What Is Anglish?

by warrenm • 3 years ago

265 338 3 years ago

miles• 3 years ago

Reminded of the Japanese native words known as "wago" or "yamato kotoba"[0]:

"Wago...are native Japanese words, meaning those words in Japanese that have been inherited from Old Japanese, rather than being borrowed at some stage. Together with kango (漢語) and gairaigo (外来語), they form one of the three main sources of Japanese words (there is also elaborate Japanese sound symbolism, of mimetic origin). They are also known as yamato kotoba."

Perhaps like "Anglish", there is an ease and softness to yamato kotoba, especially when compared to foreign loan words (both kango and gairaigo). Here[1] is a nice representative sample of 100 words and expressions.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wago

[1] https://origamijapan.net/origami/2018/01/13/yamato-kotoba/

hunter2_• 3 years ago

Japanese came to mind for me as having borrowed plenty of words from English (often modifying them simply to ensure a vowel between each consonant sound, as two adjacent consonants would be too foreign) as my contrarian reaction to

"... [English] ever borowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt."

retrac2• 3 years ago

There are lots of interesting parallels between English and Japanese.

Old English borrowed its alphabet from Latin, and imperfectly represents its sounds in Latin, with a couple extra letters. On the other hand, the Japanese borrowed writing from the Chinese, and after a long struggle, eventually adapted it to perfectly represent every sound in the Japanese language. While retaining the entire Chinese character set. The piece de resistance? You have to figure out whether a character has a Chinese or Japanese reading from context, since most have both.

Probably half or more of all Japanese vocabulary is based on Chinese. Most borrowings were about a thousand years ago, or more. In a few cases it's not always obvious if a word is even native Japanese, or not. But the sound and spelling are a very strong hint for almost all words in practice.

There's a split in numbers. In some places you use Chinese numbers, and in others you use Japanese. A rough equivalent of the mono- bi- tri- etc. nonsense.

The same word has sometimes been borrowed from Chinese multiple times, at different times, and from different regions, resulting in different pronunciations. Not unlike English's "warranty" and "guarantee". Which are early and late French pronunciations of the same word.

There are Chinese roots used in compound words to describe academic, medical, scientific, religious, governmental, etc. things. And there are native Japanese words used for all sorts of common everyday things. Despite the majority of terms being Chinese in origin, like with English and words of Germanic origin, in many contexts, the majority of words used are native Japanese.

Words coined in Japan on Chinese word formation principles have sometimes been adopted in China, particularly around the start of the 20th century with technical terms. Much as how English and French have many terms where you can't even say whether it's really an English or French word originally. It's the same roots used in the same way in both languages and would be obvious to speakers of either language if they needed a new word. And they often need a new word around the same time.

lifthrasiir3• 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure that there are parallels everywhere around the world. The Korean equivalent is 토박이말 Tobagimal (lit. native speak) [1].

[1] Also called 순 우리말 Soon woorimal (lit. only our speak) which is ironically not 순 우리말 itself because of a Sino-Korean morpheme "순" (純).

jacooper• 3 years ago

Wait, computer isn't English native?

seszett2• 3 years ago

No, it's an old French word for "to calculate/to count". Today the French word for that is "compter" (and a counting machine is a "compteur").

cmh89• 3 years ago

'Compute(er)' is a French word

G3rn0ti2• 3 years ago

Ironically, the French „Académie française“ banned the term „computer“ and established „l‘ordinateur“ instead to keep the language pure. :)

bryanlarsen2• 3 years ago

Compter is a verb in french, the noun would be comptoir, I believe. But they use ordinateur for computer, because IBM wanted a fancier word to better sell their fancy machine. https://blogs.transparent.com/french/the-origin-of-lordinate...

vincent-manis• 3 years ago

How do I say “lambda calculus” in Anglish? “Ell-stone”?

roncesvalles• 3 years ago

If you want to read way more Anglish: https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/Oned_Riches_of_Emerichland

squiffsquiff• 3 years ago

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James D. Nicoll

nqzero• 3 years ago

Is this English: Yes

(riffing off the "Is this Arabic" that was posted a few days ago - it's a lot easier in english, ie if the speaker says ti's english, it's english)

dsr_• 3 years ago

More precisely:

Is this English? Cool cool, it finna be.

hinkley3• 3 years ago

With English it’s not a case of “if” but “when”.

walrus01• 3 years ago

speaking of Arabic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Arabi...

slim• 3 years ago

I won't miss his is a unique occasion to post this arabic meme (one has to spend his karma) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1e62d6wHIU

Explanation to get around HN guidelines : The guy says : "Hey Morsi [ndlr. common male name in Egypt], Is this English ?". It started when Modamed Morsi was president of Egypt and spoke in incomprehensible English. Since most arabic speaking people are notoriously bad at English, it became a meme used when someone says something incomprehensible in any language

tikkabhuna• 3 years ago

Sometimes speakers say its French as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_my_French

paganel• 3 years ago

Related to that, it's interesting how many European languages have heavily borrowed from French in the last 2-3 centuries, especially what I would call "technical" terms.

I was watching the subtitled video of a speech made by a Hungarian minister recently and the few words that I could make sense of were all similar to the their French counter-parts (or how I would think a French technical word loaned into Hungarian would sound like). Ditto for German, even more so, I'd say. Russian, too.

