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

571

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”

  • April 6, 2013, 1:38pm

"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.

“Anglish”

  • April 6, 2013, 12:51pm

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/

“Anglish”

  • April 3, 2013, 5:47am

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

fangast - a marriageable maid ... ibid, p237

“Anglish”

  • April 3, 2013, 4:59am

@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

“Anglish”

  • April 3, 2013, 4:57am

@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

Pled versus pleaded

  • April 2, 2013, 2:13pm

I didn't say that Scots is French free ... only that it has more Anglo rooted words than does English. I should say more Anglo rooted words that are known and noted. It was farther away from the William and the other French overlords. Truthfully, those words are still in the wordbook for English as well but they would baffle most English speakers.

One should also keep in mind that a good bit of French is rooted on the Germanic Old Frankish rather than Latin. So we often get the same word in a slightly nother shape ... guard and ward are both from Proto-Germanic *wardo-".

I only spoke of plead not being "truly" English for that Georgie was all up in arms about how "English" should be spoken.

I'v read that some 80% of the thousand most noted words in Today's English come from Old English. As one goes up from that, more Latinates come in. Even then, most of the time, the Latinates aren't needed.

Having a few outlander words in a tung is not a bad thing ... when those words needlessly overwhelm the mother tung, that is a bad thing.

Pled versus pleaded

  • April 2, 2013, 8:42am

@George7th ... LMAO ... To be truthful, that "spinoff" known as "Scottish English" (SE) is more "English" than English! SE has more Anglo-Saxon rooted words than does the English spoken and written in England which might better be called "Frenlish".

BTW, plead is a Latinate. It's not truly English in that it didn't come from Old English (Anglo-Saxon). It is from Old French plaidier, "plead at court". That the Scots "englished" it (that is, making it more English-like) by making it a strong verb puts the English to shame.

Adverbs better avoided?

  • April 1, 2013, 10:55am

"To boldly go where no man has gone before."

Nothing wrong with adverbs. They're found in Old English as well.

“Anglish”

  • April 1, 2013, 8:49am

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?

“Anglish”

  • March 11, 2013, 11:11am

@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.

Questions

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