufmann

What's more, we have E. Kaiser < Austro-Bavarian Kaiser < MHG/OHG Keiser (OE-W.Sax. Cāsere, ON Keisari) < L. Cæsar. This word is said to be the oldest, and maybe the first, borrowing from Latin.

To name a few... ;-) Those seem to be good and right borrowings to me.Borrowings from about years 100-1066 (a small few after 1066) are mostly good with me. These words gave new things, thoughts and understandings, not know to Germanic folks at the time, names. As I said before, the loans/borrowings, at that time, were taken in rather willingly and freely.

@jayles "collocations"

Yes, I get that. I only meant that the word itself is ink-horn, and not needed. I acknowledge that this is a great learning tool.

@jayles:

1) Indeed you are right. I am with you here. There are good words for 'asset' and 'item' in English, too, in almost all settings. In today's English, an 'asset' (< L. meaning "having enough to redeem money owed") is "anything that has worth" nowadays. How about E. boon (< ON bόn)? An 'item' (L. adv. meaning "also, moreover, likewise; n. the same") is now mainly said to mean any "thing." So, why not say "thing?"

2) Here again, overall, I am with you. There is no need, or want, to throw out all of the Anglo-Norman-French, if they fill a need or gap in the English wordstock. The thing is most of them did not. A 'debit' (< L. dēbitum "something owed") is an 'outlay' or an 'owing' in English. A bookkeeper (accountant) would book the outlay on the left-hand side of the ledger(-book). Credit (< L. crēditum) can be written in English with "loan," "trustworthiness," "to esteem," among others. A bookkeeper would book this income on the right-hand side of the ledger(-book).

3) Liabilities (Financial) = Monies (or Moneys) owed; Liable = law-bound; lay oneself open to. Good English words that might well stand in >> owing(s) or money/business burden(s)?

Which brings us to the following:
1) There are words like "asset" and "item" which though having roots in Latin/French, have not just been borrowed straighforwardly; are more akin to new mintage. We cannot baldly root out all latinate words willy-nilly; and not allow that English had no growth of itself from 1066 onwards. If these are truely needed borrowings then they are no better or worse than other borrowings like "potato", "tomato", "bazaar" and so on.
2) If English borrowed 600 or so words from Latin before 1066 (like shrive, offer and so on), then why must we toss out all and every Latinate borrowing after 1066? Forsooth, we should allow everyday borrowings at the same rate after 1066, not those unwillingly stamped upon English by the overlords or academics, but those which filled a gap, where there is no straightforward ME word of the same meaning, or where the ME word has now died utterly. For instance "debit" and "credit".
3) This still leaves words like "liabilities" (in the bookkeeping meaning), which are more technical in meaning and hard to instead. ("Beholdens" ??)

@AnWulf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambton_Worm

Chorus
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, (=Be quiet, boys, shut your mouths)
An' aa'll tell ye aall an aaful story, (=I'll tell you all an awful)
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs,
An' Aa'll tel ye 'boot the worm.

I heard this sung off the cuff by the Newcastle lads in about 1960.
Hardly understood a word......

@Ængelfolc: Collocations (or "set wordstrings") are noteworthy when learning or teaching English: one needs to know the wonted string before straying therefrom. (Likewise in German, one needs to know "eine Entsscheidung" + "treffen" [rather than +machen] before going further). Awareness of set wordstrings is just a teaching tool. Nothing to stop you stepping outside the box though, if you know what you are doing.

I liked the "wan" words.

“Hope had grown grey hairs,
Hope had mourning on,
Trenched with tears, carved with cares,
Hope was twelve hours gone.”
(GMHopkins)
Teacher's mark: Quite well done but should have "stounds" instead of hours
Must try harder ! B-

I hav a long list of "obsolete" words that I'm working thru, like:

Whist, adj. - silent.

When all were whist, king Edward thus bespoke.
Hail Windsore where I some times tooke delight
To hawke and hunt, and backe the proudest horse.
- Peeles Honor of the Garter, 1593.

Keepe the whisht, and thou shalt heare it the sooner.
_Terence in English, 1641.

Wishness, adj. - melancholy
Witeword - a covenant
Withnay - to deny ; to resist

Seemingly Forgotten English Words

Dree /drē/, Dreich /driːx/, Dreigh/Dreegh - "to go through something burdensome or hurtful"; "to endure, suffer, put up with, undergo"; "long, extended, great”; "wearisome; tiresome, bleak, dreary"; "to be able to do, go on"

@jayles, @Anwulf > "There is a seld-seen noting of shill (or shil) … OE scylian (= ie) only in sc. of mâle - to pay off, discharge, Chronicles 1049. ['shill'] … She shilled the bill."

Eádwerd cing scylode ix scypa of mále and hí fóron mid scypon mid eallon anweg. [King Edward put nine ships out of commission, and they went away ships and all, Chr. 1049; Erl. 174, 38.]

scilian (it seems rarely scylian) < see ON skilja "to understand; to split; to set asunder" < PGmc *skilōnan, *skiljanan; see also OE *scile and ON skil "otherness, insight, understanding"

That said what about --> "She shelled out for lunch." [ 'to shell out' is a working-byword (verbal phrase)]

Good by me!

What I meant to write was >>>>

It is so silly to speak and write fremd words in English, when English has altogether great words found in its first true wordstock.

I laugh every time someone starts talking about "collocations" in English; these folks somehow boldly hint that these things are fastly fixed. They are downright aghast! Indeed they seem threatened.

Why can't these "collocations" shift or switch back to being made up of Ænglish words? Is there an abiding, ironclad law standing in the way? Nope.

In my mind, the word "collocation" itself can be done away with. It is so silly to speak and write words that have altogether great words found in its first true wordstock.

Let's look at the root of "collocation", and what its bits mean:

collocation < L. collocātiōnem < collocāre < collocō [< co(m)- "together, with" + locō "put, set"]

Meaning > "a grouping together of things in a certain order, as of the words in a sentence"

The word is rather new brooked this way in the learning of tongues.

So, collocation, in true English, means "words set together in a fixed rank, row, or group."

Indeed there is a way to say this with English words, right? Anyone have thoughts about this?

""uppityness " : to me "uppity" suggests someone is unbiddable, wayward, or unwilling to take overlordship. I see the meaning "snobby" in the wordbook but I've never heard it."

'Uppity' meaning 'snobby' is said often in the States about folks that are "pretentious" and "arrogant."

Oops....

Fr. -ir < L. -īre "action-word ending"

Fr. -ment < L. -mentum (< L. -menta) "an outcome of the verb being done"

E. wan is also akin to E. wane, G. Wahn (see Wahnsinn) and wenig. The forefasts in Icelandic, Swedish, and Danish are also the same as in English.

E. wanhope is the same as the Dutch wanhoop "despair."

E. wantrust = Dutch wantroost "distrust."

E. wanweird -> "misfortune."

E. wanton -> 'undisciplined," "unruly," "reckless," "unrestrained," among other manifold meanings.

A wonderful forefast to bring back along side 'un-.'

"Wan is a fore-fast as in wanhope."

Yes, it can be, too.

@Skeeter, I don't English follows the Latin sentence framework. Truthfully, Latin is more like Yoda-speak in that the verb is often at the end. For byspel, Agricola filiam amat ... Farmer daughter loves.

As for "logic" and "clarity" ... well fairness is in the eye of the beholder. More than once I'v been baffle'd by a Latin phrase meant and wonder'd how the English oversetting came from those words. Let's look at "Agricola filiam amat." Many would set that as "The farmer loves his daughter." ... But it could mean, "A farmer loves the daughter." (Someone else's daughter.)

Now think how good it would be if Old English were taught in school at such a young eld!

I don't think there has been a time since Lucky Bill took over England that, overall, English writers hav shunn'd Latinates. A few hav, but they were the smaller groop. I read lots of stuff from ME onward and there is no lack of latinates! While many inkhorn words fell by the wayside, many didn't and sometimes the lesser known ones still pop up ... like succor. What an ugly little word! lol

British authors in the past eschewed latinate words on the grounds that they were generally too fancy but they used latinate sentence structure. Latin was taught in schools from the age of about seven (that's when I began) and the logic and clarity of Latin sentence organization was widely accepted.

@Ængelfolc ... "Simpler" was the bookwright's words. I quoted his text. The words after the *** are mine tho.

Wan is a fore-fast as in wanhope. Here's a list: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_words_prefixed_with_wan-

I may be wrong but I only saw six words (out of a 100) on this list that are anglo-teutonic. Most of the rest are Latin/Greek rooted: http://blog.writeathome.com/index.php/2012/11/100-words-every-high-school-graduate-should-know ... nonetheless. I did well on it but that's only for that I know too many Latinates!

Englished PAY < OF paier < Med.L. pācāre "to settle" [w4w "to make peace"] came into English sometime in the 1200's. It sadly bereaved ME yelden, yielden “to pay” [ Today's E./Scot. 'yield'].

The French-speaking Normans had their sway from about 1066-1204 (Waning of the English). So, over time, 'pay' was shared by both the English and the Normans. It won out since the Normans ruled, and had great bearing on money and business at that time.

"activate, actuate - 'Begin' or 'start' say the same thing in simpler words."

I wouldn't say 'simpler' words, rather better understood because they are Germanic-English rooted words.

Seemingly Forgotten English Words

Wan < "dark or gloomy, dim"; "lacking hue/color"; "showing ill health, sickly looking"; "lacking in forcefulness, competence, or effectiveness, weak"; "lacking liveliness, boring"; v. "to become or make wan" [< ME/OE ƿann "dark, dusky, gloomy"; akin to Old Frisian wann, wonn “dark”]

(adjective) wan·ner, wan·nest, (verb) wanned, wans, wan·ning, wanly (adverb), wanness (noun)

"A wan saying..."

"She looked wan and worried..."

"A wan look"

"His job was a wan undertaking"

"deadly deathly mortal lethal fatal - is this "enrichment" or just overkill?"

You've put your finger on something here. Indeed, I wale for overkill. :-)

enrichment < ME enrichen < AN/OF enrichir > "en-" (< Latin in- and Frankish *an-) + riche (< Frankish *rīki) + ment (L. -īre)

Lethal? Why not E. baneful (OE bana "slayer"; akin to ON bani "death, murderer")?

Fatal/Mortal? E. death-dealing, E. life-ending, among others.

Good one, Meadgetter!!

"Dictionary of Worthless Words: 3,000 Words to Stop Using Now"

Right on, AnWulf! This book should be read and taught from in the hallowed halls of learning. By the way, great byspells!

@ Anwulf thanks for your help

@jayles … LOL … I like that … "She yielded for lunch."

I would say, "She bought lunch."
Or, drop the 'for' … "She yielded lunch."

Settled the bill. … We might think that she 'quelled the bill', thus … she 'quelled for lunch'. Sounds rather harsh. She soothed for lunch? Still doesn't ring right.

Maybe 'alay' in the meaning of set aside, put to rest, settle. … She alaid the bill. Swithe much like 'paid' even tho it's two syllables (rather than one for paid) … it's more of a syllable and a half. She alaid for lunch? … Still sounds out … however, "She 'laid out' for lunch" fits right in. … OED: 3 informal he had to lay out $70. See pay (sense 2 of the verb).

There is a seld-seen noting of shill (or shil) … OE scylian (= ie) only in sc. of mâle - to pay off, discharge, Chronicles 1049. ['shill'] … She shilled the bill.

There is also 'agive' … to giv, impart, deliver, giv up, yield, relinquish; restore, return, repay, pay. … She agave lunch.

Made good … She made good the bill; made good for lunch?

Pay is one of those words with a twisted background … it means to "pacify, appease". So if she pays for lunch then she has 'pacified or appeased' the seller. We all take it that she did so with gelt and not her body.

@Gallitrot yes betell is stil in the wordbook but unlike German it never meant to pay in English it seems. "Tell" still has the meaning of "count", as in "tally" but not "pay". "Yield" still has the meaning "pay" in the wordbook and works for me in "She yielded me $100" but not in "She yielded for lunch". (Sounds like I paid for lunch and she yielded!)
When talking of gelt "Yield" is mosly used to mean "produce a return" on an stakeholding, so the is room for much muddling. "be-yield" ???

Regarding an insteader for 'pay' , don't we have some link words to 'tally' or 'teller', like bank teller, or till? I mean surely: betell / betally/ betale/ betill/ till/ bedeal all hold some likelihood?

@Anwulf "payroll is good and short but one could note 'wagelist'"
In truth "wagelist" is mostly good but does not sit well in the wordstring "payroll software", where 'payroll' inholds all the reckoning and scot-unfree withholdings, that is a software-linked meaning. (see wiktionary.org for the othersome meanings). It's a shame that 'scot-free' still lives on but 'scot' has died ... it would be muddled with Scot. As for pay itself, 'he yielded the bill' ?? Sounds as if he handed over the bill rather than the gelt. But there seems little else ... ME schotten died too.

To followup on Ængelfolc's inkhorn of the day ...

crepuscular – resembling or relating to twilight … So why not note twilight or twilit?

Some quotes from "Dictionary of Worthless Words: 3,000 Words to Stop Using Now"

acquiesce - Showy word for accept, agree, comply, or consent ***[one could also say: allow, giv the nod to; giv in to, bow to, yield to, submit to; go along with]

activate, actuate - 'Begin' or 'start' say the same thing in simpler words.

advise us as to - The phrase 'let us know' is less formal.

affinity - Stuffy word for 'likeness'.

analogous - Large word. Try the simpler words 'like' or 'similar'.

apprehension - Bulky noun for 'fear' or 'worry'.

approximately - Big word. The smaller words 'about', 'around', 'nearly', or 'roughly' mean the same.

A forgotten workhorse from OE and ME ... bego (be+go) ... seen mainly nowadays in 'begone'.

to bego:
go over, traverse; get to, come by, fall into
to go to, visit, care for, cultivate, affect
to occupy, inhabit, dwell, surround, besiege, overrun
to practise, do, engage in, perform, commit, exercise, attend to, be diligent about, honor, serve, worship, profess; pledge, devote, train oneself

As an adj begone … cultivated, tilled, adorn'd

forebego (OE forebegān) — to intercept
misbego — to disfigure, mar; waste; cultivate badly
unbegone — uncultivated, untilled, unadorned

---@AnWulf - "It's hard for folks who hav spent years learning the latinates (as well as stupid spellings) to let them go." - Not only pretentious but condescending and insulting to British spelling. ---

I said nothing of nationalities ... Americans do seem to be more open to more fonetic spellings but there are too many stuck on stupid there as well. Both GB and Australia hav livelier spelling groops. Many, not all, of our odd and non-fonetic spellings are from French ... that inholds the -our, -ise (rather than -ize), ou for u (as in through ... OE þurh), the parasitic 'e' like in have, give, o for u as in monk (OE munuc), love (OE lufu), above (OE abufan) ... f = v in OE but French back then spelling didn't let u before v, n, m ... and others.

@jayles ... payroll is good and short but one could note 'wagelist' (list being both OE and there is a Germanic root for the French liste as well).

deadly deathly mortal lethal fatal - is this "enrichment" or just overkill?
What new meaning-shades do mortal/letal/fatal bring in?

folytatodik: it's all cultural you see - de gustibus non est disputandum, multo in parvo, paulatim ergo certe, gloria in excelsis, kyrie eleison - it's all greek to me.... who needs Saxon?

@Ængelfolc Whilst teaching in Central Europe, I sometimes pointed out that there is an alternative to head-on rebuttal; alternatively one can stand alongside the other person, acknowledge the world as they see it, and only then begin to show them the way to one's own little world. The latter often works better with some English people.

@WW oh dear! I did not wish to nettle you. Many of the points you make are quite valid.
It seems to me sometimes that what we have here is more of an anti-establishment or anti-academic protest or outlet than a nationalistic feeling.
I am not anti-Latin - indeed I wrote an email in Latin a few months ago - it's just not very useful unless one is a priest, medic, or botanist. Nor am I a great fan of German - it's just very Teutonic! My real interest lies more in Russian and Hungarian (despite the Jobbik). However delving into the roots of English has made me more aware when teaching: for instance, "when push comes to shove" - push from French and shove like schieben in German.
Na zdrowie!

"Take the word "dictionary", a word all you Anglish fans studiously avoid and probably think of as being somehow "foreign". It has in fact been in use in English since about 1520, rather longer than "wordbook"(1590s), and also rather longer than Europeans have permanently been in North America."

Isn't this a "judgement" of a word founded on how it came into English long ago? Why is it okay for "foreign" words that came into English after its founding okay, but new English words - made out of "native" (here Germanic) words/wordbits - not okay if they come into the tongue later than the borrowed word? More HUMBUG anyone?

"DICTIONARY" > is a fremd word from Latin. It means "book of word meanings." Odd how true English words have to be brooked to tell what the fremd word means, right?

"And I have to say that the use of words like "othersome" simply sound twee to me."

Talk about boorishly "pretentious" hued with a bit of British wit and drollery! Anyone else one call HUMBUG here?! LOL

"continuous" < L. continuus "uninterrupted" (< L. interruptus "unbroken") - is an unneeded ink-horn. There are many, many ways to say "unbroken length of time" in English.

"Meanwhile I'm going back to real English, as it seems a rational conversation is impossible here - I tried but all I get is preached at by the faithful. I respect your knowledge in Old English, but not your disdain for the natural language and vocabulary spoken by the vast majority of English speakers."

What is the "real English" of which you speak? Globalish (World English)? That can be barely seen as English. Academia is guilty of watering-down English for the swarms of folks in the World that do not know any better. Your whole, "everyone else is doing it, so it's right" whitewash is utter balderdash.

Here, we moot openly about a great many things having to to with English. All are welcome, but don't think that hearts and minds can be so easily swayed with a few lofty words and mainstream beliefs and ways of thinking.

To put forth that all here are "irrational," is wholly ill-willed, benighted and unwelcome.

Today's English did not take shape as "naturally" as you seem to think. That is one of the things that it seems those here are keenly aware of.

@AnWulf: "The latinates are a shibboleth. A way of saying, "Hey, look at me, I know these 'pretentious' words!""

Hear, Hear!

What would be the outcome of Englishing writings of law?

MORTGAGE word for word means "Death Wage." So, buy a house and work to pay it off until you die!

[E. Wage, Gage

Haughty Ink-Horn of the Day

CONTUMACIOUS (yuck!) - Instead say, in good English, headstrong, pigheaded, stubborn, unyielding, willful, untoward, froward, balky, among others.

"...insulting to British spelling."

The truth hurts. One of the biggest gripes folks learning English have is that the way words are spelled. It is downright awful.

Who or what is to blame? I think everyone here knows.

My bad! "Academia" might not say 'racist', since the word race is likely from a low-brow Germanic tongue called Lombardic (see raiza, OHG reiza, ON rīta "line" -> It. razza)

So, instead maybe "intolerant" and "prejudiced." "Instantly", an "abundance" of "contemptuous, imperious," and "just supercilious sentiment necessarily levied" against those "dispassionate" of the "foreign language influences" and the "vanquishment, subjugation, appropriation," and "annexing" of the English "language, n'est-ce pas?"

[all fremd words in ""]

Too cheeky? ;-)

"...using words like "fremd", ... ,or "othersome" instead of different (jayles) is indeed just as pretentious as using words like "enhancement", if nor more so."

Here we seem to have rotten, sour grapes. I cannot understand how using a first-hand word (albeit old, not trendy or broadly in everyday speech) could be thought of as haughty(*) put-on.

So, the French, Welsh, Irish, Hawaiians, Israelis, and Icelanders, among others, are all to be thought of as - how does one say it in the tongue of the learned high and mighty - "preposterous, pretentious, racist, nationalistic, xenophobes" because they are working hard to bring their tongues back without too many loans or borrowings?

By the way, 'haughty' is a great showing of the true 'richness' that comes from free and easy fremd inflow. This Germanic/ Latin-French word is a free blending of Frankish *hauh, hōh (OE hēah, G Hoch, Du. hoog asf.) “high, lofty, proud” and Latin altus “high, deep” which gave Old French hau(l)t “high, lofty." [*hau(l)t(us)]

Frk. *hauh + L. altus -> O.Fr hau(lt) -> E. *hauteinness(e) [haughtiness] -> ME hautein, hautain -> haughty (spelling shaped by the word 'naughty' owing to the way they both are said)

Two folkways coming together lead by the mingling of folks in everyday life, not by overbearing "royal, governmental, militaristic, academic, religious" might. Words like this are what I think of, when I think of words growing/building the 'richness' of any tongue.

Again, ink-horns are not needed and words that were bereaved from the tongue should be brought back and spoken anew.

Yes, I am aware of the background of the words 'school' and 'proper.' The thing missed here is that teutonic English words make the meaning easily understood by all. Think about this: What if all lawful writings were written in mostly English words instead of Latin-French words? What would the outcome of that be?

I don't believe anyone working this site now is for "English purism", and indeed no one seems to be, as you in a way put forth, a Jingoist. Our "little band," as you so scornfully wrote of us like-minded folks here, is about many things, and one of them is finding lost old English words and bringing the to the fore for new life. I think most, if not all, of us do not think ourselves as "Anglishers." Far from it.

Indeed there is room for these old words as many of the fremd* words are ink-horn and overmuch. So much so, that if one truly takes a good look at these words from about (which are mostly 'made up'), one would see how daft and droll it is to keep them, as well as to put forth that they make English 'richer." How does a tongue become richer when its first-hand words are swapped for outlandish ones? Doesn't seem thoughtful at all.

* FREMD is still said by the Scots and likely a few others, and is in every foremost wordbook; so it is a living English word and makes me no never mind that it is not said by throngs of English-speakers. 'Academia' as a whole is manifestly blameworthy for this.

That said I could have written:

Children need good learning-houses (< OE lārhūs) if they are to learn right.

-OR-

Children need good learning-halls (or halls of learning) if they are to learn right.

Lārhūs is the first word for 'school' in English. It seems 'school' in English came to mean "house of learning" sometime about the year 1300.

"True English" here, as I wrote above, means "Germanic English words;" not borrowed; not fremd. After all, English is, first and foremost, a Germanic tongue.

Sorry jayles, I'm not playing any more. I'm not a Saxon nationalist, so the whole premise of your argument completely passes me by. It seems that the Anglish supporters will brook no discussion except on their terms, and brand anyone who disagrees with them a Latin-lover or arse-licker, and think that telling people not to get their knickers in a twist somehow constitutes an argument. I've had enough.

@WW When I teach academic IELTS and the two thousand must-have "academic" words, I wonder why we have and use them when for quite a few there are fairly straightforward Saxon words of the same-ish meaning. This is the nub of it.
Of course if one wishes to knowingly step outside the hidebound word-stock then and plough a new furrow so to speak, it does not of itself betoken disdain for the now-in-being collocations; just that there is a wealth of little-used older and dialect words which give us wider choices.
That being said looking at Latinate words with undersight and struggling to get round them is not always do-able; after all we are talking about a 5000-7000 word hole in everyday and academic word-stock. For instance we might use "hiree" instead of "employee", (hireling is to ill-deeming); "wageslip" for payslip; but "pay" and "payroll" are hard to bestead, so I think quite a few Norman/French words are best left to stand.

@AnWulf - "It's hard for folks who hav spent years learning the latinates (as well as stupid spellings) to let them go." - Not only pretentious but condescending and insulting to British spelling.

@Galitrot - time will indeed tell

Meanwhile I'm going back to real English, as it seems a rational conversation is impossible here - I tried but all I get is preached at by the faithful. I respect your knowledge in Old English, but not your disdain for the natural language and vocabulary spoken by the vast majority of English speakers.

@Gallitrot ... It's hard for folks who hav spent years learning the latinates (as well as stupid spellings) to let them go. The latinates are a shibboleth. A way of saying, "Hey, look at me, I know these 'pretentious' words!"

Every field has its own jargon. As a soldier, I knew words that most folks didn't know ... and didn't need to know. Working in the air freight business, I knew a lot of words that others didn't ... and didn't need to know. Same thing for many fields whether it be medical or sports.

For academia and the burocracy (law and the rikedom), it was French and Latin ... While they no longer outright note French and Latin themselves, they're still heavy in the latinates. I was once asked to giv the meaning of "academic writing" ... I said it was writing with the longest latinates that one could find and that one gets bonus points for Latin quotes. That mindset is still with us:

"The every-day vocabulary of the less educated is of Old English, commonly called Anglo-Saxon, origin ..." from "The Romance of Words", 1912, Chapter 1.

"Preposterous example" … Like "preposterous"? … Maybe outlandish?

For different one can note other, another, otherly, or otherish:
… sense of cultural pride, we have become fixated on the only apparent characteristic that labels us as *otherly*.
— "Warrior Lessons: An Asian American Woman's Journey Into Power", Phoebe Eng, 2000

This likens the insect to another *otherish* human …
— "Six legs better: A Cultural History of Myrmecology", Charlotte Sleigh, 2007

Or even "nother" but then that's a whole nother ball of wax!

I think Ængelfolc was quoting the website.

Most Anglishers are ok with fore-1066 Latin/Greek/French/other borrowings. Those were more 'natural' borrowings. After Lucky Bill took over, the game chang'd; Britain became an cultural outpost of France and the English tung took a hard, unnatural turn ... and not one for the better. English is now overly laden with unneeded long-winded words. English has chopp'd many of them up into smaller and easier words but even many of the shorter words besteaded (replaced) short or shorter anglo words.

At times the meanings are a shade otherly ... but most of the time it truly only in the mind:

"Road works can be ongoing, but the stream of traffic passing them is continuous. Police investigations can be ongoing, but the policeman conducting them is in continuous employment, but pissed off because the rain has been continuous all day."

From a thesaurus for continuous (highlights are mine): the rain has been continuous since early this morning: unceasing, uninterrupted, *unbroken*, constant, ceaseless, incessant, *steady*, sustained, solid, continuing, *ongoing*, *without a break*, *nonstop*, ... *endless*, *unending*, *never-ending* ...

So you see, there are many non-latinate words to chose from that won't change the meaning.

Whew … Stay offline for a few days and things heat up. Where to start?

Go here to see a few byspels of fremd: http://www.wordnik.com/words/fremd

pretentious
adjective
Clytemnestra is a pretentious name for a dog: affected, ostentatious, *showy*; overambitious, pompous, artificial, inflated, overblown, … informal: flashy, highfalutin, la-di-da, pseudo.

ostentatious |ˌästənˈtāSHəs|
adjective
characterized by vulgar or pretentious display; designed to impress or attract notice … an ostentatious display of wealth: *showy*, pretentious,…

showy |ˈSHō-ē|
adjective ( showier , showiest )
having a striking appearance or style, typically by being excessively bright, colorful, or ostentatious … they spared no sequins or feathers in what may be the most showy finale ever seen on this stage: ostentatious, conspicuous, *pretentious*

Putting 'showy' next to 'word' shouldn't even slow you down.

What's next? … Oh, dictionary: dictionarius (liber) ‘manual or book of words’ from Latin dictio.

So, 'dictionary' is, more or less, Latin for 'book of words'. Thus you'd rather say a four-syllable latinate rather than a two-syllable anglo word? Heck, wordbook is even slightly shorter to write! Most of the time, not always but most of the time you'll find that the anglo words are shorter to say and, maybe half the time, they're shorter to write (that could be better with a more fonetic way of spelling). But if you feel the need to say wordbook in a fremd tung to feel worldly, there is always German: Wörterbuch.

With 'vocabulary' you hav five syllables (unless you note the slangier 'vocab') … wordstock is two.

"It's easiest to do between related languages, which means that English, with its varied wordstock, is a particularly tough language to translate poetry from or to." http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001464.php

I guess if you think that wordstock is 'pretentious', then you'll not be going to the yearly Wordstock Festival? http://www.wordstockfestival.com/

Hey WW,

Don't need to get your knickers in a twist. We'll see in due time whether this 'little band' is winsome or not to mother-speakers of English - who knows. Nearly all the words coming into every tongue have happened through hap or trend. Neither our strive, nor your chiding, on this site alone will alter whether or not a kindling of Old English words will come about in the next while or not.

@Ængelfolc - why is it that when people want to prove something is bad in English they always choose the most preposterous example they can think of? And I'm sure you realise that "school" came into Old English via Latin from the original Greek skhole, and that "proper" came from the Latin proprius via the Old French propre. So what exactly are you trying to prove? Not to use long words? To cut down on nominalisation? No argument. But that doesn't mean you have to judge every word by how came into the language centuries ago.

And as far as I'm concerned, using words like "fremd", listed by the Free Dictionary as "Archaic - alien or strange" instead of foreign, or "othersome" instead of different (jayles) is indeed just as pretentious as using words like "enhancement", if nor more so. At least most of us know what enhancement means. Distinction can mean difference, and by using such words you are indeed differentiating yourself from the bulk of English speakers; your little band apparently know better than your fellow speakers.

And what the hell is "true English" when it's at home? Sounds too much like the "true religion" to me.

High-quality learning environments are a necessary precondition for facilitation and enhancement of the ongoing learning process.

-OR-

Children need good schools if they are to learn properly.

http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/examples/before-and-after.html

Which is 'richer?" The one that is easily understood or the one with too many unneeded fremd words?

'nuff said.

"What's so wrong with glorying in the richness of the language we have, rather than wishing for some form of ethnically pure language that, thank God, we haven't?"

The thing is, everyone does not think that today's English has 'richness'. Rather, the other side is that English seems to be teeming with needless Latin-French/ Greek words. Some loans and borrowings are great when truly needed, and do help to make a tongue 'richer.' Too much, however, is... too much. Dare I say it....downright superfluous (< Latin). :-)

wale - "Something/anything that is chosen as the best." < ME wal(e) < ON val "choice" < ON velja "to choose". Akin to German Wahl (< OHG wala "to choose").

Pretentious = "Marked by an unwarranted claim to importance or distinction."

One way to say "pretentious" in true English is highfalutin(g). There are so many other ways to say it, too.

@jayles - but it is precisely because I'm a non-believer that I have neither the need nor the desire to replace continuous with anything. Sorry, but to be honest I think the whole idea is absolutely daft. I'm perfectly happy with both ongoing and continuous, they are both thoroughly standard English words. My only concern is with what sounds natural (ie used by most people) and apt for the occasion. And I have to say that the use of words like "othersome" simply sound twee to me. (Which is not surprising as I can only find two dictionaries that list it, and that as poetic and dialectal, and with a completely different meaning to the one you're using - "some folks do and othersome don't").

And again continuous and ongoing are not often synonymous in my book. Road works can be ongoing, but the stream of traffic passing them is continuous. Police investigations can be ongoing, but the policeman conducting them is in continuous employment, but pissed off because the rain has been continuous all day. It's a matter of simple collocation, and the fact that ongoing is used about processes, rather than states. I (and I imagine the vast majority of English speakers) use words to express myself, not for what are patently ideological reasons.

@WW It is certainly true that choose Anglo-Saxon words often brings in an othersome nuance and/or usage. ManU supporters -> underpinners, upstayers ?? I thnk not!
"Underbearers" = pallbearers.

You do not have to be a "true believer"; but you might choose to use "ongoing" instead of "continuous" more often; no harm in that.

May frith and frothe be with you alway.

hearty greetings.

The trouble about these equivalents is that many (perhaps most) of us use both the Latin-derived and Anglo-Saxon derived words, but with subtly different meanings and collocations. A showy car, showy clothes yes, but a showy word? Oxford Online has showy as "having a striking appearance or style, typically by being excessively bright, colourful, or ostentatious" - "showy costume jewellery" and pretentious as "attempting to impress by affecting greater importance or merit than is actually possessed" - "a pretentious film". Use an online collocation finder and "showy word" appears nowhere, nor does it make much inroads in Google Books.

Similarly, I use both "wherewithal" and "ability", but for most of us I imagine (and in dictionaries) wherewithal is more about physical resources, especially money. When talking about skill, ability is more natural.

I might well say something underpins somebody's argument, but I'm not going to underpin that person at the next election, I'm going to support them.

For me, to see these as simple equivalents is to grossly simplify the meanings they have acquired over the centuries. Unlike AnWulf I have no insight into how these words came into English, and if they have become the natural choice over time, I don't really care. I live in this millennium, not the last.

Take the word "dictionary", a word all you Anglish fans studiously avoid and probably think of as being somehow "foreign". It has in fact been in use in English since about 1520, rather longer than "wordbook"(1590s), and also rather longer than Europeans have permanently been in North America. It is as English as Americans are American!

Now look at usage: there is a 900-1 ratio dictionary to wordbook on the Internet, and something similar in Google Books. And if you discounted the other meaning of wordbook (libretto) it would no doubt be a lot higher. Dictionary is the word that is overwhelmingly used by English speakers. The every day words that the vast majority of us use totally naturally are apparently not good enough for you, simply because of their derivation. So yes, I do think the use of wordbook and wordstock (for vocabulary) is being pretentious. And no, I don't think it is being showy; that's something else.

But then I'm not one of the true believers.

support -> also underpin, underbear

to shrepe - to clear: "The fog begins to shrepe yonder." … The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, p 238

fangast - a marriageable maid ... ibid, p237

@Xen ... Stormfront also notes English ... Does that make English racist? Your lack of wit-craft (logic) is showing.

Speaking of "pretentious" ... You don't think that you're being showy by noting such a showy word as "pretentious"?

ability - wherewithal
absorb - soak, soak up, soak in
pretentious - showy
support - upstay http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/upstay

@Xen ... Stormfront also notes English ... Does that make English racist? Your lack of wit-craft (logic) is showing.

Speaking of "pretentious" ... You don't think that you're being showy by noting such a showy word as "pretentious"?

ability - wherewithal
absorb - soak, soak up, soak in
pretentious - showy
support - upstay http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/upstay

If Stormfront (the racist forum) supports Anglish something is wrong. I love English because of it's ability to absorb loanwords. You people are pretentious.

Well, they're at it again ...

—The team calls its biological transistor the “transcriptor."— http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2013/march/bil-gates.html

What the heck kind of name is "transcriptor" ... that means "writing over ... writing across ... writing thru". It in no way describes what it is. It sounds like someone who handles students' transcripts.

Anyone want to take a shot at giving it an anglo name … or at least make it half anglo?

"uppityness " : to me "uppity" suggests someone is unbiddable, wayward, or unwilling to take overlordship. I see the meaning "snobby" in the wordbook but I've never heard it.
How about "one-upmanship"?

@WW ... "But is it any less pretentious to use words (real or invented) known only to a small band of enthusiasts (i.e. words that are foreign to people like me), rather than use the perfectly normal words that everyone knows, simply because they happen to have come into English from French or Latin?"

Is that not how the Latinates came into English in the first place? Were not the Latinates pretentious (showy) and only known to the "educated" (learn'd) thus was ... and still is taken as ... a way to show off one's "education" (learning) by noting these words? I likely hav a bigger wordstock than most, yet I still come by Latinates that I hav to look up ... And when I do, more often than not, it's some showy word that could hav been written another and more understandable way.

Gemean is from OE gemǽne; adj. Common, general, mutual, in common; communis

Inflow is already a noun in English, the note of it is nothing more than a calque of the Latin influere, from in- ‘into’ + fluere ‘to flow’ which is a root of the Old French influence. One could also write inflowness but there is no true need to do so.

Two-tungness is a straight calque of diglossia a word which didn't come about til the 1950s! An academic made up the word from Greek ... in 1950s (that's from the Oxford Dict. Online)!

Tung itself is the older and the fonetic spelling: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tung

Note as both noun and verb for 'use', see etyms 1 and 2: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/note

One doesn't hav to truly make up words. Only need to edquicken (OE edcwician) words that hav a little dust on them and sometimes calqing the Latinate.

It's not Anglishers who are trying to naysay the history of English but the Latin and French lovers. Anglishers are trying to make folks aware that they don't need the showy (pretentious) Latinates to be smart. The heavy noting of Latinates is a token of snobbery. It's a kind of "elite speak". It means that one has, needlessly (mostly) learn'd a bunch of Latinates and thus they like to throw them out to show their uppityness http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/uppityness. Then these selfsame folks will snivel when you yank that rug out from under them.

There's no way to edquicken or dust off mostly unknown words unless one notes them ... and that is what we do.

The perils of writing late at night. The second part of the first paragraph should have read something like:

By all means choose short words over long, simple rather than over-complex. Yes, it is true that the use of longer words, often of Latin derivation, can be pretentious (although it can also sometimes lead to greater precision or nuance). But is it any less pretentious to use words (real or invented) known only to a small band of enthusiasts (i.e. words that are foreign to people like me), rather than use the perfectly normal words that everyone knows, simply because they happen to have come into English from French or Latin? Methinks not.

As this thread now seems to have left the realms of what I would recognise as English, I gracefully bow out and leave the field to the Anglish speakers. I would leave you with one thought, however. By all means choose short words over long, simple rather than over-complex. But is it any less pretentious to use words (real or invented) known only to a small band of enthusiasts (i.e. words that are foreign to people like me), than to use perfectly normal words that happen to have come into English from French or Latin, when they are the words everyone knows? Methinks not.

What differentiates English from other Germanic languages is that very admixture of Anglo-Saxon and French. To deny that is to deny linguistic history. Most of the great literature of English, from Shakespeare on, has drawn on that rich heritage, and its writers have profited from the broad choice of words that was available.

And like most languages, English is ruled by custom (and that includes British spelling) and the common sense of its speakers, not by the dictates of prescriptivist grammarians or the fanciful whims of etymological purists, of whatever stripe. "Custom", as the writer Ben Jonson said, "is the most certain mistress of language".

Let's write with a few Latinates as we can. I'll note old words and put the Latinate in ( ) when I think you likely don't know the word. The gemean (common) lines that the Latin/French upholders (apologists/supporters) giv are:

1. The Norman-French Takeover didn't truly hav "much" inflow (influence) on English.

This is — eath-seen — bunk. The Takeover by Lucky Bill the Bastard had a mickle (enormous) outcome on the English tung. In the time following the Takeover, the Anglo-French two-tungness (diglossia) was open and unhidden with French taking over the “higher” notes (usages) by becoming the tung of rikedom (gov't) and of law. Eke to that that Lucky Bill bestedded the head of the church in England with a Frenchman and afterwards work on oversetting the Bible into English was stoppt. Thus was set the mindset that higher and better tungs were French and Latin while English was for the churl-folk.
Slowly it began to giv way to a hidden diglossia, as can be seen in the unfolding of the Middle English “high style” – the words noted by the word-sowers (OE wordsāwere, 'rhetoricians') of the Middle Ages to bewrite (describe) the writing way (literary style) deem'd right for ernest and high works. This enker (particular) way of writing can be found in English from about 1350 onwards, and in the fifteenth and early sixteenth hundred-years (centuries) it bloom'd into a truly showy, Latinate shape call'd 'aureate'.

2. Saxon (English) lackt the wordstock for … blah, blah, blah. Again, utter bunk. The Saxons had a rich wordstock and many words for things like lore (science), tungolcraft (astronomy), and many others.

3. Latin was the tung of science and French was the tung of culture … Yes and no. Latin was the gemean tung for science but other Teutonish tungs weren't flooded with Latinates. The flood of Latinates had little to nothing to do with Latin being noted for science. French as seen as the tung of culture by the French begotten athels (nobles) after the Takeover and later when the royalty fled to France (where else?) during the Cromwell years. The "Restoration" of the French begotten athels brought yet another flood of Latinates. And again, the other Teutonish tungs are not overloaded and belorded by Latinates to the depth that English is. As odd that it is, some of the Latinates in other Teutonish tungs hav come from English!

Anent -ise; the Oxford Dict. Online clearly says that the -ise is from French:

The alternative spelling -ise (reflecting a French influence) is in common use, especially in British English. - http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/-ize?q=-ize

For that matter, the French inflow (influence) on spelling in English is strong and is the root of many odd and unfonetic spellings. If you want to note the French rooted spelling of colour (Middle English (as colo(u)r): from Old French colour (noun) … http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/colour?q=colour),for a Latin word, meh. But it's truly sad when you put it on an Anglo-rooted word like neighbor or harbor. Whenever you note the -our for these words, you might as well find the nearest Frenchman, get down on bended knee, and put a big kiss on his arse and thank him for teaching the dumb Saxons how to spell.

A deal of Anglish should be to root out some of the worst of the French spellings but that is even tuffer than trying to root out some of the French words.

addyatg! Welcome back. I see that you made it thru DLI. I'v been dealing with a few Persian friends and they too are trying to "un-arab" their tung … Like noting 'dorood' insted of 'salaam' and 'naam' insted of 'esm'.

Sorry about being away for so long but good to see that thred is still alive. I don't want to get between W.W. and Gallitrot but I will say that I'm with Gallitrot ... for me there is no notherness between haughty and supercilious. Supercilious is a snob word that ... thankfully ... I seldom see.

Oh, and don't get bent out of shape about haughty (from haught+y) ... While the "conventional wisdom" is that it is: haught - c.1400, haute, from O.Fr. haut (11c.) from L. altus "high"; with initial h- by influence of Frankish hoh "high". ... I can as eathly say that it is the other way. My guess is that maybe the 't' might hav come from altus otherwise this looks a lot like O. Fris hach and Goth. hauhs. So haut is likely at worse a blend of Frankish hoh and Latin altus.

@Holy Mackerel - "Mostly they have no clue what they're talking about" - Who would they be here, and what are they talking about? Just curious.

I've been doing a bit of research on the -ise/-ize business, and although I haven't got to the bottom of it yet, I'm finding it rather interesting. Although there was quite a lot of inconsistency, with the same word sometimes appearing with both spellings in the same work, -ize endings seem to have totally predominated in Britain until the end of the 18th century. But these -ize verbs were used pretty rarely compared with the French -ise verbs like surprise, compromise etc. until the end of the 18th century. Then two things appear to have happened. There was quite an increase in the use of -ize verbs, followed by very rapid changeover to -ise spelling, so that by about 1850, it seems to have dominated in books and magazines. Modern commentators say this is due to French influence and a mistaken analogy with the French -ise verbs, but I've found nothing contemporary to give the reason.

But whatever the reason was, the changeover was very rapid. The original editions of Jane Austen's six novels, published between 1811and 1818, have about 90% -ize endings, with about 10% of -ize verbs appearing with an S. But when they were all republished by a different publisher in 1833, they appear with -ise endings throughout. And most of Dickens seems to have been published with -ise endings, including those published in his own magazine. I'm not convinced that this was a deliberate bow to French influence. I think it's possible that British publishers realised they had to clean up these inconsistencies, and went with the flow of the more common French -ise verbs. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Noah Webster had decided to go the other way.

We are sometimes told that the -ize version is correct because of the Latin and ultimately Greek origins of these verbs. But one thing I've learnt, is that while this true for some of the earlier adoptions, already by 1600 people were creating -ize verbs from existing English words. Shakespeare is credited with five of them, including the wonderful "sluggardize". Probably the majority of the ones we use today are formed this way, without a Latin root at all.

I've written about on this my blog and am collecting material which I hope to put in a little blog dedicated to -ize/-ise verbs soon.

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2013/01/some-random-thoughts-about-ise-and-ize.html

I s'pose that the -ize/-ise disparity is ultimately the same argument about whether we want to go all the way back to the Latin (or here even the Ancient Greek) or take the Anglo-Norman or Old French spelling. When all of these differences in spelling began to be homogenized in the eighteenth-century there seems to have been no real rhyme or reason to much of it on either side of the Atlantic but there is some history to certain conventions. I'm not advocating a resurrection of variants like 'governour' or 'errour'. There's a reason for all of these forms to exist or not exist but in the Internet Age it seems like some of it could be codified.

I've been living in the United Kingdom long enough to know how these things go. Mostly they have no clue what they're talking about. Sometimes I just want to be able to say 'sidewalk' with impunity while other times we all have a good laugh that the Yank said 'pants' when he meant 'trousers' and no one cares. I do wish the Americans would just switch over to the date convention the rest of the world uses and make it easier for everyone. I make a point of writing the date with the name of the month written out and the day-month-year order (26 February, 2013, for example) when I can to avoid confusion.

I know that spelling usually doesn't impede understanding but, then again, not many proper usage rules protect comprehension either. People want to be understand so they usually make an effort to avoid ambiguity. As French evolved and certain changes occurred others like liaison compensated for ambiguity. Liaison rules weren't set down they evolved naturally. At least in spoken language this is true; often written language can be frustratingly ambiguous with things like antecedents. A lot of the differences among dialects just have to be understood as part of tapestry of linguistic diversity. But the reasoning behind some of these things just looks wrong. As you say, even as a non-prescriptivist, you take issue with things like group nouns in American English. It'd be nice if we could come to a consensus on some of the unnecessary differences at least as the gold standard in formal writing. As unimportant as it may be, I'd like to see 'colour' in the States and 'harbor' in the Commonwealth. Oxford spelling nicely favours 'synthesize' but it doesn't seem to have gained currency in the rest of the United Kingdom and my compatriots extend the pattern to 'analyze' quite wrongly. It really isn't much of a cause for complaint but when one is writing transatlantically a fair amount and always thinking about what to write and why to write it that way, it begins to seem important.

@Warsaw Will: dinosaurs like me lay eggs
Ruthfully my career in business ended b4 some spider spun the worldwide web: quite how an office really works with emails is beyond my ken, although sometimes I write php, html, or javascript just while away a sunny retirement.

@jayles - you do know about grannies and sucking eggs, don't you? :))

When do you ever date an email? It's done automatically for you, isn't it?
Anyway, it's not an issue here, as other European countries use exactly the same short form as we do. I don't think many of them write emails to the States, unless they work for American firms, in which case they probably know anyway.

But I grant you the comma / decimal point thing can be a problem.

Awra best

@Warsaw Will Just teach your student to always write the month in letters like "Mar" when putting dates in emails. And watch the use of a comma for the decimal point.
I think one of the early Mars probes crashed because of the feet/meters issue in the software.
"My boss's car was kaput so I gave him an elevator to the airport" !!
With hearty greetings.

@Holy Mackerel - Here's one Brit saying that any Brit that told you that is talking out of their proverbial. Unfortunately, there are a few idiots in Britain who think that BrE is the "only true English", especially amongst Daily Mail readers, but sometimes egged on by the media.

Of course, people are most comfortable with what they know, and I have some problems with certain aspects of American English, especially in relation to group nouns (and dates - see below). But I understand that it is simply a different way of thinking, just as our national senses of humour differ.

Linguistically, no language or dialect is superior to any other. Whether it's a matter of BrE vs AmE, or standard dialects vs regional or ethnic dialects (including the much maligned in these pages ebonics or African American Vernacular English) . Anyone who says differently doesn't know very much about how languages work.

@jayles - There is one city in Britain where subway has the same meaning as for Americans - the official name for the underground line affectionately known as "the clockwork orange" is "Glasgow Subway". Dates are the ones that get me; I can never get my head around the American dating system.

Here's another little difference:
Brit - I got really pissed last night.
American - Who with?
Brit - Oh, there was just me. And a bottle of whisky.

As a ground rule we mostly wish to be understood clearly so don't write anything that might be misunderstood in context. Thus "harbour" or "harbor" doesn't matter as both are understood whichever side of the Atlantic you come from. However, "subway", "vest", "4/5/2012", "3.08" (feet/inches/dollars/pounds?? are fraught.
Sometimes of course we wish to be vague, or smokescreen the truth, or to one-up, or break the norms, or inter alia sound like an academic prat. Or indeed sound like Chaucer.
Each to their own!

Right, you need to pick and choose whose advice you heed. I hold none of these usage bibles sacred. I think here they're being somewhat fair but I see some of these rules more as guidelines and others completely unfounded and nonsensical. As from any religious text I can glean a lot of reasonable moral advice and a lot more mythology. Many of these rules rooted in erudition rather than tradition, books rather than speech, are absurd. I agree with you for the most part but don't share your complete disdain for prescriptivism. I don't want to tell people how to talk but I do have my own opinions on what is correct when 'experts' have set rules that I disagree with on historical or etymological grounds. I suppose it's more the prescriptivists that get my goat. As you say, some of their laws are nonsense. So who's correct? If there are to be rules, and I think there should be some things we can agree on for formal writing and teaching, they should have some kind of correlation with the spoken language or some historical reason for existing.

If I had a nickel for every time a British English-speaker has told me that the way I speak or write is incorrect, I'd have a nice nest egg by now. Spelling is one of the big ones. I can see the etymological justification for Norman words like 'favour', 'colour', and 'labour' but also for 'harbor' and 'neighbor'. There's a similar argument for -ize/-ise. A lot of these accepted usage laws have the same kind of flimsy defence but we're told we're wrong when we disobey them. I know that this probably belongs in a different forum but discussing prescriptivism like this begs that question: whose Rx are we taking?

@HolyMackerel - I appreciate what you say, but I wouldn't rely overly on Strunk and White. Their bit on the Passive is absolute nonsense, and usage mavens of this sort rarely follow their own advice in their own writing. Orwell's famous essay where he both advises not to use the passive and to use Anglo-Saxon words in favour of latinate ones is riddled with passive verbs, and I''ve no doubt with latinate words. He was a good writer; he knew when to break his own rules.

@Gallitrot - of course anyone can say what they like about the language, although I prefer to avoid passing judgement - I leave that to prescriptivists and pedants. And from reading some of what you've written earlier in this thread, you are obviously very knowledgeable on this subject, much more so than me.

What I'm saying is that serious historians don't tend to try and rewrite history, and I very much doubt that people who study Old and Middle English academically or professionally would have much time for this sort of thing. And yes, I do respect the views of people who know about these things. Take David Crystal, for example. He has recently been working with a theatre company in Canada to try and recreate exactly how the works of Shakespeare would have sounded in his day. That is a worthwhile exercise, as is trying to reconstruct what Old and Middle English sounded like, a the differences in dialects you were discussing above. That is what I call serious scholarship. And I'm sure that amateurs can add their bit. You have obviously made a deep study of the English of the period, isn't that fascinating enough?

I can see that recreating a modern Anglo-Saxon might be an interesting exercise, but where you lose me is when you try to extrapolate this to modern English, as if you would have liked English to have existed in some sort of cocoon. When you put it forward as an alternative to the English we love and speak, then you start standing on the toes of people like me who like our language just the way it is, thank you very much, and who just say or write what they think fit, without constantly thinking of the derivation of the words we use, who like having choices. And who disdain most of the other prescriptivist nonsense. For telling people they should use Anglo-Saxon based words in preference to Latin or French based words is just as prescriptivist as saying we must say "Whom do you love?" instead of "Who do you love?".

Of course you're free to say and write what you like, but as long as you use words which don't appear in my dictionary, like propone, I'm afraid I can't take you very seriously (especially when you then follow it with "observation", as Latinate as they come). I like good natural English, and this all sounds rather artificial to me. I'm sure it's all great fun, and intellectually challenging, but it doesn't have much to do with the English of the last five hundred years, as far as I'm concerned. And apart from Chaucer and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and one or two others you will know more about than me, that means the English of the bulk of English literature. My problem is that I was just never into fantasy. And I can't stand any sort of prescriptivism.

Ironically, looking back at this, I imagine that the vast majority of the words I've used are in fact of Anglo-Saxon or French origin, and not too many of them are "effete, elevated or overly academic", I hope. But that's just the way I write, there's no deliberate thought to it.

That's about right. I was under the impression that this was no more than an amusing exercise in etymology or some kind of language construction game. There is very little serious style and usage talk here. I don't see any practical application beyond something akin to the old Strunk & White commandment, V.14: "Avoid fancy words". There's not reason 'ameliorate' when you can 'improve'. They're both Latin-rooted but one often smacks of awkward pretentiousness. Each has its uses depending on whether you're speaking formally, dysphemistically, quaintly, or however. Strunk and White go on to write:

"Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able. Anglo-Saxon is a livelier tongue than Latin, so use Anglo-Saxon words. In this, as in so many matters pertaining to style, one's ear must be one's guide: 'gut' is lustier than 'intestine', but the two words are not interchangeable, because 'gut' is often inappropriate, being too coarse for the context. Never call a stomach a tummy without good reason. If you admire fancy words, if every sky is 'beauteous', every blonde 'curvaceous', if you are tickled by 'discombobulate', you will have a bad time with Reminder 14. What is wrong, you ask, with 'beauteous'? No one knows, for sure. There is nothing wrong, really, with any word--all are good, but some are better than others. A matter of ear, a matter of reading the books that sharpen the ear."

I think that's pretty fair. A bit dated maybe. I knew I'd read that 'gut/intestine' example somewhere. The only thing I advise or hope beyond that is that speakers keep a closeness or an affinity for the language they speak, its heritage and richness, and a respect for the regional speech that keeps language close to home. I'm not advocating that we lose any of it, if it's good, useful language. Where I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts my family called a refrigerator an icebox long after refrigerators ousted iceboxes and I always preferred the sound of it. Hell, 'box' is a Latin word but it's a much more colourful than 'refrigerator'. But I don't think I'll be trying to call a sickwagon to take me to the sickhouse anytime soon. This is a fool's errand. I mean, 'cheese' is a much more English-sounding word than 'etiquette' but 'cheese' is a Latin-rooted word and 'etiquette' is Germanic, related to Old English 'stician'. It's a wild goose chase through the pages of the OED. When you get back to the Frankish and the Old High German and the Old French, the etymology becomes so incestuous it's hard to make heads or tails of what's what anyway.

Most of these old Norman words sound more quintessentially English than anything else. All this talk about Anglo-Saxonness and people forget that what makes English special is that it's British. Where I live in Glasgow it seems that nothing is more native to the Western Lowlands than Scots but, despite its heavy Norse vocabulary, it's all Norman-riddled Middle English to its core. At that point, why don't we all just speak Pictish?

''And I doubt if one serious scholar of Anglo-Saxon languages has joined this Anglish movement.''

Correct me if I'm wrong *I'm sure you will :)* So no one, without them being what you'd determine a ''serious student'' should be allowed to pass judgement on their native tongue??? And anyhow, trying to suggest scholars are somehow 'objective' due to their education is laughable. Seeing as most learned folk quite readily propone or denounce any observation that enters the realms of what they feel is their 'chosen' subject of expertise.

Damn, I hit the wrong button! That unfinished sentence should read - And I find changing the meaning of some existing words like "bespeak" really annoying and confusing. When I see it with its standard (literary) meaning of suggest - "His style of dressing bespoke great self-confidence." I just about understand it, but the way it's being used on this page, I have to stop and wonder what the hell's going on. I'm afraid the only word I can think for this is Latin-based - obfuscation.

OK jayles, and I usually try to avoid these words, but in science they can sometimes add a bit of precision, no doubt. And you could say just the same (about one-upmanship) about business buzzwords, and very few of them are latinate, except for the habit of verbalisation, and even then the source words are often not latinate.

To me it's just another silly rule: don't use passive, don't use nominalisation, don't use any redundancy, don't use latinate words. What about just using common sense and good judgement instead? And you can see what this argument taken to its extreme leads to in Gallitrot's comments: all these artificial words, or using words like "infill" with a completely new meaning. It may be a fun parlour game, but it has little to do with modern English. I have to agree with a previous commentator (from about five years back). I find all these so-called "Saxon" revivals or neologisms rather annoying. And I find the use of some existing words words like "bespeak" rather more pretentious than

As I said before, it comes from a very selective reading of both English history and the English language. Serious students of the English language like David Crystal have very little time for these source-based prejudices. And I doubt if one serious scholar of Anglo-Saxon languages has joined this Anglish movement.

@Warsaw Will As I said before, it's not the words themselves but the way some people use them; and often it's the latinate words in English which are used in a sort of linguistic one-upmanship game especially in academic circles.
I too taught in Central Europe for several years (not in Poland itself though) and it certainly seems like a boon and so easy to deal with latinate and french words that are in English too.
However for the past ten years I taught many Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Fiiipino, Indonesian, Hindi, Arabic and Thai speakers too; and when one gets to IELTS and academic English, all those latin-based words become a pain - moreso than phrasal verbs, although the latter are far more use in everyday speech. Words like "rural" - why on earth did this get borrowed, when "country" would be good enough. (Sometimes I feel like I'm teaching latin and greek! especially when explaining prefixes like con- syn-). So much of what is called the "formal" register is just putting in a latin-rooted word where a saxon one would do - "decapitated" instead of "behead" .
Korean does in fact have more than a few hundred words borrowed from , well, American I think. Alas the pron and meaning often somewhat changed too!

I do agree however that some latin-rooted words do add an other nuance.

You are quite right about Celtic tongues - perhaps one day there will be a revival in the west of England, everywhere west of Reading!

@Gallitrot - I'd also quibble with the word "supercilious" being the exact equivalent of "haughty". My dictionary defines "supercilious" as "behaving towards other people as if you think you are better than they are", and gives the example "The dress shop assistant was very supercilious." The important words for me here being "as if you think". Now I'm not saying the upper classes are in any way superior to the rest of us, but I can imagine a duchess being referred to as haughty, but probably not supercilious. On the other hand, a jobsworth might well be referred to as supercilious but probably not haughty. That same dictionary has haughty as being synonymous with arrogant, and supercilious as being synonymous with superior. It is this enlarged palette of nuanced meanings that is one of the things that makes English so fascinating for me, you have so many choices. If you reject all Latin-based words and French-based words, you lose these possibilities. Not to mention not having to repeat yourself.

Well, admittedly 'wordsmith' may not be the best infill for lexicographer... but it leaves the way open for: wordhoardbuilder, wordgatherer, dictionarybuilder (if you want a wholly simple and straightforwardly understandable term - albeit Anglo-French).

Oh and yeah, I suppose the substitution does float my boat - otherwise I wouldn't be putting forward the virtues of Anglish and older more English based words.