In fact even a word that we've now stopped regarding as "technical", such as bicycle [1], comes in English via modern French (so not via the French spoken by the Normans back in the day):

Borrowed from French bicycle (modern bicyclette), from bi- (“bi-”) + cycle (“cycle”). First attested in English in 1868, and in French in 1847.

yosito2• 3 years ago

Hungarian actually had a language reform in the late 1800s to remove foreign words and replace them with pure Hungarian equivalents. These days though, quite a few loanwords have crept back in. I'm not sure if the Latin-based words actually came via French or via English. And there are very many Slavic loan words in Hungarian too, and some Germanic ones. My favorite loan word in Hungarian is "vásziszdász" from German "Was ist das?", it's used to mean deal, as in "not a big deal", "nem egy nagy vásziszdász".

speakspokespok• 3 years ago

English also seams to borrow heavily from latin for anything medical. The words in Spanish for your bones, bacteria, etc would all be recognizable to your doctor.

dorilama2• 3 years ago

I would say borrow from latin and greek: bi- from latin bi- meaning twice [0] cycle from greek kyklos meaning wheel [1]

[0]https://www.etymonline.com/word/bi-?ref=etymonline_crossrefe... [1]https://www.etymonline.com/word/bicycle

Swizec• 3 years ago

This has been fun to observe in Slovenia.

Old words come from German, because we were part of AustroHungary. Old-but-reformed words come from Czech, because in the 1800's we wanted to stop being so Germanic. Somewhat old words come from Serbo-Croatian, because we were part of Yugoslavia. Modern words come from English, because internet.

So we have a language where words you use around the home are often germanic, jokes and swear words are south slavic, and anything to do with computers is english.

Plus a few French words here and there from the time of Napoleon.

irrational2• 3 years ago

Same with English, but not only European languages. Just yesterday I was listening to a woman speaking Tagalog and quite a few words almost certainly came from English.

coldtea2• 3 years ago

Related to that, it's interesting how many European languages have heavily borrowed from French in the last 2-3 centuries, especially what I would call "technical" terms.

And in other areas, like the arts (from painting and photography to film and the novel), legal, and political terms. That's because France in those past 2-3 centuries was a huge power in Europe and globally, along with the UK).

For France, this ended with WWI and was a done deal with WWII but there was still some momentum up to the 70s.

So it was kind of like countries today copy US terms, fashion, politics, music, etc.

hinkley3• 3 years ago

Rome first, the descendants of Charlemagne second, and William the Conqueror. “English” didn’t have a chance.

ggm3• 3 years ago

Borrow is an odd word to use here "loan word": even odder, just a bit posher (why is it posher? is loan more posh than borrow? really?)

* when do I have to give it back?

* Is it "by permission"

* do I have a library card limit how many I can borrow?

* can I borrow from the 'enfer' shelves? (there's a loan word...)

I'd say "steal" is a better fit. The word isn't coming back. Capice?

pwpw• 3 years ago

it's interesting how many European languages have heavily borrowed from French in the last 2-3 centuries

You see this a lot with modern Greek. As an example, appointment is ραντεβού, and elevator is ασανσέρ.

hcayless• 3 years ago

It’s interesting to me how comparatively impoverished Anglish seems. Here’s to promiscuity!

tomxor• 3 years ago

Is that mainly due to it being based upon a historical snapshot of English? that by definition never evolved further. If it had the same huge population of English speakers over hundreds of years (i.e was a living language) then it may also have evolved a diverse range of words without the need to absorb other languages - not that I care for it.

On a slight tangent, I've noticed when translating from English to Chinese (mandarin) many of the equivalent literal translations do not have a unique single purpose word where English does. So it can sound much like this Anglish e.g the literal translation of "thigh" is just "big leg", and this is not a one off. I have no idea why this is.

mc322• 3 years ago

There are lots of languages that are more insular than English. Do you consider them to be impoverished, why so? All a language needs is to provide the ability to communicate to its speakers.

mkotowski2• 3 years ago

Opinion of a Polish guy: In my eyes, English is pretty bloated, when seemingly almost every concept can have three or more alternative words, each from a different source. It is all matter of perspective, I suppose. :)

I think such feeling can be caused by languages that rely strongly on creating compound words rather than borrowing a new ones (example from the site: Dictionary > Wordbook).

pantalaimon2• 3 years ago

To me as a native German speaker it feels more homely, but that’s because it’s most of the time pretty much a direct translation of the German words.

danjac• 3 years ago

Compared to what? German is a rich language with a wealth of literature from novels to philosophy and science/technology, utilizing a much smaller set of root words.

English is a very bloated language compared to its European neighbours - it's almost two languages in one. That doesn't make English bad per se, but it makes it more challenging for foreigners to learn.

LordDragonfang• 3 years ago

Y'know, I've seen dozens of versions of this quote, but this is the first time I've seen it phrased this way and with proper attribution.

Edit: From wikiquote[1]:

(This observation is extensively quoted even outside of Usenet, and has appeared in textbooks. It has also been misattributed, in part and in whole, to Booker T. Washington, to Ambrose Bierce, to Terry Pratchett, and, in one case, to the painter James Nicoll (1846–1918).)

[1]https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Nicoll

giraffe_lady• 3 years ago

Because linguistic purism has a totally untroubled and neutral history of effectiveness.

triyambakam13• 3 years ago

The Anglish community isn't ideologically motivated. It's a fun conlang (constructed language) project from language nerds.

jerf• 3 years ago

Archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20230227185951/https://anglish.o...

zabzonk5• 3 years ago

Anglish is a kind of English which prefers native words over those borrowed from foreign languages.

does not make sense - english is a language sythesised from huge borrowings from other languages, over time. what is the "native" language supposed to be?

klooney• 3 years ago

Probably the Germanic languages of the Anglo Saxons- it's called Anglish, after all.

zabzonk5• 3 years ago

what it is called (which is a kind of advertising) is no evidence of where this came from.

bloppe6• 3 years ago

This is turtles all the way down. All Germanic languages are highly related to the other Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet we use to write can be traced back to Egyptian Hieroglyphs. People just like to pick arbitrary points in an evolutionary timeline and use those points to create in-groups and out-groups.

triyambakam13• 3 years ago

If you wind back when the borrowings started happening in great number, you get to a time when English was mostly "purely" Germanic. That's what this project is - as if Old English had continued on without being influenced from French etc.

zabzonk5• 3 years ago

borrowings have always happened.

and as regards early english, did you ever see phillip larkin describe it as "ape's bumfodder"? luckily we replaced it with many, many borrowings, so much so that looking at AS english is prainful on the brain - and uneccessary.

everybodyknows• 3 years ago

Don't the Celtic or other pre-Saxon dialects have the better claim to seniority, rather than the tongue of the Saxon invaders?

https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom/Anglo-Saxon-...

xeyownt• 3 years ago

They said that "native" is not Anglish, they should have used "inborn", which means their about page is not written in Anglish...

bloppe6• 3 years ago

This is a fun way to speak English, but this notion of "native" vs. "borrowed" words is incredibly slippery. For instance, the example replaces "union" with "oneship", but these words share a common Proto-Indo-European root and can reasonably be interpreted as the same word; the same goes for most other Norman words "borrowed" into English after the conquest. The page advocates the use of "Old English words ... revived and updated to modern spelling and phonology to be used for a modern meaning". How old is too old?

Not to over-charge this conversation, but it reminds me of anti-race-mixing ideologies. Race is also a much more slippery concept than some people would care to admit; we're all related if you go back far enough.

triyambakam13• 3 years ago

Yes, you could go back and back and back. But the point of this project is to see what a modern "pure" Germanic English would be like.

bloppe6• 3 years ago

Sure, I just think it would make more sense to pick a real date then. No words that would be unrecognizable to a typical English speaker before 1066? Sure. You'd still have to define "typical" because even modern English speakers do not all speak an identical language, and this notion of "updating to modern spelling and phonology" becomes a strange exercise.

All I'm saying is, the word "pure" doesn't make sense to me here.

lisper• 3 years ago

the point of this project is to see what a modern "pure" Germanic English would be like.

The absurdity of this is manifest in the name: "pure Germanic English". That's like "pure California Champaign" or "pure Wisconsin Parmesan". There is no such thing as "pure English", Germanic or otherwise, because one of the defining characteristics of English is that it is, and always has been, an amalgam of many different languages accrued over time. Even Old English had four different dialects. And certainly a "pure modern English" is the very paragon of an oxymoron. If it's "pure", it's not English.

There's nothing wrong with playing around with language. There is something wrong with calling the result "pure" because it casts negative aspersions on everything else as "impure", which is a word that carries a lot of disparaging implications.

jameshart• 3 years ago

Which is all a fun linguistic ‘what-if’ game - but when you start posting ideas online about ‘pure Germanic heritage’ you might find you attract an audience who are not just interested in word games.

axlee• 3 years ago

I see it as a fun way to see how english would work when it is delatinized / degallicized. Most other influences are a detail.

aardvark179• 3 years ago

Although it seems intended as fun I’m always a little nervous of things like this because it also denies the power relationships that led to those borrowings. Degallicized English is kind of erasing the relationship between England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and even Cornwall. I’d be much more comfortable if I didn’t have to explain to so many Americans that Scotland is not a part of England, that it isn’t a separate island, etc.

philwelch6• 3 years ago

Latin and Proto-Germanic were both Indo-European languages but that doesn’t make them the same language. A lot of the family resemblance between English and other related languages like German or Dutch is lost under the thick blanket of Romance vocabulary.

avgcorrection4• 3 years ago

Tired point to make. Languages are cousins, either first or fifteenth. (Or maybe they have no known cousins, but whatever… English certainly does.) Anglish proposes more Germanic words. It doesn’t propose to find words which cannot be traced back to a common Indo-European root word…

Not to over-charge this conversation, but it reminds me of anti-race-mixing ideologies. Race is also a much more slippery concept than some people would care to admit; we're all related if you go back far enough.

First of all, “race” is pseudo-science. Language research is not. Second of all, try to make an argument for “race mixing” which isn’t racist.

In contrast, Anglish is more of an aesthetic approach to language, one which doesn’t threaten to marginalize any groups of people. Frankly, I suspect that the reason why this offensive comparison is even brought up is becaue of the Germanic assocation, which some people might not find aesthetic for historical reasons.

TimTheTinker• 3 years ago

First of all, “race” is pseudo-science.

Thank you. That is all.

bloppe6• 3 years ago

I think it's fine to describe Anglish as "more Germanic". It's the words "native" and "pure" that I find confusing in this context.

Digressing a bit, I think race is rather akin to dialects, and species akin to languages. Neither have clear distinctions. Most people think of species as groups that can sexually reproduce, and races is a sub-groups of a species with identifiable shared characteristics. Similarly, languages are often defined in terms of mutual intelligibility, and dialects in terms of, well, identifiable shared characteristics.

But this is all very hand-wavy. In particular, nether can satisfy the transitive property. I might understand the English spoken in two different regions, but speakers in those regions could have a hell of a time understanding each other. The same applies to reproduction, and not just hypothetically: Grizzly bears can hybridize with polar bears and with black bears, but the latter two cannot hybridize with each other.

All this is to say that every individual actually has their own unique language, it just happens to be 99.99% similar to a lot of other peoples' language so we call them "the same". But within "a language", differences abound in vocabulary, grammar, slang, and connotations.

yarg4• 3 years ago

Races exist. I can't believe that I'm even saying that.

They're not a social construct. Nor are the sexes.

Human beings are a single species with a large number of branches allowing them to survive localised environmental niches.

Sometimes the edges are blurry, sometimes not.

But to pretend that races aren't real just because of an interlink between the study of race and racist ideologies is fucking ridiculous.

csours• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding

vitno2• 3 years ago

Before anyone gets too worried, the Anglish community in my (limited) experience has been incredibly anti-racism/Nazi/etc.

They are just a bunch of linguistics nerds who are having fun imagining what English would have been without a Norman invasion.

In the same spirit, I'd recommend checking out the Uncleftish Beholding. Although I think it predates the modern Anglish community, it's an attempt to describe Quantum Mechanics with Latin/French derived words.

https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/110/docs/uncleftish_beh...

triyambakam13• 3 years ago

Yes, every time I've brought up Anglish to someone they think it must be some white-supremacist project. I've never come across that in the nearly 20 years I've known about Anglish. It is, as you say, a project from linguists and language nerds.

PaulDavisThe1st• 3 years ago

The Anglish project is intended as a means of recovering the Englishness of English and of restoring ownership of the language to the English people.

https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/What_is_Anglish%3F

When I first came across Anglish I thought it was a really fun linguistic idea. Then last week I came across the above. Fuck no.

vitno2• 3 years ago

The fandom is an unmoderated site and does not reflect the general community. Racists have edit buttons too unfortunately. If you look at the edit history of the page it'll tell a story of far-right trolls attempting to rebrand it in recent years.

https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/What_is_Anglish%3F?type=revi...

triyambakam13• 3 years ago

I have had a lot of fun with Anglish in the past, composing poetry and even attempting to write school assignments in it.

However as I've grown as a linguist, I now disagree with the direction that they've taken it, but I understand why.

That is, the Anglish project uses cognates and sometimes inventions from Old English, Dutch and German because most linguists (and people) consider English a West Germanic language, most closely related to German and Dutch, and more distantly related to Swedish, Norwegian and Danish.

But I'm convinced that Faarlund is correct [1]; that Old English is not the only ancestor of Modern English, and that actually Modern English is more like a creole of Old English and Old Norse.

So I'd like to see an Anglish project that instead uses the Scandinavian languages for word replacements.

[1] "English as North Germanic [Language]" https://brill.com/view/journals/ldc/6/1/article-p1_1.xml?lan...

epicureanideal• 3 years ago

Do you have any examples of an English / Scandinavian hybrid?

Also, I wonder if such a thing might actually arise in the Scandinavian countries in the future?

OnlyMortal5• 3 years ago

Yorkshuhman here… we say “ta” (tak) for thanks. We also say “cheers” (tschuss) for goodbye.

Going a bit deeper, “dale” (daal - Dutch), “beck” (beek - Dutch).

Having learnt (not learned) in Amsterdam, it’s very, very like the dialects of the north east of Yorkshuh. So much so, it’s rather a surprise.

martynr3• 3 years ago

Northern English is significantly influenced by Scandinavian words today- for example the “-by” suffixes on town names is a direct use of the modern Danish word for town, Kirkby meaning Church Town in a direct translation

triyambakam13• 3 years ago

I'm not aware of any natural or constructed English/Scandinavian pidgins/creoles, but that sure would be fun. The conventional wisdom is that it's easier for an English speaker to learn Swedish than it is to learn German.

Regarding if that would arise in the Scandinavian countries in the future - it actually seems more likely in German speaking countries. There is actually a word for it now - Denglisch (Deutsch Englisch), similar to e.g. Hinglish (Hindi English). Basically using German grammar with large amounts of English vocabulary. I hear so many English words in German lately for which there exists a perfectly good German word already.

Examples:

Denlisch: "Bist du ready?" Deutsch: "Bist du bereit?" English: "Are you ready?"

Denglisch: Joke Deutsch: Witz

fsckboy4• 3 years ago

not a direct answer to your question, but there is a great youtube video explaining the reasons why English may be more Scandinavian in origin than we thought. has to do with... can't remember gotta search, brb

How the Vikings Changed the English Language https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZV1BOcGiV0

this is lifted from the google closed caption "transcript":

The argument was put forward by Jan Terje Faarlund, professor of linguistics at the University of Oslo. This is what he says:

There are many English words that resemble ours, but there is something more. Its fundamental structure is strikingly similar to Norwegian. We avoid many of the usual mistakes because the grammar is more or less the same. Norwegians find it easy to learn English because of the similarities to their language. We often find that when grammar in modern English is different from other West Germanic languages such as Frisian, Our supposed closest cousin or Dutch is the same as in the Scandinavian language. It's very unusual for a language to borrow syntax from another language.

For example, word order. In English and Scandinavian, the object is placed after the verb.

I have read the book.

Eg har lese boka

German and Dutch and old English put the verb at the end.

Ich habe das Buch gelesen

English and Scandinavian can have a preposition at the end of the sentence.

This we talked about

Dette har vi snakka om

English and Scandinavian can have a split infinitive. That is when we insert a word between the infinitive marker and the verb.

I promise to never do it again.

Eg lovar å ikkje gjera det igjen

Group genitive.

The Queen of England's hands.

Dronninga av Englands hatt.

All of this is impossible in German or Dutch.

And these kind of structures are very unlikely to change within a language. The only reasonable explanation, then, is that English is in fact a Scandinavian language, and the continuation of the Norwegian Danish language, which was used in England during the Middle Ages.

But why the inhabitants of the British Isles chose the Scandinavian grammar is something we can only speculate on.

temp23022711482• 3 years ago

A møøse once bit my sister... No realli!

fsckboy4• 3 years ago

Do you have any examples of an English / Scandinavian hybrid?

the idea being floated is that English is that Anglo-Saxon / Scandinavian hybrid.

tsm• 3 years ago

I think Shetlandic is the closest you'll get: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland_dialect

ZeroGravitas2• 3 years ago

They'd probably get some of that for free if they leant on Scottish and Northern dialect words, like they give the example of

Famous > Nameknown is one of the examples, but perhaps Wellkent would work better if they're otherwise using ken for knowledge.

triyambakam13• 3 years ago

That's true! I forgot about Scots

forgotusername6• 3 years ago

Perhaps the word bairns for children could have been used instead of the word offspring. The word is pretty similar to the Scandinavian words for children

pantalaimon2• 3 years ago

Wellkennt is closer to the German Wohlbekannt too

philwelch6• 3 years ago

It’s not clear to me why the project should seek to revert the linguistic influence of Norman invaders while enshrining or even amplifying the linguistic influence of Norse invaders.

ineptech• 3 years ago

What is the "Anglish project"? Do you mean people who write in it for fun, as one might write a short story in Klingon? Or are there people advocating that we should adopt it, by avoiding romance-language words? Something else?

triyambakam13• 3 years ago

Sorry, by project I mean community, i.e. yes the people who use it for fun

mc322• 3 years ago

I think it depends on what region of England or the UK at large you want to consider. If you're NE England into Scotland, yeah, Scandinavian languages had influence and that's is reflected in their current vocab. Other areas may have retained more of the original dialect with fewer Scandinavian influences initially though those would return via the Norman invasion with added French vocabulary.

spokesbeing• 3 years ago

Old Norse accounts for about 5% of English vocabulary, including very common everyday words, not regional. Examples: egg, knife, sky, skill, etc, etc. Tons of core vocab.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Old...

thaumasiotes4• 3 years ago

But I'm convinced that Faarlund is correct [1]; that Old English is not the only ancestor of Modern English, and that actually Modern English is more like a creole of Old English and Old Norse.

But your link says the opposite of that:

In the book, we show that both synchronically and historically, Middle (and Modern) English is unmistakably North Germanic and not West Germanic. (Uncontroversially, Old English, just like Dutch and German, is West Germanic.) That is, Middle English did not develop from Old English.
We claim that Middle and Modern English are instead direct descendants of the language spoken by Scandinavians who had relocated to England over more than two centuries prior to the Norman Conquest. We refer to this earlier language as Norse.

The model there is that you have Angles in England speaking English and they get so badly overrun by Norse settlers that their language is replaced rather than influenced. None of them realize that this has happened; everyone blithely continues to refer to their language as "English" even though they've switched what language they're speaking. That seems like a difficult case to make.

permo-w13• 3 years ago

> … English is unmistakably North Germanic and not West Germanic …

that’s exactly what they were saying. English is traditionally described as West Germanic with German, Frisian and Dutch, but as a creole with Old Norse it could be instead described as North Germanic

MarkusWandel2• 3 years ago

This has the same feel as avoiding "immigrant German". My family is ESL, and communicating in our original language/dialect has devolved into a free mix of German and English words. It takes a conscious effort to keep it all German when talking with relatives from the old country! But I agree with others, trying to keep English "pure" is a lost cause; it's a glorious hodgepodge of influences from all over, and I love it (as an ESL person).

triyambakam13• 3 years ago

This project isn't ideologically motivated, which I think many people immediately jump to that conclusion. It is a fun project to explore. If you have never come across the conlang (constructed language) community it might not make sense, but it's more so linguists and linguistic hobbyists having fun.

MarkusWandel2• 3 years ago

Sure. Reminds me of "Up Goer Five" but these language experiments don't stay interesting for long.

shkkmo• 3 years ago

This project isn't ideologically motivated

I'm sure many people who play with the idea are not ideologically motivated.

However, like some other constructed languages, ideology does play a non-neglible role. I think any time the word 'pure' is used to describe Anglish, it seems likely that some sort of ideological motivation is at play. William Barnes, for example, supported english purification to make the language more accessible to the uneducated.

many supports of the language were

martynr3• 3 years ago

It seems relevant to me that the English themselves are actually a good mix of Vikings, Romans, French, Germans and Celts (and some other stuff no doubt) - so to advocate for just one of these inheritances as opposed to the mixture seems a bit of a nonsense, even if one chooses to ignore the richness of interactions with other languages in Britains history as an international nation - “Global Britain” indeed.

imbnwa2• 3 years ago

Sicily is another island in Europe everyone and their mother landed on, and like English, native Sicilianu demonstrates its inheritance from its many mothers: Latin, Greek, Spanish, Norman French, and Arabic.

bee_rider• 3 years ago

“We the Folk of the Foroned Riches, to make a more flawless oneship, build rightness, bring frith and stillness to our land, shield one another, uphold the overall welfare, and hold fast the Blessings of Freedom to ourselves and our offspring, do foresay and lay down this lawbook for the foroned riches of Americksland.”

This sort of reads like an attempt at coming up with like a “English, 100 years after the apocalypse, in some super insular community” language. I expect there will be too much world building and some heavy handed social commentary.

Anyway, it is probably a fun exercise for the people engaging in it.

Of course English in actuality is the totally ownerless language that can customized however it needs to be. Let’s be honest about it, just messing with the language is pretty mild revenge, considering all the trouble the British Empire got up to historically.

SeanLuke• 3 years ago

This sort of reads like an attempt at coming up with like a “English, 100 years after the apocalypse, in some super insular community” language.

It sounded to me like English as spoken in Firefly.

OscarCunningham• 3 years ago

Weird that they remove Latin from the language but not Anglo-Saxon, even though the Latin influence was earlier.

ianburrell• 3 years ago

Anglo-Saxon is the original language of English. The grammar and base vocabulary is Germanic. English picked up little vocabulary from Brithonic it replaced. Latin was gone from Britain by Anglo-Saxon invasion. Then some words came from Old Norse.

Next was French, providing majority of vocabulary but not the most frequent words. Latin provides a lot of vocabulary but it came later, it is mostly scientific and technical terms.

Archelaos• 3 years ago

A rather subtle feature of Tolkien's style is that he often favours words or expressions of Germanic over such with Romanic roots. He does not overdo it, but the low frequency of "Romanic" words seems deliberate.

henriquecm8• 3 years ago

This gave me a cool idea for worldbuilding.

jagthebeetle• 3 years ago

Of particular note are some reinforcements from Old Norse (circa 850s onward):

- are (displacing bēoþ, sind, and sindon)

- their (displacing heora)

- they (displacing hīe)

As a linguistic game, sounds fun. Hopefully its pupils don't take it too seriously, hem hem, e.g. William Strunk the Lesser: "Saxon is a livelier tongue than Latin, so use Anglo-Saxon words"

SideburnsOfDoom2• 3 years ago

I have first seen this idea in the short piece "Uncleftish Beholding" (Atomic Theory)

"For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding

It makes some sense, e.g "sourstuff" for "oxygen" - which in German is "Sauerstoff", in Dutch "zuurstof".

CommieBobDole• 3 years ago

"Nor are stuff and work unakin. Rather, they are groundwise the same, and one can be shifted into the other. The kinship between them is that work is like unto weight manifolded by the fourside of the haste of light."

culebron216• 3 years ago

Although I know German and "Sauerstoff" and "Waßerstoff" seem normal, in English "sourstuff" or "waterstuff" sound just utterly hilarious! (English is not my native language.)

SideburnsOfDoom2• 3 years ago

English shifts up into this "academic register" for scientific or medical words, utilising Greek or Latin roots. Many other languages ... do not.

So learning that e.g. "gums" - (i.e. the part of the mouth around the teeth) is in Dutch "tandvlees" (and German "zahnfleisch") - i.e. "tooth-flesh" - has that humorous quality when the expected shift up does not materialise. I mean, does not happen.

nikolay• 3 years ago

Isn't "book" borrowed from German ("buch")?

kzrdude• 3 years ago

Probably common origin - i.e came to english before German as it is today existed.

Supposedly cognate with Beech (the tree) which is called bok (sv) and Buche (de)

dctoedt• 3 years ago

Brings to mind the Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe (of XKCD fame), which uses only the 1,000 most-common English words.

EDIT: And its online example Up Goer Five: https://xkcd.com/1133/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_Explainer

cafard• 3 years ago

If that is your thing, have a look at Charles Doughty's Arabia Deserta. I believe that Dover Books keeps it in print.

bitwize• 3 years ago

As others have commented, modern English is a creole made of bits of Anglo-Saxon, Old French, and Norse such that "Anglish" is about as authentic a pure Anglo-Saxon English as the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park are authentic dinosaurs: enough bits and bobs of modern material have been mixed in that it is at best an approximate reconstruction of something that didn't really exist in that form to begin with.

That said, I still giggle when I read "Uncleftish Beholding", as it sounds like how Marvel's Thor might explain human scientific understanding to his buds in Asgard.

jake_morrison• 3 years ago

My parents were English majors, and they met in Anglo-Saxon class. My father described speaking Anglo-Saxon as being like cursing all the time. Everything is basic words like "shit" and "blood".

tremon• 3 years ago

Is that because those are the only known words left in our time, or because the original vocabulary was rather limited?

brenns10• 3 years ago

My understanding (and take this with a grain of salt, I don't have sources) is that after the Norman conquest in 1066, the original English language was the lower class language and the Latin/French language of the conquerors became the upper class language. So the words which came to English through French/Latin tended to be considered high class, and the words from older English were considered lower class, rougher, and maybe in some cases more profane. A prime example might be beef vs cow: both referring to the same animal, but the higher class word deriving from French has become the culinary term whereas cow remains the term when speaking of the animal. (That I do have a source for: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef#Etymology)

I think that's why some of the Anglish stuff (or Anglo Saxon class?) might come off as rougher, more basic, simpler, or more profane. It's really interesting (but also really sad) how nearly 1000 years can go by, yet a language can still carry the scars of oppression.

Anyway, that's just my thought, I'm no linguist or historian, so don't take my word for it.

IncRnd• 3 years ago

  If certain people had their wish,
  with the language being Anglish,
  then Anglish wouldn't be a word.
  You'd need an English noun or verb.

kazinator• 3 years ago

The concept behind Anglish is poorly founded because English is built on Latin just as much as on Germanic roots, if not more.

What do they do with grammatical constructions like non+<noun> meaning "not a <noun> and non+<adj> meaning "not <adj>". English just isn't English without non-.

ex- is another one.

What do Anglish speakers breathe and push out of their lips when speaking Anglish words? It better not be air which is from French, Latin and ultimately Greek. Indeed, I see they replace that with lift. If you know a bit of German, it's not far off from luft, but calling the air lift screws up English, rather than purifying it. lift meaning air is a dead word that disappeared in Middle English.

I suspect purification attempts will produce better results for languages that have a less diverse, more linear (and perhaps shorter, in some sense) history and are spoken by a relatively small number of people concentrated in a particular area.

naniwaduni• 3 years ago

Unless I'm missing something, I don't think non- is a Latin root in the first place?

I suspect purification attempts will produce better results for languages that have a less diverse, more linear (and perhaps shorter, in some sense) history and are spoken by a relatively small number of people concentrated in a particular area.

Ah, but they're only (or at least more) interesting on languages that are already a mess of influences to contrast with.

dragonwriter• 3 years ago

Unless I’m missing something, I don’t think non- is a Latin root in the first place?

It is, from Latin non = “not”.

moffkalast• 3 years ago

Computer > Reckoner

walks up to workstation

At last, the time of reckoning is at hand!

davidgerard• 3 years ago

Beware - Anglish was invented as a fun linguistic game - and it is! - but then neo-Nazis took a liking to it. So if you wonder if some fans are a bit odd in that way ... they probably are. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/...

tptacek• 3 years ago

At some point, we just have to stop letting trolls claim things like this. Linguistic purity would be a worrisome goal if, like, any native English speakers could casually and correctly speak Anglish. But they can't, because Anglish is silly. It doesn't seem like a useful tool for indoctrination.

I'm just writing out of frustration. As a practical matter, if, like, the only people on the Internet that do Anglish stuff are Nazis, and so digging into Anglish messes with all the recommendation algorithms, then my being irritated at their claim on it doesn't make much of a difference.

temp23022711482• 3 years ago

I think anglosaxon suprematists have bigger issues. First, and foremost your charset is Latin. Enjoy your rune based punycode URIs.

iForgotMyPW• 3 years ago

This is dumb but I'll take reckoner over computer, that word is wicked

drpixie2• 3 years ago

It's a nice word. I wonder where they borrowed it from :)

billiam• 3 years ago

Tl;dr but it seems like this movement says that English was native before the Norman invasions. Whut. There are no native tongues, and the languages of the Picts, Welsh, Irish, Celts, Romans, Saxons and others shaped what was being spoken on fair Albion long before the Normans showed up.

Reminds me of riding in a cab once in Turkey with a guy speaking Armenian on the phone. The Turkish driver was prejudiced against Armenians and ordered us out of the cab in angry Turkish, which I did not speak. My companion laughed and told me the phrase he used to tell us to get out was Armenian.

longcat• 3 years ago

What makes today's English so great is what has been borrowed and adapted from foreign languages. Everything adapts and grows with the cultures around them.

crispinb• 3 years ago

It's also one of the compensations for so many of us native English speakers being disadvantaged by monolingualism.

praveen9920• 3 years ago

'..Folk of the Foroned Riches'.

That would make USA -> FRA. Half France :)

EGreg• 3 years ago

Angrish is a portmanteau of Angry and English — people are angry that Normans and other peoples brought more words to the language.

Portmanteau is a French loanword.

Also, before the Norman conquests, wasn’t England full of tribes like Britons who all had different words anyway?

xwdv• 3 years ago

Facebook is an Anglish word, so what was the original English word?

cardanome• 3 years ago

I can see myself using this for fantasy stuff.

It is perfect for adding some flavor and old-timey vibes to your writing while still being much more readable than actual old English.

jonnycomputer3• 3 years ago

What a quaint 20th century-sort of ethno-nationalist notion that is.

drpixie2• 3 years ago

It's disturbingly reminiscent of the rule britannia crowd, proud boys, and (now) dilbert :(

bbg2401• 3 years ago

Get a grip.

jonnycomputer3• 3 years ago

I think the downvoters must really not know much about 19th and 20th century European ethno-nationalism, or how cultural movements centered around language, religion and myth, were particularly instrumental in the formation of ethnic national identities, and what that inevitably entailed for those not in the hegemonic majorities. Nor how the invention of the past, construction of new "ancient" traditions, and a nostalgic longing for an imagined more pure mythic past served nationalist agendas among competing European states. And of course, all of this is still going on, in all sorts of places other than Europe (e.g. Africa, Asia).

But I won't complain about downvotes without an attempt to actually give people the opportunity to learn something.

Ethnonationalism, Nationalism, Empire

- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/11287462.2006.10...

Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe - Language Chapter

- https://ernie.uva.nl/viewer.p/21/56/object/122-159898

Linguistic Purism in the History of the German Language

- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291539411_Linguisti...

Revisiting Key Debates in the Study of Nationalism

- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01432-w

wrp• 3 years ago

For the non-British here, the history of the English language can be a toxic political subject in the UK. As an American who studies Anglo-Saxon-Jute language and literature as a hobby, I'm intrigued by speculation on how the language would have developed without the Norman Conquest, but I'm wary of discussing it around Brits unless I'm sure it won't trigger them.

secondcoming• 3 years ago

What in the world are you on about?

gerdesj3• 3 years ago

Anglish can go and fuck itself, as a wise person once never said.

English cannot and will not and never will be perfect, nor pure or whatevs but it will get a message across. It is rather more flexible than your average language and that is probably a complete accident. There are loads of pidgins of English and a phenomenal number of dialects. This is just for "modern" English.

You can fiddle with word order and ignore quite a lot of word endings and still it hangs together.

This Anglish bollocks sounds like a roundly racist notion involving "purity". I hate that.

calvinmorrison• 3 years ago

I guess the premise of Anglish can be summed up as:

No, we don't need latin, or greek roots, to enjoy our language, and there's just as much if not more of a reason to use roots natural to our language, and no you aren't smarter or wiser, more scholarly or intellectual, because you use big long fancy sounding latin or greek based words.

maybe the reason a lot of english doesn't make sense (in contrast to german) is because we replaced a lot of words we might join to create new meanings with greek words"But there is also the further idea that Anglish is a recognition and a celebration of the English part of modern English. For, although it has borrowed thousands and thousands of words throughout its life, there still exists a true English core to English, the most important everyday words which no sentence or uttering could manage without. By stripping away the layers of borrowings, Anglish lets us better appreciate that core and the role it plays in our language."

gerdesj3• 3 years ago

English is French! (lingua franca) The reason for that is because English is considered relatively easy to communicate with as a second language.

English has quite happily built upon its roots and is able to grab "foreign" words and take them on board, without fear, favour or rancour. Why not? Modern English takes advantage of a vast vocabulary, much of which is not natively derived or generated but is still cherished.

Anglish with it's purity notions should be considered degenerative and racist in my view.

sublinear• 3 years ago

there still exists a true English core to English, the most important everyday words which no sentence or uttering could manage without.

I want to agree with this, but the handful of Anglish examples I've heard with old English equivalents seem awkward. Reducing the borrowed words really helps with comprehension though.

irrational2• 3 years ago

This reads like Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer (where he describes things using the ten hundred most common words in English) mixed with racism.

maximinus_thrax• 3 years ago

We the Folk of the Foroned Riches, to make a more flawless oneship, build rightness, bring frith and stillness to our land, shield one another, uphold the overall welfare, and hold fast the Blessings of Freedom to ourselves and our offspring, do foresay and lay down this lawbook for the foroned riches of Americksland.

:)) for a second there I thought this was /r/justneckbeardthings

ascotan2• 3 years ago

Honestly I can only hear this in the voice of one of the hobbits from the Amazon LOTR series.

permo-w13• 3 years ago

"I am of this opinion that our own tung should be written cleane and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borowing of other tunges; wherein if we take not heed by tiim, ever borowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt." - John Cheke

I think John Cheke can be satisfied that English has repaid its dues ten times over in the modern era

Octokiddie• 3 years ago

The term "Anglish" was made up by Paul Jennings in 1966, however the desire to remove foreign influence from the English language is a tradition that goes back all the way to 1066 when the Norman invasion brought in the majority of foreign vocabulary to English.

It's worth noting that Paul Jennings is described as a "humourist."

Paul Francis Jennings (20 June 1918 – 26 December 1989) was an English humourist and author.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Jennings_(British_author)

ihatepython• 3 years ago

I was hoping it would be a combination of Angular and English.

ascotan2• 3 years ago

This is silly. There is no such thing as "native" English. English is a hodgepodge of languages from Scandinavian, Celtic, German, Latin, French and more.

chadlavi• 3 years ago

And the Angles came from modern day Germany anyway

coding123• 3 years ago

why? serious question

tw1984• 3 years ago

wait a sec, their web site itself is written in English not that fancy Anglish!

sharkjacobs• 3 years ago

An interesting illustration of this is the way in which the English flower names which were in use till very recently are being ousted by Greek ones, snapdragon becoming antirrhinum, forget-me-not becoming myosotis, etc. It is hard to see any practical reason for this change of fashion: it is probably due to an instinctive turning-away from the more homely word and a vague feeling that the Greek word is scientific.

from Politics and the English Language by George Orwell

omoikane• 3 years ago

These examples like "wordbook" and "nameknown" reminds me of Newspeak, in the sense of building words by concatenating simple words.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

ryanschneider• 3 years ago

I coincidentally just watched a YT video by RobWords on the same subject last week: https://youtu.be/aMA3M6b9iEY

It’s an interesting watch but I do see why the attempts at “purifying” the language are troubling if taken as an actual attempt at anything other than a fun conlang.

Edit: oh the video is mentioned on the site. :)

notorandit• 3 years ago

Nice and interesting. And useless IMHO. It hardly will be a small group of scholars and aficionados to shape a language.

More likely, we the people.

kissgyorgy• 3 years ago

In Hungary, we sometimes speak "Hunglish", where we sprinkle Hungarian with English words, most of the time simply because there is no alternative.

nickpinkston• 3 years ago

It sounds like how Cletus on the Simpsons talks - which may be because some of the backwoods accents in popular media are parodies of real accent isolates from remote areas in the near past. (present?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMKqRp3veL8

intellectronica• 3 years ago

This is a dog whistle for white supremacy that screams louder than a vuvuzela. English as it is used today is, like every language, the product of evolution, including cross-pollination with other languages. The idea that there's some "pure" form of a language, or really any aspect of Human culture, is an offence to everything that being human is.

kensai• 3 years ago

I thought only we Greeks did such stuff! :)

hyperthesis• 3 years ago

  ever borowing and never paying [1500's]

Did not age well.

English degrades gracefully, in grammar and vocabulary, enabling it to be widely used (or, conceivably, resulting from wide use).

inwit• 3 years ago

Cf uncleftish beholding https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding

jl6• 3 years ago

English has clearly borrowed a lot of words, but this makes me wonder whether English has borrowed grammar too.

bravura2• 3 years ago

The beauty of the English language always comes from picking the word with the perfect connotation.

At the most articulate, you have speakers like Christopher Hitchens: “It especially annoys me when racists are accused of 'discrimination.' The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members on one 'race' to be the same, the racist precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.”

― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

But sometimes the strongest turns-of-phrase in English can be the simplest. We were recently chatting about the Portuguese "Cansas-me a beleza". In English, if you said to someone: "You tire my beauty" with perfect delivery it would be withering.

permo-w13• 3 years ago

that Hitchens quote is nice, but typically for him, and fittingly for the context, it’s more of an attempt to be contrary and interesting than it is to be correct. racists are accused of discriminating by race. he obviously knew this, and it’s still an interesting point, but to be annoyed by it is to be annoyed by correct usage of English

bravura2• 3 years ago

The word play here is one of nuanced diction here. Namely the secondary meaning of the word:

Meaning 2: recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another. "discrimination between right and wrong" 2a) the ability to judge what is of high quality; good judgement or taste. "those who could afford to buy showed little taste or discrimination"

I.e. the true ability to distinguish things, not simply sorting objects by color.

culebron216• 3 years ago

Reading the subredit, all the Anglish names of some special forces make a great alt-rock band names.

https://www.reddit.com/r/anglish/comments/11dtrqp/special_op...

Gouth Gripper, Fallwardens, Sundry Underrighting, Wyecraftish Loft Sway Band

tarkin2• 3 years ago

English and England and its history have never been pure. It has always mixed and took from other languages and other cultures. And from such derives some its most successful cultural items: its music ands its humour and its general creativity; that is, the creation of culture rather than the preservation of the ways of old. Purity and creativity and creation are no bedfellows. The project is fun for the addition of new words but I would hate to rob myself of the richness of English.

wageslave992• 3 years ago

Are there something like this for other languages? For example, Spanish without Arabic, Germanic, French or English words? It would be funny to know if a "more Latin Spanish" would be more understandable for Italian or French speakers.

BiteCode_dev• 3 years ago

That's basically what the Academie Francaise have been doing all along for French and why we have words like "courriel" instead of email in the dictionary despite the fact most people never use them.

oblio6• 3 years ago

A bit of consistency is good, I find, but not actually in actual words.

The real consistency you should aim for is pronunciation. Especially for loanwords. