“Anglish”

"Because so many have disappeared, become lost, and are no longer in a modern wordbook."

Between the O.E., M.E. and wordbooks of today, among other things, we likely have enough writings to find the lost words of which you speak. I see no roadblock here.

@jayles:

To my mind, the same is not brought into play. Let's look at the words you brought up...

CHAIR (abt.1250) M.E. cha(i)ere "a stool to sit on; a seat of office or authority" < O.Fr. chaiere < L. cathēdra "seat" < O.Gk kathedra "seat"

APPLY (abt. 1350) M.E. ap(p)lien < Anglo-French, Old French ap(p)lier < Latin applicāre < ap (ad- before 'p') "toward" + ply (from plicāre) "to fold" = In English, "to fold toward"

My main thought against these words is that they are both after 1066. CHAIR began to take over from stool (O.E. stōl), settle (M.E. setle < O.E. setl, akin to saddle; see G. Sessel), and seat (O.N. sæti "seat") in earnest about the 1400's. Anyway, I would say that 'chair' seems much more deeply rooted in British English than say American English. It seems to me that this is found more in government.

APPLY, too, is highly academic, no? Can English not live without this word? I think so. There are many ways to say "apply." I guess my thought is that those words that were borrowed from Latin so long ago likely didn't have a Germanic match. Ænglisc has/had words for all, or most, of the fremd borrowings from Latin & Norman-French. What are the true Ænglisc words for 'cheese', 'wine', and 'kitchen'? To me, CHAIR, APPLY, and other Norman-French/ Latin words do not hold the same worth.

**So the task is to find some marketable spur to sell our way of thinking.**

Yeasaid, I've been saying this for years - convince the common Joe and you can pretty well aliven anything, just has to be trendy.

"These Latin words have truly become woven into Ænglisc owing to their meaning and high standing in the daily lives of the Ænglisc folk."
So too have many Norman-French words like chair, apply .... so logically why does the same not apply?

"These N.Fr and L words took over from English ones, so why couldn't we switch back to the unseated English words?"
Because so many have disappeared, become lost, and are no longer in a modern wordbook. A shame I agree but nevertheless we must work with what we still have.

"I think the best thing to look at settle on what is true English are the EVERYDAY WORDS." Hmm but wouldn't 'transit lounge', or 'bus station' be an everyday word?

I am not agin the thrust of your thinking; when I said "people don't want Anglish", I was thinking that most lede are not worried about word-roots, they just want to be understood clearly and get on with their lives. So the task is to find some marketable spur to sell our way of thinking.

Here an englishening of a German loanword: zeigeisty http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zeitgeisty meaning "contemporary", "trendy", "modern".

WELKIN "the sky" < ME welken < OE wolc(e)n < PGmc *welk-, *wulknan, *wulkō, *wulkô "sky, clouds, heavens"; akin to German Wolken.

" Regn wolcen brincgeþ"

Unaddling >> "...in the thirteenth century [ an Icelandic writer wrote] that up to the time of William the Bastard the language of England was one and the same as that in Norway and Denmark"

"Why are words borrowed after that not good English? But those borrowed before are?"

I never said, or hinted, that borrowed words after the year 450 were not good English. There were many Latin words that flooded into the tongue in the year 597, and those would be thought of as "good English", if one is Christian. Also, since Christianity became meshed wholly into the lives of early English folks, these words would take on an inborn meaning for them over time, too.

The Vikings began coming to England about the year 800, and by year 1100, English had already warped into "Anglo-Scandinavian", as put forth in "The Vikings in Britain" by Professor H.R. Loyn. He wrote:

"...in the thirteenth century that up to the time of William the Bastard the
language of England was one and the same as that in Norway and Denmark, and that it was only after his conquest that there was a change...By 1100 the very nature of the English language itself in the east and north had been profoundly modified to the point where it is not unreasonable to call it Anglo-Scandinavian; and it was from the language patterns of eastern England that the main lines of standard modern English were ultimately to develop." pp. 114-115, "The Vikings in Britain" (1977)

I'm okay with all of the Scandinavian borrowings, too. Old Norse and Old English are near enough that likely a Viking and an Anglo-Saxon could talk to each other and be well understood.

Not all loans and borrowings are bad for English, but the way I see it, most of them have been.

I think the best thing to look at settle on what is true English are the EVERYDAY WORDS. Most of these, I think, should be thought of as true English.

"what happened at 450 which is so important?"

This is thought to be about the time when English began to come together as a tongue. This "first Ænglisc" already had some fifty Latin borrowings from when these "Ængliscmenn" were still on the homeland.

These Latin words have truly become woven into Ænglisc owing to their meaning and high standing in the daily lives of the Ænglisc folk.

M-W has had some fetching WOTDs for the past few months ... skirl, wifty, welkin, wetware ... only three Anglo-Teutonic rooted words so far this month.

My wisse (rule) of thumb is that any word found in B-T or Clark's Concise is good to go. It'll be fetching to see what the Univ. of Toronto's project to foregather every known A-S word turns up!

Can I make a suggestion? ... Can I put out a thought?
Suggetion / proposal ... Foreset http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/foreset (noun and verb), to suggest/propose ... put forth
Giv up "proper" in a sentence that is bothering you.
disappear (3 syllables) ... lost to sight (3 syllables), lose from sight, melt away, die out, dwindle, fordwine (for-dwine) http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fordwine

Here's another fetching word that means extinguish, blot out, delete: adwesch (a-dwesch) http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/adwesch

WAR is good anyway, it is not Latin, Greek, or French. English already had the word, which was the same as what the gallicized Vikings brought over. WAR < OE wyrre/werre; the ON.Fr werre (Frankish *werra) < all from PGmc *werso.

The Germanic gave Sp. guerilla, Old French guerrer, ONFr werreier, ONFR. warant(ir)/warantie (< Frankish *warand), O.Fr garantir/garantie (Frankish *warand), among others.

OED says, "Romanic peoples turned to Germanic for a word to avoid L. bellum because its form tended to merge with bello- "beautiful.""

"Any Latin word which English willingly took in and not thrust upon it as an unneeded inkhorn term should be deemed fine, this will also include Norman French words such as 'war' or ' part' that were accepted into the language as they filled a niche one expects... probably some even after the Overthrowing which were just plain useful - though that is obviously harder to prove."

Yeah, that's almost my position too. I have a blanket policy of accepting pretty much anything borrowed before the mid 1100s or so, and anything not from French, Latin and Greek. I mean, we borrowed potato and kangaroo because they were new things to us, but administer and corpulent? Nuh-uh. I can understand why the cut off should be after the Norman invasion, as that's when the social structure of England changed and impacted the English tongue. But what happened at 450 which is so important?

Any Latin word which English willingly took in and not thrust upon it as an unneeded inkhorn term should be deemed fine, this will also include Norman French words such as 'war' or ' part' that were accepted into the language as they filled a niche one expects... probably some even after the Overthrowing which were just plain useful - though that is obviously harder to prove.

Ængelfolc: "I give you that there are some Latinates can be thought of as "true English"- kitchen, street, wine, cup, and other early borrowings before the year 450."

Can I ask why the cutoff is at 450, and not any other year? Why are words borrowed after that not good English? But those borrowed before are?

I stumbled upon this list of twin-words:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_with_dual_French_and_Anglo-Saxon_variations

'I must gainsay that "...and the like" is doomed; Anglish may be, but Englishing English again, I think, is not.' Yes that is in truth what I meant.
re: suggest/propose - in a business meeting "can I make a suggestion?" much more tentative than "I propose that we.... ". (This can be a pitfall for unwary French speakers).
I haven't worked out a good answer for this in true English.
"despite all the efforts" -> all the struggles/strivings notwithstanding..
"proper" with the meaning of "up to the set standard" is unanswered so far.
amen -> so be it.
" "The people don't want it" - by this I meant that that the middling wight doesn't want to bother with Anglish - it is to bookish, there are more weighty things in life. Many wights would be interested in cleaning up the gobbledegook and making English "plain and simpler", though. (more straightforward and less snobbish)
Any ideas for "disappear" ??

I have to yeasay Ængelfolc's points,

He's right, speech and language are ever flowing and so there is nothing that has been done to the language that cannot be undone.

