Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Username

AnWulf

Member Since

June 19, 2011

Total number of comments

616

Total number of votes received

580

Bio

Native English speaker. Conversant in German, Russian, Spanish, and Anglo-Saxon.

Ferþu Hal!

I hav a pilot's license (SEL certificate); I'm a certified diver (NAUI); I'v skydived and was qualified as a paratrooper in the Army (Airborne!); I was a soldier (MI, Armor, Engineer).

I workt for a corporation, was a law enforcement officer, and a business owner.

Bachelor's in Finance; minor in Economics
Masters of Aeronautical Sciences

Strong backer of English spelling reform.

Browncoat

Now I'v written my first novel [ http://www.lulu.com/shop/lt-wolf/the-world-king-book-i-the-reckoning/ebook/product-22015788.html ] and I'm working on others.

http://lupussolus.typad.com
http://lupussolusluna.blogspot.com
http://anwulf.blogspot.com

Latest Comments

“Anglish”

  • August 8, 2011, 7:24am

I thought that we had settled that pre-Norman Latinates are OK.

Þenung could be used. I chose dight because the word is short, in the nowadays wordbook, and it is a pre-Norman Latinate. Thus the Saxons must have found the word useful enuff to have chosen to use it. But hey, there is always bendability among users. One is not bound to use one or the other.

Your suggestion for satellite certainly covers artificial satellites if there is a need to be specific ... and would be a good choice as well but it's kind of long (five syllables). Satellite is three syllables (artificial satellite - seven) whereas fylgend, geneat, and gesith are two syllables and fylgestre and gethofta are three syllables.

I'm not sure whether to change to spelling to match the nowadays use of the letters or change the pronunciation to match the old use ...

y=ü and in many cases has mutated to the long i as in fire (OE fyr)
g=y before e.

eo=oo or u or ou (as in you)

Thus fulyestre, yeneat, yesith, and yethofta ... and yetheode or yethude

geol = yule; geong = yeong = young (yung?) ... BTW, knowing this then it become clear that yeoman is the contraction of yeong+man.

My tendency is to pronounce the leading g hard as in get. Tho there are instances of pronouncing it as j as in general ... What the heck ... people (Anglo-Saxon spelling of peupel similar to þeod?), could just accept it the way it is and let the pronunciation find its own worth.

I wouldn't mind bring back the thorn þ or at least having it has a choice again. I'v gotten used to using it!

“Anglish”

  • August 7, 2011, 2:34pm

To say ... Using "bearingacross" just sounding like throwing words together, doesn't really convey anything and crossover is already another word. If we calque German it would an "oversitting" which doesn't convey anything. That could be be another world for babysitting or sitting with an elderly person.

For the verb, I can just say I want to put this in Anglish and get around it. But the noun is a different creature. Might as well bring the OE noun getheode (geþeode) out of retirement and use it. It's close to Icelandic þýða (v) and
þýðing (n). The "eo" was often a "ü" like the "y" in OE or "u" sound. So I would be good with that.

In the getheode that I did, I also used ken, craft, and dight are in the wordbook.

For scientist: kenkrafter (ken+kraft+er) - ken (knowledge) ... word from OE cennian.

For national administration, I used: theod-dight - OE þeod (national)+dight (from OE diht - administration office ... pre-Norman Latinate dictare - dictate).

I got a little a little creative with satellite (from Latin for attendant): The options were: OE - fylgend (m) or fylgestre (f) - follower or observer / geneat - companion follower (esp. in war) dependant vassal tenant who works for a lord / gesith - companion / gethofta - comrade, mate, follower.

I picked fylgestre (f).

For communication system, I used broadcast network ... in the OE getheode, I used sprecungnett. I guess that I could have used "speaking/talking network" for Anglish but broadcast is already widely known in that field.

“Anglish”

  • August 7, 2011, 8:15am

The "challenge" was for the noun form ... as in the challenge is ... I just finished an Anglish translation of blurb that I saw in the Wall Street Journal.

Bodytalk sounds pretty good. I'll see how it fits.

I agree ... Any word like concupiscence should be tossed at once!

Since this thread has gotten so long ... I posted a translation of a blurb that I saw in the WSJ on my typepad blog. You can comment here or there.

http://lupussolus.typepad.com/blog/2011/08/sun-blasts-slam-into-earth-anglishanglo-saxon.html

The Facebook links are at the bottom of the blog for anyone who wants to comment there as well.

And if anyone posts something on their own blog, post it here and I'll go read it when I get the email.

Today's challenge: translation ... rendition, rendering, conversion; transcription, transliteration are all Latinates! Maybe "tongue-shift" or "tongue-rework"?

“Anglish”

  • August 5, 2011, 7:25am

@Jayles ... The story that I'm writing arose from a chat and a swap of emails. I started it as a lark and saw an opportunity to explore Anglish. I quickly wrote out seven pages and I've been going over them looking for Latinate words and trying to put in Anglo-Saxon based words ... It has been an undertaking!

Even the Anglo-Saxons chose words from other tongues prior to the Norman invasion. So I don't have a problem with using words that fit a nook. But prior to the Normans, AS had a rich vocabulary ... as I'm finding out when I seek other words and there really wasn't a great need for all the Latin/French based words ... a few perhaps but not to the extent that we have them. The AS even had lawyers! ... So you know that they had a lot of words! lol

You're right in that AS words have more feeling to them and that is probably because so many of the Latinate words are used in academics. But I'm constantly surprised at some of the more basic sounding words that turn out to be Latinates ... like task. Task sounds pretty Anglish ... but it's not. It's a corruption of the Latinate tax. Maybe it's ok since we corrupted it! lol

For example, I went looking for an AS word for opportunity. The best AS word that I found was byre ... which can mean anything from a shed to a strong wind to an opportunity. Interestingly, the dative case is byrum ... like the name Byrum. So I looked up the meaning of the name; it was listed as OE for "at the barn" and a couple of other wild ones. HUH? I know that AS/OE for barn is bern so I knew that the name meaning was off. But it showed up on two different sites. meh

You do know that Tolkien was an OE professor! Right? So the hobbit-speak in the Rings series is based on AS/OE words. Heck, there are even passages that are almost right out "Beowulf". So the task for me to find a decent blend that doesn't make people think that it's hobbit-speak! As I said, I started it began as a lark but I think that I can actually put some legs to it and make it longer. Either way, it's fun to write it while using the AS based words (for the good guys anyway!).

As for elf-tongue, one of the AS words for beautiful is ælfscyne (elfshine). I'd love to work that one in! The other one that is often used for beautiful is fæger from which we get "fair" ... Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?

@Ængelfolc ... For admit/confess the AS word verb is andettan ... bring it forward and make it “to andett” ... So, I andett, you andett, he andetts. Then we could take Edward the Confessor BACK to Edward the Andetter. Actually, it was Andettere but we don't need the extra e. It sounds a little strange at first but it probably wouldn't take long to get used to it.

Today's challenges/tasks for playing instead of Latin ... the word challenge itself and the word language in the sense of "body language" ... I don't think that "body tongue" fits here. Here is the sentence:

From the body language and nods, it betokened that Jared had agreed to perform the Ritual.

“Anglish”

  • August 3, 2011, 9:47am

@Jayles ... I agree. That's is more or less my method. It it is short ... one or two syllables ... then I'm usually good with it. Once the words start getting longer, I start looking for other words. I'm finding it a lot of fun to look for different words and learning quite a bit along the way!

In the story I'm writing, I've decided that the "bad guys" will use lean towards using the Latin based words ... while the pro-freedom (almost wrote pro-liberty) side will lean towards the Anglo-Saxon based words. Thus the oppressors will commune regularly, denounce individualism, and demand repentance. While the freedom lovers will gather together and mark their selfhood.

Two words for today: Honor (verb and noun) and color (hue?) ... These may be two keepers. The words that I come up with just don't fit the use.

Anglo-Saxon has a verb weorthian ... to make worthy / to honor ... I haven't found a modern verb form for it.

“Anglish”

  • August 2, 2011, 9:18pm

It's hard to know which Latin words came into Anglo-Saxon before 1066 (Battle of Hastings) unless the history of the word is dated. The wordbook on my computer doesn't usually give the dates. It just states the source. I'v found myself lately looking thru a number of sources ... I now have an online etymological site and two Old English sites that I use along with the computer wordbook/thesaurus. Even then, I often miss words like selfhood.

Bulwark might work tho, to me, it has a navy feel to it. I think I'v usually seen associated with ships.

Make amends ... amends ... Old French amendes ‘penalties, fine,’ plural of amende ‘reparation,’ from amender.

I had considered forswear but that means more to give something up ... I would hav to write: ... until one forswore his selfhood. It doesn't quite have the impact of ... until one repented.

But I like selfhood. In another story, I'v been using selfstanding for independent. I don't know if it is because I'm used it, but it fits pretty well. Now I'm just looking for an opportunity to use (em)biggen! lol

@Dyske ... "Actually, this shouldn't be so hard to do if the president of the US wanted to do this. He could for instance make the regular versions of the irregular verbs officially acceptable among all governmental communication." ... Actually this has been tried by presidents from Teddy Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan (and probably others) yet most people still use through, though, and although instead of thru, tho, and altho. Congress even forbade Teddy from using gov't funds to implement his reforms.

FWIW, I've been using thru, tho, and altho for over 30 years and people still send me corrections!

Comma before “respectively”?

  • August 2, 2011, 8:12pm

In the example you gave, it is not needed. Only use a comma if it provides clarity. The sentence is perfectly clear without the comma.

“Anglish”

  • August 2, 2011, 4:42pm

I didn't doubt that there was biggen existed, I was thinking that it was an Anglo-Saxon verb and was wondering how it would conjugate ... but it is a Middle English creation.

There is biggen from Middle English and embiggen from the late 1800s which was brought into play on a Simpson episode and later used in a scientific paper (see below) ... I allllllmost used it to in when I was reviewing a paper written by a Tunisian woman. She needed to add the phrase "venture capital for businesses to expand" I started to put in embiggen. I still might but it's pretty important for her so I'm on the fence about it. If it were my paper, I'd do it!

1996, Dan Greaney, The Simpsons, episode 3F13: “Lisa the Iconoclast”, credits, beneath the statue of Jebediah Springfield: A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.

2006 November 22, Riccardo Argurio, Matteo Bertolini, Sebastián Franco, and Shamit Kachru, Gauge/gravity duality and meta-stable dynamical supersymmetry breaking, published 2007 January 23, pages 24{1} and 26{2}:
{1} For large P, the three-form fluxes are dilute, and the gradient of the Myers potential encouraging an anti-D3 to embiggen is very mild.
{2} While in both cases for P anti-D3-branes the probe approximation is clearly not good, in the set up of this paper we could argue that there is a competing effect which can overcome the desire of the anti-D3s to embiggen, namely their attraction towards the wrapped D5s.

2010, September 21, If a future turn of events in Africa was seen as requiring the island’s military role to be embiggened and its facilities rendered much more secure http://www.economist.com/node/17082686

---

On another note, I was thinking of using safeguard for protective as in "safeguarding walls" for "protective walls" but "safe" is from Latin!

Maybe "forfending walls"? That might work.

Here is the paragraph:

Jared wasn’t the only one who lived outside of the protective (forfending) walls but those who did were often viewed with mistrust of not wanting to be part of the Gathering. Blatant individualism could lead to one being shunned until one repented.

I replaced suspicion with mistrust.
individualism?
repented? Maybe rue? "... until one showed rue" ... That just doesn't flow.

BTW - I created an Anglish page on Facebook ... So if you have FB, you can "like" it and start a thread there. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anglish/242781915742432

Stood down

  • August 2, 2011, 4:24pm

I was in the Army (U.S.) and I never heard "stand down" for suspending a person or even to resign ... I think that is a British usage. It meant more to relax or stop what you're doing.

For me, I agree with you, it doesn't sound right to me either.

Questions

What can I do besides... October 8, 2011