Profile

Registered: 3 years, 3 months ago

What is Anglish?

 

The aim of Anglish is: English with many fewer words borrowed from different tongues. Because of the fundamental modifications to our language, to say that English folks at the moment speak Modern English is like saying that the French speak Latin. The actual fact is that we now speak an international language. The Anglish project is intended as a method of recovering the Englishness of English and of restoring ownership of the language to the English people.

 

 

The goal of the Anglish project differs from individual to individual, but mostly it is to discover and experiment with the English language. This exploration is driven for some by aesthetics, for the ethnic English by cultural needs, and but for others it is only an fascinating diversion or pastime. Language plays a big position in our lives, so to be able to play with that language, and shape it to our own needs or needs is very important. For this reason, writing or talking in true English is a positive end in itself, in as a lot as it provides an different outlet for this need.

 

 

However there is also the additional idea that Anglish is a recognition and a celebration of the English part of contemporary English. For, although it has borrowed hundreds and hundreds of words all through its life, there still exists a true English core to English, crucial on a regular basis words which no sentence or uttering could manage without. By stripping away the layers of borrowings, Anglish lets us higher admire that core and the position it performs in our language.

 

 

The most effective way to find out the place a word comes from is to look it up in a dictionary. Most decent desktop dictionaries will embrace quick etymologies for a lot of of their entries, which give a little knowledge of the place the word arose from, and the way it was used or written in the past. Some online dictionaries have this knowledge as well, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com and Wiktionary. There are also dictionaries dedicated to word etymologies, which are a goldmine for knowledge about English words. The Online Etymology Dictionary is perhaps the very best available online.

 

 

However these will only inform from where and when a word came into English, but not whether or not it must be thought 'borrowed'. Some immensely old and very primary words, such as 'cup' and 'mill', are indeed borrowed from Latin, but nobody would say these words should not English. Conversely, words like 'thaumaturgy' and 'intelligentsia' are clearly not of English origin, and have been borrowed relatively lately.

 

 

Where to draw the road between English and 'borrowed' is yet an different space of personal selecting, and there are numerous views on this amongst Anglish proponents. A very broad rule says that anything borrowed from French, Latin and Greek in the final eight hundred years needs to be thought borrowed. A more discerning view would say that any word which was introduced into English to fill a genuine need or hole in vocabulary must be kept, however those words borrowed to "adorn" or "enrich" the language however in reality push out existing words, ought to be weeded.

 

 

Are there actually that many borrowed words in English?

 

Yes. English is renowned for having borrowed so many words from different languages over the past thousand years. The core of English is Germanic, but only about 25% of the words in English right now derive from such a root, and that features those of Norse, Dutch, German and others, as well as English. Which will sound like many, one in every 4 words, however not a lot when one thinks that Latin and French every account for 29% of the English vocabulary. Greek yields an different 6% of words, with the final 10% being from different languages, derived from personal names, or just unknown.

 

 

Nonetheless, as mentioned earlier, the core of the English language still mostly consists of English words, which makes an undertaking like Anglish possible.

 

 

When a word is taken out from English, where do replacement words come from?

 

There are many roots for words to exchange these which have been removed from English. Sometimes, a word which is removed will have a commonly known English synonym already present. Words like 'quotidian' and 'illegal' can easily be switched for 'on a regular basis' and 'unlawful' without shedding meaning or intelligibility. When there may be not a readily available English word to be used, a new word should be found or made. Some old or obscure words will be introduced back to life and reused; new words will be calqued from English morphemes using the old word's pattern; other instances wholly new words, "neologisms," may be put together from existing words and affixes. None of those strategies are right or unsuitable, however each has its stead in making a wide and assorted lexicon for Anglish, and every is used according to the context and particular wants of a word.

Website: https://anglish.org/

---

Forums

Topics Started: 0

Replies Created: 0

Forum Role: Participant