AMEN < O.E. Soðlic (< Today, soothly), Swā hit ys (so/thus it is {true})

despite < notwithstanding, even though, even with, against

effort < deed, work (hangs on meaning)

proper (appropriate) < right, (be)fitting, true, meet (meetness) [< O.E. gemǣte akin to German gemäss (OHG māza), ON mǣtr]

nuances < shades, sheer

mimic < ape, take on, make like, liken oneself to

@jayles:

1) "The people don't want it" < Want what? Do you mean to say that all English-speaking folk thoughtfully wanted to wreck the English wordstock and/or tongue? Folks wanted fremd words to be put in stead of English ones? I don't think it was done by the folks with aforethought (BTW, this is a great word that can stand in for 'intentional', 'deliberate', 'premeditated', among others). The so-called "academics" are another thing.

2) "Many Norman-French and some latinate borrowings have become deeply embedded and there are now no proper stand-ins".

Kindly, name a few. These N.Fr and L words took over from English ones, so why couldn't we switch back to the unseated English words? I give you that there are some Latinates can be thought of as "true English"- kitchen, street, wine, cup, and other early borrowings before the year 450.

3) "there are nuances available in the french/latinate borrowings that are hard to make up, for example "suggestion" (open to discussion) and "proposal" (more take-it-leave-it) - hard to mimic with "forelay" "put forward" or "input"".

That is only owing to our weak English knowledge of how those shades of meaning were made with the wordstock--of which some words are no longer known or said today.

Take L. suggestion. In what way do you mean it? It could be said to mean "hint at," "a forewarning," "put forward," "bring up/forth," and so forth.

Proposal > a bid, a pitch (to propose (in business) > bid on, to pitch)

It might take a little more thought now, but working daily toward the goal of Englishing ones speech will allow one to hone and sharpen those skills. Soon, everyday English words would roll freely and readily off the tongue.

I must gainsay that "...and the like" is doomed; Anglish may be, but Englishing English again, I think, is not.

There is still hope!

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 01, 2012 > aborning "while being born or produced"

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 02, 2012 > wend "to direct one's course : travel, proceed "

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 06, 2012 > gainsay "1 : to declare to be untrue or invalid 2 : contradict, oppose"

Jayles here is my answer to 1:

http://rootsenglish.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/there-has-never-been-a-better-time-for-roots-english/

Jayles, I will answer your asks on my blog in good time.

But for 2, I can only say what I've always believed, that if we lessen the FLaG words in English, then it makes no odds whether there are some (or even many) left. Getting rid of all would be great, but fewer is the true goal. Though I often seek to write with none, I know that it cannot always be done. Even we can only get rid of 1 in 10, that is still something worth our hard work.

Why Anglish and the like are doomed to failure:
1) The people don't want it: despite all efforts since the inkhorn era, there has been little go-forward. Some progress toward plain-speech (which is not quite the same thing).
2) Many Norman-French and some latinate borrowings have become deeply embedded and there are now no proper stand-ins.
3) there are nuances available in the french/latinate borrowings that are hard to make up, for example "suggestion" (open to discussion) and "proposal" (more take-it-leave-it) - hard to mimic with "forelay" "put forward" or "input".

In writing this I cannot easily come up with stand-ins for despite, effort, proper, nuances, mimic and so on. It is too hard unless one spends ages with a thesaurus and etymology. Interesting as an exercise but in the end doomed. All that we can ask is for folk to stick to short words wherever possible. Success is just beyond our grasp.

Cloze -->> gapfill

I've come up with five questions that I think it would be great to hear answers on from anybody interested in Anglish. They seek to get to the root of what and why we do what we do, and hopefully spur some discussion on them. I think that everybody's view is a little different, but I wonder if there are main "strands" so to speak.

The questions are here:
http://rootsenglish.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/5-asks-for-anglishers/

"Historical linguistics is not just guesswork." ... Sure it is. It may be very good guesswork but until yu can come with a recording with that wayback masheen ... then it's guesswork (speculation) built upon assumptions that may or may not be true ... for byspel:

" But we have (I think) no evidence that this happened in the middle ages, when people spelled how they pronounced, and not the other way around. All the examples of Norman influenced spelling change I am aware of did not change the pronunciation."

That's a mighty bold assumption to say that no one gave into their teacher's pedantic rant on how to spell words and that everyone spell'd the words the way they thought they should be spell'd as to how each one said the word. Or never thought, "Hmmmm ... I'm writing to someone in the king's court and I don't want to seem like some country bumpkin so I'll spell it the way he spell'd it when he wrote me so that my writ won't be thrown out. " (That's still done today ... I'll giv yu that's it likely worse today since so many are stuck on "stupid spellings" like through, though, enough ... none of which where the 'ough' are said the same way.)

Heck, I'v seen the same word spell'd sunder ways in the same writ!

Look, I'm not trying to be froward ... linguistics giv us a good framework to work within. But that is all that it is ... a good framework. The same as learning a fremd tung in the classroom givs a good framework but yu can't truly learn all the qualities of the sounds til yu hit the street ... Sadly, we can't "hit the street" for OE or even ME ... so we work within the framework as best we can; however, never be afeard to step outside of it and look at again. Eke, it is only a deal of the puzzle. It's not the alpha and the omega.

I was wondering if someone (or anyone) could cast some/any light on how today's usage of "some' / "any" came about. Yes, "any" "einig"; some summige. But how did the meanings and the use of "any" after negatives develop in OE?

I fīnd þat þe ſtrȳgel on ſpæccanġeclæne þōht iſ an godþōht, hoƿefer, þær haſ to bē an līne, raðerþænoȝt, þæt muſt be draƿeð bēfor þīne tȳng ſcallt bēccome unfūl to bē rǣddan by ȝuƿer poēpel.

@goofy: I thought Anglish has at root a wish to turn back the inflow of (snobby), mostly latinate words in today's English. My ask is what rede could we give to today's writers - in news/books/universities/business so as to make English more "sturdy" ?
I am thinking of a short rule of thumb which does not mean learning the word roots. For instance avoid words of more than one syllable which end in -ate, ation, ative; or words with forefasts like "trans-", "extra-". It would mean a word like "scarce" (which at first I thought might be ON) would not be targeted. But overall it would be a step in the right heading.
What rede would you give today's writers of English?

Yes, if you're going to discuss etymology, then yes, knowing some historical linguistics would certainly help.

Gallitrot, I'm not sure what you mean about "mother tongue only has worth if viewed through the learning of another" - I never said anything about that.

And yes, spelling can be affected by pronunciation. We have evidence to show that the pronunciation of words like "forehead" and "waistcoat" changed because of the spelling. But we have (I think) no evidence that this happened in the middle ages, when people spelled how they pronounced, and not the other way around. All the examples of Norman influenced spelling change I am aware of did not change the pronunciation.

Good grief, I never said that 200 years of lingustic studies was unquestionable fact. However, we have a prevailing theory, which explains a lot, is testable, and lets us make predictions which have been fulfilled (Saussure's coefficients sonantiques is a good example). Language study is a science, and like a science, if you have a problem with the prevailing theory, then do the work and come up with a better theory, one that explains everything the current theory explains and more.

Perfect sh1te, no English speaker should be waylaid by snobbish scholars saying that their mother tongue only has worth if viewed through the learning of another... utter midden slops!

And it is untrue that pronunciation and uttering is unaffected by spelling... take 'forehead' for instance. Originally, it was pronounced 'forrid' yet now there is back-formation and many say 'fore-head'. 'Again' was mostly said as 'aggenn', but we see a trend towards ' agayn'... Back-formation in line with spelling is commonplace.

A thousand scholars spouting untruths doesn't make them right, and yes I am stating that I find it more likely that a befolking of 95% English speakers that had the word 'beclysan' are more likely to have influenced 'close' than a minority of flowery gallic vikings... sorry but that's strength by numbers. Vowels are soft and squishy and get warped and weft constantly. Plus the b@llocks suggestion about 200yrs of linguistic studies being unquestionable fact is what keeps progress slow and allows professional misunderstanding to become enshrined nonsense.

Language study is a form of science, and as with all science, as the adage goes ' If you aren't pissing people off, then you aren't doing it properly ' And I yeasay that through and through. We here are the questioners, the frainers, the askands, whatever... we don't like the biased populist drivel in the OED or mainstream English language mythology... and we defo have a right to ponder, rethink and provide our own educated guesses.

Oh dear me! sighed Teddy, so now I must learn historical linguistics as well as Latin and Greek, just to show the other bears how to speak true English. Oh dear me, I'm quite stuffed as it is.

“Yu can't say that belcose is beclysan, influence'd by French, but then say that close has nothing to do with clysan. That's a "non-sequitur".”

The way I interpret the OED’s etymology of “beclose” is that it is a continuation of “beclysan”, but the second element was replaced by “close”, which was borrowed from Old French. 

I have a background in linguistics. You say it's “all guesswork”, but isn’t. Historical linguistics is not just guesswork. You're making speculations that conform with what you want to be true - that's guesswork. But I'm looking at the theories that have been formed over the past 100-200 years based on observation and rigorous methodology. Sure, I could be wrong, but I'm much more likely to be right. If you think the entirety of historical linguistics is wrong... well you've got quite a job ahead of you.

LOL --- We'll hav to agree to disagree for that it's all speculation. Until someone invents that wayback masheen and gets a bunch of recordings ... it's all ... ALL ... guesswork. I'v tried a few sundry ways to get yu to step away from that tree to see the forest but yur nose is stuck to the tree. So be it.

I don't know yur background but I can tell yu a bit of mine ... I'v liv'd in sundry countries ... lern'd German, Russian, Spanish to the point of being conversant ... dabble'd in French. One thing I know that that the clean sounds that one lerns in the classroom don't exist on the street. Many a time I hav been amaze'd at the spelling of a word after hearing it ... and that is from the ones that are fairly well fonetically spell'd. French ... blah ... they might as well note Chinese characters.

So, in arguendo, if both clys/clus and clos come from clusa then when they met again on the iland, the differences wouldn't hav been that great. Indeed, in ME we hav clus-, cloos-, and clos- ... and biclusen and biclosen. The French didn't hav beclose so biclosen could hav only come from OE beclysan. Yu can't say that belcose is beclysan, influence'd by French, but then say that close has nothing to do with clysan. That's a "non-sequitur". The bottom line is that a shape of close stood in English before the French came. It did not begin with the French. It was wisly influence'd by French as were many words but the root was alreddy there in OE. So I'm more in line with wiktionary, close:

From Middle English closen (“to close, enclose”), partly continuing (in altered form) earlier Middle English clusen ("to close"; from Old English clȳsan (“to close, shut”); compare beclose, forclose, etc.); and partly derived from the Middle English adjective clos (“close, shut up, confined, secret”), from Old French clos (“close, confined”, adjective) ...

Yes, the Norman influence respelled a lot of words. "gilt" became "guilt", "mȳs" became "mice". But the respelling never changed the pronunciation. You seem to be suggesting that with "close", the spelling changed the pronunciation. This is a big deal, and you need evidence.

OE "clȳsan" probably had a long /ȳ/ - a high front rounded vowel, like modern French "tu". In ME it unrounded to /i/ - as in modern English "heat". You've provided no evidence that it had a different vowel sound, or that our modern word derives from a certain dialect variation. Sound change is regular. You can't just make stuff up.

"Anent close, I think it might help if we note ü insted of y and üü insted of ȳ … and uu for ū. Thus clüs, and cluus are not far from the Latin clusa and OHG klúsa. I'll leav it to Ængelfolc as to whether the P-GMC word came from Latin or a common PIE root."

It might help if we use different phonetic symbols? Using different phonetic symbols doesn't make a sound change more likely. And the Proto-Germanic word didn't come from the same PIE root as the Latin word. We know this because both words begin with /k/, and Latin /k/ corresponds to Proto-Germanic /h/.

We are reasonably certain that "clūs" was borrowed from Latin "clūsa", and that OE "clūs" became "clȳsan" with a fronting of the vowel.

"The staff 'y' has an utterly nother sound in ME than in OE … So what is a scribe to do? Now, yu think that 'oo' in ME isn't the 'oo' as in loop. It's either that or a looong 'o' so if someone wrote cloos … that would with a slightly longer 'o' sound … which, if said quickly, sounds a lot like ü … either way, it isn't the same as close and likely from the OE clüs or clus … but near enuff for writing."

This is all speculation. The fact that a long "o" might sound a lot like ü if said quickly is irrevelent. They were still presumably separate phonemes, and if you're saying that a specific sound change happened here, you need good evidence.

munec > monk
sum > some
hearsum > hearsome
tung(e) > tong > tongue
wundor > wonder

First of all, the spelling of these words is well understood. We don't have to resort to saying "it was really chaotic, there were a lot of dialects, anything could have happened."

Second of all, these words all have short "u" so they're not relevent to the question of "close".

Third of all, in these words, the "u" was changed to "o" purely for ease of reading. In the calligraphy, "u" looked like two vertical strokes (minims), and "m", "n" and "w" also looked like a series of minims, so a combination of these letters was hard to read. So the scribes changed "u" to "o" in these words. *The pronunciation did not change as a consequence of the spelling.*

þurh (thurh) > through

OE "þurh" had a short vowel. As I understand it, the loss of the final fricative lengthened the vowel, which was then spelled "ou" - "ou" being a Norman convention for spelling long /ū/. *The pronunciation did not change as a consequence of the spelling.*

"Take a look at the words dūstig, dystig, dȳstig (all for dusty; y=ȳ=ū) … dust itself is dust and dūst (u=ū). If we were to put how we now think each of those vowels sound then we would come up with some pretty wide sundernesses among them. Dialects? Accents? Why did the scribes choose the spellings they chose? Why do we now mark some of the vowels with the ¯ for the same word? So you see, I don't hav the same trust that some of the words hav been rightly markt in the first place. I take it all with a grain of salt."

So your reason for being skeptical of the whole enterprise of historical linguistics is one word? According to Upward and Davidson's A History of English Spelling, "dusty" from "dystig" is a West Saxon respelling. Where we find surprising results, we can often attribute them to dialect variation. But that doesn't mean sound change isn't regular. If you think that "clȳsan" came to be pronounced "clūs" because of some dialectal variation, ok - which dialect? Where is your evidence?

Maybe I'm not being clear ... that's always mightlic ... this is anecdotal but I'v liv'd in other countries of a sunder tung. I DON'T hav a good ear ... I cannot tell yu how many times I'v spell'd an outlander word wrong ... and we're talking about fairly fonetic tungs like Spanish and German. Likely the only tung that is spell'd more unfonetically than English is French. Now how much nearer French was to being fonetic in the ME, I can't say but it wisly screw'd up English spelling. Keep in mind, that we're talking about Norman-French which likely had somewhat of a Germanic lilt to it. So for me, it is a small hop for someone to be saying something more like clus but writing clos.

And isn't that how words change and new tungs come out of old ones? Another thing is that there was no purity of sounds and speech among the Saxons. Most of what is taught nowadays is rooted on the LWS (Late West Saxon) dialect which was only one of three of the bigger dialects.

Further, I don't think that French has be spoken the same way thru the years so the true way that close was said by them may or not hav been nearer to Latin clusa or clausa. Given that clusa is a Late Latin change then we can see that it was still in a state of flux as well.

Are there any other words sum-hwat like this: sponge and spynge from L. spongia from Gr. spongia (o=y)

Take a look at the words dūstig, dystig, dȳstig (all for dusty; y=ȳ=ū) … dust itself is dust and dūst (u=ū). If we were to put how we now think each of those vowels sound then we would come up with some pretty wide sundernesses among them. Dialects? Accents? Why did the scribes choose the spellings they chose? Why do we now mark some of the vowels with the ¯ for the same word? So you see, I don't hav the same trust that some of the words hav been rightly markt in the first place. I take it all with a grain of salt.

Anent close, I think it might help if we note ü insted of y and üü insted of ȳ … and uu for ū. Thus clüs, and cluus are not far from the Latin clusa and OHG klúsa. I'll leav it to Ængelfolc as to whether the P-GMC word came from Latin or a common PIE root.

So as we go from OE to ME there has been a big change in the way of spelling words after the Gap. English is now under a the strong inflow of French and is noting the French way of spelling for many words. The staff 'y' has an utterly nother sound in ME than in OE … So what is a scribe to do? Now, yu think that 'oo' in ME isn't the 'oo' as in loop. It's either that or a looong 'o' so if someone wrote cloos … that would with a slightly longer 'o' sound … which, if said quickly, sounds a lot like ü … either way, it isn't the same as close and likely from the OE clüs or clus … but near enuff for writing. For the Saxons, it was likely nothing than an accent and they likely thought that the Normans were saying it kind of funny. Same the other way, the French likely thought the Saxon where a bunch of hicks who didn't know how to say the word. However for the French traind scribe, his spelling of choice would more likely be 'close' regardless of how he was truthfully saying it. It was how the Normans wrote it and that is how he would hav written it.

Others? Oh there are byspels galore. Here are few.
munec > monk
sum > some (thus somedeal insted of sumdel/sumdeal; something insted of sumthing) hersum/hearsum > hearsome
þurh (thurh) > through
tung(e) > tong > tongue (the French note 'ue' … as in prolog(ue) … to show a hard g; not needed in English)
wund > wound (the injury)
wundor > wonder
Now these were often done for that the carolina script noted by the French could befuddle the stafs.
... So ME clusen > closen is no great leap to someone alreddy wonted to writing o for u.

When my kin from Wisconsin say 'huse' insted of 'house' … I know what they saying. Furthermore, they write house even tho they're saying 'huse'. So for me it's hella believable that folks could hav eathly been saying 'clus, clüs' and writing 'close, cloos'. What is not believable is that folks stoppt saying 'clus, clüs' and started saying 'close' in one fell swoop after we had been "enlightend" by the French. The slight change in the way of saying the word in no way naysays that 'close' (as a verb and noun) was in the English tung before the Normans came. Thus … close is from OE clys, clus and inflowd by OF clos. I think the wiktionary etyms of beclose and close are much nearer the mark than the OED.

AnWulf,
The Wiktionary entry gives no references for its etymology of "beclose". This is what the OED says:

"Originally Old English beclýsan , < be- prefix 1 + clýsan : see cluse n.; subseq. changed to close n.1 after French."

Now you say "close" is a blend of OE and OF. Earlier you said that it was simply the spelling that changed. It is certainly possible that the presence of an English word with a similar shape might have made the borrowing of the French word easier. But this is not simply a spelling change. It can't be, because the English word was not pronounced with the same vowel as OF "close".

Drop offline for a few weeks and I miss stuff! lol

Why you should want to know the background of a word … Those who want to turn away from after-1066 Latinates, huru those word that shuv'd aside Anglo words, need to be somewhat careful. The word that goofy and I hav sparr'd over, close, is a byspel of how some etyms can be misleading. The Oxford Dict. Online (ODO) … the free side of the OED … only talks about the Old French/Latin bit. Yet, if we look at the etym of beclose on wiktionary, it givs the etym as from OE beclȳsan http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/beclose . Indeed, wiktionary also givs a nod to my thought that close is a blend of OE and OF. So if you throw out "close" and any begotten shapes like "beclose" yu're needlessly throwing out words.

There are many words like this. OE had "scrudnian, scrutnian" - To examine carefully, consider, investigate … That is, to scrutinize. It also had "scrudnung, scrutnung" - Examination, investigation, enquiry … that is, scrutiny. But if you look in the ODO under scrutiny it says: Middle English: from Latin scrutinium, from scrutari ‘to search’ (originally ‘sort trash,’ from scruta ‘trash’). So if yu want to note the word without the Latin blend, then drop the 'i' and write scrutny … BTW, that is how it is said: / ˈskro͞otn-ē /.

Sometimes yu come full ring … infer: from Latin inferre ‘bring in, bring about’ (in medieval Latin‘deduce’), from in- ‘into’ + ferre ‘bring’.

To make the same word from OE then in + fer (the root of ferian - to carry, convey, bring ['ferry']) which would giv "infer". So yu'd come up with the same word!

@Gallitrot: I would fain say the irony was intentional; but in truth it wasn't. Of course I blame my "education". Glad I brought some sunshine into your life though.
Another example of "political correctness" might be:
"Your behaviour is inappropriate" instead of "you shouldn't have done that"... and so on.

@Jayles

''The other thing that might be looked at is the whole academic tradition of writing without using "I" or "you"; and stating one's opinions as if they were fact.''

Bidya tell me you wrote this on purpose, as the irony is comic genius :)

"All told, approximately 600 words were borrowed from Latin during the Old English period[4] "
wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_influence_in_English
http://www.orbilat.com/Influences_of_Romance/English/RIFL-English-Latin-The_Inflluences_on_Old_English.html

These include both church and non-church words. Hardly surprising when stone churches from 654AD are still standing in southern England. But it does surely mean that words are not "bad" English simply because they have latin roots.

The other thing that might be looked at is the whole academic tradition of writing without using "I" or "you"; and stating one's opinions as if they were fact.

I've read Lieberman's Word Origins And How We Know Them, and he doesn't say what features characterize Germanic languages, besides the sound changes due to Grimm's Law. But I assume he's talking about things like the -ed past tense ending and the use of two word verbs like take off, put on, etc. Of course English still has these features, and it is not going to lose these any time soon. And it certainly won't lose them just because it's borrowed a lot of Latinate words.

In my view, English won't stop being a Germanic language, because "Germanic" is the label we give to one branch of the IE tree. No matter what happens to English, it will still be on that branch.

"The Germanic group of languages, which is at the center of our interest, because English belongs to it, has several features that characterize it uniquely. If English had lost them, it would have stopped being Germanic, but both its basic vocabulary, and some peculiarities of grammar survived the Norman Conquest." -- Pg. 171, Word Origins And How We Know Them: Etymology for Everyone by Anatoly Lieberman

Thorn and Aengelfolc,

Hear hear guys, you're both on fire, brandburning hot! Well done! We all benoot far too many fremd words, even those of us striving hard to akindle words falling into nothingness... and the only way of withstanding the dearth is to keep striving, all the more, till it becomes so unbelievely eath for anyone to choose a homeword as to pick a far-flung, trendy and fickle fremdword.

@ þ: You are right -- George Orwell said as much in his "Politics and the English Language."

"Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent." -- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" (1946)

Hear, hear!

@jayles: " ...the Japanese guy, looking at me as if we are mad not to say take-out in the first stead....."

We are MAD!!! :-) LOL

Yeah, the purity thing is irrelevant. There is no such thing as a pure tongue, and Anglish isn't seeking to make one. You'll go mad working towards that.

The issue is about control. It's about who chooses whether and what words are said. The common person--who knew neither French nor Latin nor Greek--would never have chosen and *could never* have chosen many of the words we say today. Yet because of the social power of the elite who preferred those tongues, we took in a great deal of those words. The same or a like thing happened with Chinese in Japanese, French in Russian, Arabic in Turkish and Urdu, and doubtless many tongues.

But we don't have to say "the past is past". We say these words every day, and every act of saying these words makes anew their existence. We can still choose not to say them; to say where we can a word with the same meaning but not from French, Latin, or Greek, and where there is no word, think up something that might work. The first decision to bring them into English was made maybe six or seven hundred years ago, but the choosing to keep them in English is made every day, by ourselves. We must say whether or not linguistic elitism is something we agree with, and if not, throw out such words and not hand them down to another generation.

There will always be an English tongue, but what it says about us can and will shift if we want it.

@Ængelfolc: I often uncloud the meaning of a latinate word to overseas learners by going back the roots: thus "ex" "cept" means take out, and so on.
"Ahhhh soooo, except mean take-out" mutters the Japanese guy, looking at me as if we are mad not to say take-out in the first stead.....

@jayles: "At the end of the day, the word root hardly matters. What is noteworthy is whether the message is clearly understood."

Isn't it funny, odd even, that the word-string with more West-Germanic English is better understood and more stalwart?

"English is gaining more speakers every day." Which English do you mean? Any one of the many kinds of over Latinized-Greek-French-Pidgin-Creole-English mixes spoken throughout the World, or the West-Germanic first tongue of England and America?

"The fact that it has a large vocab borrowed from Latin doesn't mean it's not English." Hmmm...how so? It would seem that English speakers have lost the means to speak about a great many things without fremd words. That would seem to show that West-Germanic English is dying, albeit slowly. If we be true wards of English, we'd be making new words in all fields (high technicality notwithstanding), and hold unneeded borrowing way down, to keep the tongue timely and alive.

"All languages borrow words, there's no such thing as a pure language." Yes; whoever says or thinks any tongue is free from outside sway foreswears the truth. That is not what is at play here...at least for me.

There is nothing wrong, as far as I can see, with a folk keeping their tongue with the times, like in Iceland or France.

At the end of the day, the word root hardly matters. What is noteworthy is whether the message is clearly understood. Part of the problem is that at school and college we are instilled with the idea that nominalisations, passives, latinate vocabulary, and impersonal structures are the stuff of academic and formal writing. Thus for example:
A) "Government intervention is required"
B) "The government should do something".
Version A gets the plaudits for being the 'right' style. However version B is clearer and sturdier.
"Government intervention" as a phrase is quite hard to render into something more Anglish; what is needed is a less contuminous (!=)) approach... whatever that be.

" If the earliest know source is Germanic, the dictionaries will say so. No one is hiding anything."

the word books do not always say so; at least that is not what I have found. It must be an oversight, thoughtlessness, or slim means. ;-) Anyway...

Feud "hated" should've been *feed in today's English [< O.E. fǣhþ(u) < PIE *pAik-, *pAig- ], but it seems the Norman-French 'feud' "property, livestock" [< Frankish: *fehu, *fihu < PIE *peḱu-] helped to shape the words spelling. Fee, Fief, Med. Latin feudum, feodum, and many others are from the same root.

Proto- Indo-European raises as many questions as it answers; Proto-Germanic even more so. As John McWhorter wrote in "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English" ( a great book, by the way), "...Proto-Germanic was a distinctly weird off-shoot of Proto-Indo-European...with a mysterious many of the Proto-Germanic words, we just hit a wall." The Germanic branch seems to have gone its own way.

Keep in mind, shifts in word meanings and new words taking over for old ones is acknowledged all over as standard happenings in any tongue. The Germanic tongues are not left out of this, so it is not odd that there are many Germanic words of unknown roots. Although your words are thought stirring...

"English is still a Germanic tongue, but many of it's upper-crusty know-it-all's seem to want to keep on shaping it into the new Latin. English will then go the way of Gothic, Langobardic, and Frankish."

No it won't. English is gaining more speakers every day. The fact that it has a large vocab borrowed from Latin doesn't mean it's not English. All languages borrow words, there's no such thing as a pure language.

@ þ: "I don't care one bit about how "Germanic" a word is, or for making English "more Germanic".... I want to root out linguistic snobbishness or elitism, not foreignness."

I am with you somewhat here. I care about all of the words that English has lost, making it something other than English. English is still a Germanic tongue, but many of it's upper-crusty know-it-all's seem to want to keep on shaping it into the new Latin. English will then go the way of Gothic, Langobardic, and Frankish.

Borrowing is only good when needed... orange, kitchen, wine, and so on, are good since they show how folks of yesteryear came together to share and learn from one another.

What it comes down to is this:

"Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent." -- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" (1946)

Inkhorns must go for the good of the English tongue. My 2 Marks.

By the way, beer is one of those words that is marked "...of disputed and ambiguous origin." Here is a great post on this word and it's shrouded root: http://zythophile.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/words-for-beer-3-the-big-mysteries/#more-1363

The idea that a word has a "true root" seems silly to me. "feud" was borrowed from French, which borrowed it from OHG. Where did it come from before that? Was it borrowed from another unknown source? Some experts think that a large percentage of Proto-Germanic vocab doesnt come from PIE. And if it goes back to PIE, where did it come from before that?

"My whole thought above was about Academia not acknowledging the true roots of "French" words that came into English."

I don't know what this means. The etymologies of these words are easy for anyone to look up. If a dictionary says "obscure" that means that either experts aren't sure or don't agree. If the earliest know source is Germanic, the dictionaries will say so. No one is hiding anything.

The question of where a word is "from" completely depends on what you want to know. You could be interested in the immediate source, or you might want to go further back in time. 

Goofy:"But all these words were borrowed from French. The might be from a Germanic source if you go further back, but that doesn't change the fact that they were borrowed into English from French."

You see, that's my issue with a lot of Anglish summed up. I don't care one bit about how "Germanic" a word is, or for making English "more Germanic". That's nonsense to me. I care only that words came in to English from certain sources--specifically French, Latin and Greek--because many folk at the time were of the opinion that they were "better" languages. I don't agree that one language is better than another--English is equal in worth to Swahili, Chinese or Aymara--and that means I reject words brought into English on that belief. I want to root out linguistic snobbishness or elitism, not foreignness.

It makes all this playing with word origins so irrelevant, as knowing where a word came from into English is relatively easy, and anything beyond that doesn't matter. When I see people insist that "allegiance" can stay because it's "Germanic" but "cup", "wall", and "beer" have to go because they're ultimately not, it makes me weep for the meaninglessness of it all. There's an awful lot of aimless and worthless work on what could be--no, is--an interesting and worthwhile attempt to re-evaluate how we look at our language.

I've laid my thoughts out very clearly, and I wish others would do the same so that they can reflect upon on them:http://rootsenglish.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/1-on-good-grounds/

@goofy: "but that doesn't change the fact that they were borrowed into English from French."

True enough, but the French got it from a Germanic word/root, which likely was already in English at the first. My whole thought above was about Academia not acknowledging the true roots of "French" words that came into English. It is not right to call them French; folks not in the know always read in that it is "Latin-French," even when it is not. The French have, for a long time, down played the Germanic words in the French tongue >> it's seems it is a truth that is kept under wraps > willfully or not, I cannot say. In the same way, it would be wrong to say that BANANA comes from Spanish/Portuguese, when in truth, it came through those tongues from Wolof.

What is odd is that Wordlorists always seem to acknowledge Latin --with or without any grounded findings. The standard (< Frankish *standord) line is "from an unknown source" or "obscure." New findings have shed light on words that were once thought of as Latin rooted, and have shown that they are truly from Germanic roots. Look up the word FOREST to see what I mean.

Here is another good one:

FEUD < M.E. fede < M.Fr. fe(i)de > Frankish *fehu. The Franks also gave this word to Catalan in 976.(del germ. frànc. *fĕhu 'possessió, propietat' http://www.diccionari.cat/lexicx.jsp?GECART=0063693)

Borrowing Germanic rooted words from French is the same to me as borrowing Germanic rooted words from Italian (Langobardic), Old Norse, Dutch, or German: they are words all from the same tongue.

It is right to acknowledge the input Germanic tongues have had; it is wrong to hide it, willfully or not.

Ængelfolc posted this a while ago:

* allegiance (from O.E. læt)

"allegiance" is derived from Old French "liege", which *might* be a borrowing of Old High German "ledig".

* Feudal (from Goth. *faihu, O.H.G. *fihu)

This is in Skeat, but it is disputed. "feudal" is ultimately from medieval Latin "feodum", and the OED has a long discussion on why further etymology is obscure.

* standard ( from Frankish *standhard)

This is either ultimately from Latin "extendere" or from Frankish *standan, from PIE *steh2.

* baron ( from Frankish baro; merged with cog. O.E. beorn)

"baron" is from late Latin "baro", which might from Celtic *bar, or from OHG bero "bearer", or from the same source as OE "beorn", or from something else entirely.

Ængelfolc writes "Check twice, if you think, or more importantly someone (especially in Academia) tells you, a word in English is borrowed from French."

But all these words were borrowed from French. The might be from a Germanic source if you go further back, but that doesn't change the fact that they were borrowed into English from French.

Another word that English doesn't need >> DELIQUESCE

(v) To dissolve gradually and become liquid by attracting and absorbing moisture from the air, as certain salts, acids, and alkalies.

In English >> to slowly melt away over time.

INKHORN, anyone?

How does one teach the word "susceptible" to overseas students?
Well of course it is "sub"+"cept"+ible = under - take - able -> wide open to
we can link it with:
acceptable (ad = to) -> take-on-board-able -> well-takeable
reception receive receptacle -> foreroom, get, ??
capture caption captive -> taking, headline, taken-man/heldman
perception perceive -> seeing/ making-out
deception deceive -> take someone in
exception except -> aside from / take-out
...
and now we come to the word "intervention".... inter+venire veni ventum
a coming-between
with another great batch of linked words made up with either inter or ven

I think many of these words are benoted in today's English because it is not easy to find a ready stand-in, and it is mighty hard to find the path from the latinate word to a truly English one. The wiring is truly not there in my mind already, and it gives me a head-ache. Truly "pain in the English".

I'm pretty sure it's the etymology. Clark is saying the etymology of "clȳsan" is "clūse" which means "bar, bolt: enclosure: cell, prison", which is borrowed from Latin "clausum". So "clȳsan" is an i-umlauted verb form of "clūse".

"Further, The Clark Concise A-S Dict. has: -clýsan v. be-c. [clûse] [[under "clûs"]]."

I had a look at Clark, and it's not clear to me what the material in the square brackets is supposed to be. The introduction makes no mention of what these brackets are for. It is not obvious to me that is is an alternate form. Other entries suggest that the square brackets are for etymologies or modern reflexes.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31543/31543-h/main.html

"Most of it is likely right but it would be nuts to say that it's all 100% right."

I never said anything was 100% accurate. I just said that there were some things we could be reasonably certain about, and that if you have a different hypothesis, you need good evidence.

"first we hav that the Saxons didn't mark their vowels … Or maybe I should say that they seldom did."

Are you talking about how OE writing doesn't distinguish long and short vowels? You're right, but the comparative method, as well as examination of OE prosody, and examination of the modern reflexes of OE words, let us determine the values of the vowels.

"The ū often, but not always, yields 'oo' in today's English. It seemingly did yield 'oo' in some of the ME spellings of close (cloos)."

Except that as I've already said more than once, ME "oo" was not prounced /ū/. It was probably pronounced something closer to /o/. It can't have been pronounced /ū/ in ME, because words spelled with "oo" became to be pronounced /ū/ after the Great Vowel Shift. And OE ū usually became modern /aw/ as in "house".

"Yes many, gewiss not all, of the ȳ words today is spoken with a long ī. However, that IN NO WAY means that it was said that way in OE."

I never said it was pronounced with a long "i" in OE. I said that if "clysan" had survived into modern English, it would probably be pronounced with a long "i" now.

"However, they did adopt the French spelling and either thru the GVS or with pronunciation chasing spelling, the pronunciation shifted more to the 'o' sound as well."

The Great Vowel Shift would have had nothing to do with long /ū/ or long /ȳ/ turning into /o/.

"In Clark's Concise Dict. we hav fyrhto, fyrhtu (fryht-, N) f. 'fright,' fear, dread, trembling [forht] … whoa … fyrht = forht? yep … y=o …"

Is "forcht" even Old English? Anyway that's a short /y/ in "fyrhto", and we're talking about long /ȳ/.

You gave some examples of "u" alternating with "o" at the end of a word in OE. That's a specific environment, and it doesn't necessarily mean that they alternate in other environments. And these examples concern short /u/, not long /ū/.

"So you see, it isn't a great leap from OE clȳs-/clūs- to close."

You havent provided any evidence that OE "ȳ" was pronounced /ū/. And you've provided some speculation, but no evidence, that "close" was a French respelling of the OE word because the vowels were similar.

"And we often see pronunciation chasing spelling (route is more often said as 'rowt' than root; thou was once thu rather than "thow"

I'll give you "route", the pronuncation with /aw/ is a spelling pronunciation. It happens sometimes. But the pronunciation of "thou" didn't change because of the spelling! It changed because of the Great Vowel Shift.

Sorry for the hit and run again, but I'm on limited time.

Linguists hav a sted and they hav worth, but in my findings, they make the utter worst etymologists. They can see the worm in the bark of tree but can't see the forest that they're standing in the middle of.

Any … ANY … building up of the way that we THINK that words were said before masheens were made to record such words is subjectiv gesswork. Most of it is likely right but it would be nuts to say that it's all 100% right. It should only serve as an overall guide but not as an absolute marker.

So, anent OE, first we hav that the Saxons didn't mark their vowels … Or maybe I should say that they seldom did. I haven't seen it but I haven't read many handwritten writs either. I like better to read the typ'd ones so I lean on those who made the overwritings to be right. The vowel marking is a nowadays thing to help us to read and MAYBE say the word somewhat near to how some THINK the Saxons said it. Most will admit that if a boatload of Anglo-Saxons came thru a time tunnel that even our utmost, best Anglo-Saxon scholar would hav a hard time speaking with them.

Further, The Clark Concise A-S Dict. has: -clýsan v. be-c. [clûse] [[under "clûs"]]. Well there it is … it can be ȳ or ū! The ū often, but not always, yields 'oo' in today's English. It seemingly did yield 'oo' in some of the ME spellings of close (cloos).

So we know that clȳs = clūs and that clūs is akin to Plot. kluse; Dut. kluis; Kil. kluyse; Ger. klause; M. H. Ger. klóse; klús, klúse; O. H. Ger. klúsa.

So, let's say, in arguendo, that it was an EARLY borrowing from Latin clusa/clausa. Then it would hav been big a leap for the OE clȳs- to hav been said with today's long ī. The y is said to be = to ü. Keep in mind that the OE ȳ was merely the y said a little longer (or so they say) and not a nowadays ī. Yes many, gewiss not all, of the ȳ words today is spoken with a long ī. However, that IN NO WAY means that it was said that way in OE. Soothfast, the those who teach OE will often remind one of that! So it's not a matter of a nowadays ī forshaping to a nowadays 'o' … It's how near were they back about 1100 AD. If it is right that the ȳ is only a lengthening of the y, then it wouldn't hav been that far off and even nearer with the ū in clus.

There are always exceptions: One would expect fright to come from a word with ȳ … but it comes from fyrht(an). In Clark's Concise Dict. we hav fyrhto, fyrhtu (fryht-, N) f. 'fright,' fear, dread, trembling [forht] … whoa … fyrht = forht? yep … y=o … Altho they are sunder entries, they are cross-referenc'd and hav the same meanings. Look at the -o and -u (fyrhto, fyrhtu) … it could be either one hinging on how someone said them. This happens often … searo and searu.

Now for the rest of the trees in that forest.

So we hav the nobility speaking French and spelling it clos- … the Saxon would hav likely thought they were SLIGHTLY mispronoucing clys-/clus-. The Norman-French scribes would hav written clos-. When English started being written again after the Gap (the nearly 100 years where is practically stoppt being a written tung), it began noting French spelling. Thus we see spelling all over the sted!

Now with the nobility speaking French and the Church speaking Latin, English was left to the common man. Those who could write were strongly inflow'd (influenc'd) by the French spelling way and often chose French spellings of words that were somewhat alike to the Saxon word. It's only natural that someone would want to seem "worldly" and "learn'd" by noting French words given England was wielded by the French speaking Norman descendants (and still are). We still see that today … Why should anyone note 'avant garde' when we hav the English shape of 'vanguard' … but 'avant garde' is more "worldly" and toss'd about a lot.

Since the y=ü had been droppt, then that left u, oo, or o. What scribe would buck the "worldly" French way of spelling it? It was worldly to note the 'o' like the French version of the word so they did. A few chose 'oo' but not many.

So you see, it isn't a great leap from OE clȳs-/clūs- to close. That is much nearer than many etyms of other words which take some truly great leaps. To say that the Saxon dump'd the word clys-/clus- and began noting clos- is laughable … it's downright ridiculous. However, they did adopt the French spelling and either thru the GVS or with pronunciation chasing spelling, the pronunciation shifted more to the 'o' sound as well. And we often see pronunciation chasing spelling (route is more often said as 'rowt' than root; thou was once thu rather than "thow" ... many such byspels.)

That is much more plausible than saying the English folk threw away their version of close for the French version. Thus, the word 'close' didn't infare the English tung with the French but before. Therefore the etym found in the OED is wrong.

BTW, I'v been told ... reminded ... that the OED is a dictionary and not an etymological dictionary ... it overall goes back to Middle English with byspels and more or less stops there.

Ængelfolc: Yes, to my mind 'human' as an adjective (which-thyng-word ??) is more woesome, as in 'human weakness', 'human rights', human mistakes, 'I'm only human' and so on. The other thing about 'mankind' is: what about womankind? (from a womanist standpoint). 'Human' is so close to the OE and the PIE root, there does not seem to be great point in burrowing around for something else, less beckoning, less winsome. Better to turn our minds to weightier goals like:
deforestation -> bare-felling, overlogging
semi-arid -> half-dry

Hey goofy, you're a good guy, and right to challenge what folk say. I don't know enough to comment on any given word, but I believe you when you say that we need to show how something happened and not just "find" an OE word that "seems to fit".

For me, the most I'm willing to say is that an existing word influenced the meaning and acceptability of a new word, even if it did not influence the sound. An example would be "blue", which always makes me wonder why on earth it was ever borrowed from French. It was though, and we can only say that the existing "bleo" helped by being so near. The same would go for table, market, sound, plant, turn and various Latin borrowings which were borrowed in OE and through French.

The picture is complex, and our understanding must acknowledge that if we're to make something lasting.

http://rootsenglish.wordpress.com/

"For those folk watching the olympics who don't know what "equestrian" means......
It's horse-riding.
I cannot begin to fathom why we make such a meal of it all when it's so easy in true English."

Hear, hear Jayles. Jolly (< ON jōl) Good Show!

@jayles:

Human < O.Fr (h)umain < L. hūmānus "of man" < Old Latin hemō "the earthly one" (whence L. homō "man" -> New Latin homo sapiens "wise man") > akin to < ME gome < OE guma "man" < Gmc. * gumō/-ēn/-an/-un < P.Gmc. *ghemōn-, which is still found today in the word "bridegroom".

Why not say "Man" two ways like was said before political correctness? 'Mankind' instead of 'Humankind'?

HUMAN is on of those Latin words that came into English way after 1066 (mid 1400's), and is, to my mind, unneeded.

If you believe that "close" is the result of a respelling by someone not familiar with English, then my question is: why did it stick? Most French respellings were just that: changes to spelling, not pronunciation. For instance hus - house, mys - mice, scame - shame, gylt - guilt. Why did this respelling of "y" to "o" stick, and change the pronunciation? Why did this not happen with any other words? What other letters should we expect to see respelled?

Simply saying that it was really chaotic and we can't be sure of anything is not an answer. Historical linguistics has a methodology for finding things out, and it's been really successful at showing that sounds don't change randomly, but that there is a regularity to sound change.

For those folk watching the olympics who don't know what "equestrian" means......
It's horse-riding.
I cannot begin to fathom why we make such a meal of it all when it's so easy in true English.

On the other hand there are words like "human" for which a stand-in is hard to find, another kettle of fish indeed, takning on board that there is an almost-the-same word in OE.

Orefastness/ respect to you, Goofy...

...takes a bold mind to admit a mistake openly, and shows a quest for accuracy that won't let ego get in the way. We need more of that type of mind-ghost/ spirit online and in discussions in general.

No, I'm wrong. Many spelling conventions were introduced by French scribes not fluent in English (A Biography of the English Language by CM Millward, p. 137). But that still doesn't mean we don't need evidence for our claims.

"We all know that Old English into Middle English was, after the conquest, ascribed spelling and lettering variants by non-English speakers"

We know nothing of the sort. Estimates on how many Norman French speakers lived in England range from 2 to 10 percent of the total population. Most people in England had no direct contact with the Norman French-speaking nobility. Yes, many words were respelled, but not by non-English speakers.

If you don't take me seriously, then I suppose you don't take historical linguistics or the comparative method seriously. I guess things are more fun when you do away with all those pesky rules.

*Usually, spelling follows pronunciation, not the other way around.*

Yeah, but most other languages were penned up by their own native scribes. We all know that Old English into Middle English was, after the conquest, ascribed spelling and lettering variants by non-English speakers who applied their own Romance writing rules to English words. And in the ensuing years Norman French and Latin was often used as the lingua franca for administration, though those writing it possessed Latin, and even NF, as a second learned language. So of course accuracy is dubious, and transcription discrepancies are everywhere, especially seeing as English was barely written for 300yrs and I once heard that before the consolidation of English due to the Black Death there were some 80something dialects of English bouncing around, presumably all vying with each other and because none of them were governmentally recorded then it is impossible to say whether vowels and consonants were static for any degree of time. Hell, we don't even fully know just how many of Shakespeare's words were concocted or dialectal. So don't start beating on the 'absolute evidence' drum, as you know it's folly, for there are still too many 'we think' and 'we estimate' and 'we're pretty sure' in experts' lingo for me to take you seriously.

Gallitrot:
AnWulf thinks the change from "clȳsan" to "close" was merely a spelling change. The sounds /yː/ and /o/ are so similar that people simply respelled the word with the letter "o".

Which dialect did this happen in? What exactly does "similar" mean? Exactly which vowels would be likely to be respelled? Why don't we see this process with other words? Usually, spelling follows pronunciation, not the other way around.

In fact, why can't I use this argument to just say that any modern word is the reflex of an OE word, if the sounds are "similar" enough?

The only evidence AnWulf gives is a quote by Trevisa where the word is spelled "cloos". But in ME, "oo" was probably pronounced like the modern /o/ of "home".

@Sefardi: Cheers for that Ive bookmarked the link, great reading.

@goofy: Well I think Anwulf's evidence was pretty good as a counter measure to the typical Normanophile dross. Nothing in his analysis seems wildly outlandish.

this is very interesting http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15755/15755-h/15755-h.htm#chapIX

It's certainly fine to speculate when the etymology is unknown. But the etymology of "close" is well understood. If you think you have a better account of its etymology, then you need good evidence.

Granted, there are indeed well-known sound changes... but vowel shifts and sound-warpings aside, no one, not even the most enlightened linguist knows the whole rounded story as to how English rang in the ears a thousand or so years ago. Though, admittedly, we're fairly sure how it didn't sound. But for those gaps in knowledge there are fair and learned guesses, and it's perfectly right and just to assume that something as transient as a soft vowel sound could be as loose and yielding when uttered as an old trick's knickers.

No, I am not agreeing with AnWulf. There are well-understood sound changes in the history of English. The change that AnWulf proposes is not one of them.

Wooah there, Matey, and plug the feckin' sluices!

Did you just agree with Anwulf to get one over on me?! Sweebejeesh, wonders will never cease.

Anyhows, 'i' mutation or not, the point is the original spelling possibility you alluded to has many exceptions to the generic y>>i exchange.

The point is that it's not complete chaos where any guess is as good as another, as AnWulf suggests. We know what the sound and spelling changes were and we can explain them.

It's possible there is "custy" from OE cystig. There certainly are examples of OE "y" becoming something other than Modern "i". Some West Saxon words respelled "y" with "u": crycc - crutch, dystig - dusty. Some Kentish words respelled "y" with "e" as in cnyll - knell. I recommend The History of English Spelling by Upward and Davidson as a good overview of the topic.

weorcwryðe = work worthy
...bryce = breach
unhydig = un+heedy
cystig = 'custy' NE England dialect for nice/ great

None of the words on the left, with the possible except of the last one, are the actual etymons of the words on the right.

"worthy" is from ME wurði, worði from OE weorþ. The "y" in weorcwryðe would seem to be i-mutation in this particular construction.

"Breach" is from ME breche - OE bryce, brice gave ME bruche, and the OED explains that modern "breach" is by analogy with "speak, speech".

heed is from OE hēdan. The "y" in unhydig would again seem to be i-mutation.

I'm not familiar with "custy", but if it's the same as "cushty" meaning "good, wonderful", then it's borrowed from Romani.

Anwulf's right... Modern English grew out of Anglian dialects and not West Saxon, and seeing as the West Saxon writers overwrote many Mercian texts and then cast aside the originals then no one can be siker of the right pronunciation, for the Mercians and WSaxons were at loggerheads with each other and the Mercians had broad inflowings from the Vikings affecting their everyday speech patterns.

Oh,BTW, there are examples of where an OE 'y' doesn't become an 'i' spelling or sound for that matter . Cowley lists a few from latter Old English in his How We'd Talk... from 2011:

weorcwryðe = work worthy
...bryce = breach
unhydig = un+heedy
cystig = 'custy' NE England dialect for nice/ great

...basically give me another week and I'd be able to trawl out many more. The Old English scribes were trying to write as phonetically as possible to their own norms, and shire to shire meant variations in pronunciation and spelling would change. Add to that mutations to sounds when the case altered. Like Modern German with umlauts being added to discern the sound changes between adjectives and nouns, singulars and plurals, and verb conjugation.

No, I'm not kidding. I'm talking about historical linguistics. Yes, it's complicated but there are some things we can be reasonably certain about. Trevisa probably pronounced "cloos" with a long /o/ (as in modern "home"). The modern pronunciation of "oo" as in "hoop" arose with the great vowel shift. The Old French borrowing is attested from c1275 in the OED:
c1275  (1200)    Laȝamon Brut (Calig.) (1963) l. 4867   Wel heo closden [c1300 Otho tunde] heore ȝeten.

@goofy ... You're kidding right? You cannot possibly say with any great certainty as to how pure or clearly the words were said ... unless you hav a wayback masheen that took you back to get some recordings. Even then you'd hav to hopscotch about the land to get the sundry different samples. Given the dialects and accents ... you could hav myriad of variations. Add in the merging of the two orthographies and you hav a mess that you cannot with any "gewiss" untangle and not nearly to the degree that you need to make that distinction.

How about this: (a1398) * Trev. Barth.(Add 27944) 142b/b: Þe egle haþ on foot ***cloos*** and hool as þe foot of a gandre.

So how do we think that person meant to say that? The oo as in loop? Then that would be closer to clysan than ō in closan (if said purely). Clos- did NOT simply bestedd clys- ... the spelling merged ... then it is a matter of either the GVS or proununciation chasing spelling ... as has happen'd often!

See y'all next week, I'm out here.

AnWulf, This isn't just about spelling, it's about spelling *and* pronunciation. Simply saying that the two words are not far apart in pronunciation is not enough, you need to provide evidence that a pronuncation change from /yː/ to /o/ is a reasonable one. And it isn't, we already know that /yː/ changed to Modern English /aɪ/. "close" is not a continuation of OE "clȳsan" because it violates well-understood regular sound changes. If you think the OED should change their etymology, you should take it up with them, but be prepared to provide evidence.

Let me show what I think is wrong with that argument. OE clysan (stem is clys) then we hav ME closen (stem is clos) ... all verbs went from -an to -en so that means nothing. So we hav clys and clos. Keep in mind that the right-spelling change the y in OE was often ü ... clys and clos are not that far asunder in the way to say them ... huru keeping in mind the sundry dialects and accents. So the right-spelling changes ... the French scribes hav a handy vowel/word and merely swap the spelling! The meaning of the words are the same, we're truly only talking about the spelling here.

Clysan was a weak verb ... it had an -ede past tense ... any ME shape would be -ed ... the ppl from the French was clore.

Guess what ... we find both in ME but closed much more often! So the Saxon grammar shape is what we're seeing with a spelling change.

There was no "replacing"! It was merely a spelling change. Thus the verb close was in English well before the 13th century. That is why the OED is wrong. They say that clos "replaced" clys. Nonsense! If it had, we would hav 'clore' as the ppl but it didn't. The right-spelling chang'd and they merely plugg'd in the 'o' for the 'y'.

It may be that clysan is an early borrowing but it came into the tung before the French. The thought that we didn't hav this word til somehow the French enlighten'd us is bull. The French/Latin train'd scribes only swapp'd in the 'o'. Nothing magical about it but the word in every witt (sense) of the meaning stood in English before the French came.

AnWulf, that etymology of "close" is not wrong. Here is what the OED says about "close":

"Middle English close-n (13th cent.), < Old French clos- stem (close present subjunctive) of clore < Latin claud-ĕre to shut, close. Old English had already the vb. clýs-an , < clús(e , < late Latin clūsa = clausa ‘shut or enclosed place’. This came down to 13th cent. in form cluse-n (ü ), and probably close-n was at first viewed simply as a frenchified pronunciation of this earlier word: compare biclusen , beclose v."

Yes, Old English had "clȳsan" but it didn't survive. It was replaced or subsumed by "close" which is a borrowing from Old French. If it had survived it would have become "clise" - long "i" is the usual Modern English reflex of Old English "ȳ".

@Mediator

Many thanks for 'deigning' your amusement. Naturally nowhere near as simple an analogy, but how else do you condense a 1000yrs of subversive language tactics into something that a) isnt a thesis and b) won't send even the most patient of folk to slumberland. TBH, most of the subversion was achieved through the vessel of the Catholic church until Henry VIIIs dissolution - and seeing as the church was imbued with wealth and they opined the power of God through riches, then I suppose they fit the bill.

@goofy ... Here is what the Oxford Dict. Online (the free version of the OED) says about close: Middle English: from Old French clos (as noun and adjective), from Latin clausum 'enclosure' and clausus 'closed', past participle of claudere http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/close

However, we know that is wrong since "close" is found in Old English. It may be an early OE or even Germanic/Teutonic borrowing ... and that's ok ... but it seems that it didn't come from the French. That the "rood" (crux) of the thing ... an OE borrowing is fine as it came from trade and "natural" (cyndelic) interaction (betwixt doings?). It's the raising of French and Latin over English after 1066 (even more so during the "Restoration") that givs me hart-ake.

Be fele ( http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fele ) careful about "LATE Latin" words. A LATE Latin word is often a borrowing from some other tung ... often a Germanic tung. It's gets kind of murky as one goes back in time.

We hav many words that are said to hav come into English in MIDDLE English from French/Latin but we yet we find them, or something hella close to them in in OE ... another one is "fealty": ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French feau(l)te, fealte, from Latin fidelitas, from fidelis ‘faithful,’ from fides ‘faith’.

What do yu think that the OE word for "faithful" might be? ... Fǣle ... the ǣ often sounds like 'ee' ... hmmmm

Now you tell me, which word sounds more like "fealty" ... "feele" or "fideles"? Kind of close ... And early borrowing? Maybe ... And maybe the French word is has a Frankish root insted of an Latin root or is a blend of the two ... and the English fealty may itself be a blend of the the Anglo "feele" with the -ty afterfast.

@Gallitrot ... I'm trying to sprinkle more Anglo words about not only on blogs but in my novel. I can put in almost any Latin word or phrase and my beta readers thing I'm worldly. But if I put in a little known Anglo-word ... yu should hear the bemoaning! There are over 156,000 words in my novel and a few ... a few ... little known Anglo worlds get the whining!

You guys are really amusing.
It all comes down to the poor working class being browbeaten by the aristocrats and scholars?

ROFLMAO

@Jayles: Which is what makes me so vexed with the situation. English was in no way engendered by Latin, so why on earth should anyone have to learn a language that was the tool of the rich to downtread the poor for the last 900 and so years? I'm an interpreter... and I've learnt more about English since learning German and Dutch than I ever did being brow beaten by French and the snobbery surrounding Latin. In my eyes, English has become a needless cacophony of sayings and idioms (housing the age-old framework of the tongue) due to the ridiculous ousting of its native attributes by scholastic tinkerers.

The most galling thing is unclouding the meaning of words to outland learners: for instance:
'verb' = 'doing-word';
'noun' = 'thyng-word';
'adverb' = 'how-word';
'pre' -> 'fore' as in 'forecast';
'suffix' -> sub+fix -> 'under-fix' = 'add-on'.
Really! we should either speak latin or use English, not mix them up without pale. Learning English is indeed much easier if one learns latin first!

@Jayles: I'm inclined to agree/ I lean toward yeasaying, however, all things in good time. It took time for English to become the unwieldy mess she is now, and it would take years to undo much of the inkhorn terms and jargon nonsense exacted on her. A besprinkling of oldy-worldy words would at least start the ball rolling, and I'd settle for that presently... but hopefully, bit-by-bit and with growing familiarity then it would become possible/ mightly to up the game and hurl more OE wordhoard back into the mix. To be honest, if anything, it would be a nice start for the bloody OED to recognise words afore the 12th Century.

@Angelfolc: notiert!
@Perfect Pedant: Yes indeed, we all face choices when using English: 'global' or 'worldwide', 'prevent' or 'forestall', 'introduction' or 'lead-in', and so on. The next step-up is where we choose to toss in the odd word marked as 'obsolete' or 'archaic' in the wordbooks instead of the more common latinate ones: makes it sound like Tolkien.....
anything beyond that and it becomes too hard to understand.

@jayles: "...German seems to need the article..."

Nein, das stimmt nicht...z.B. "Der Inlandsgeheimdienst ist Teil des Problems".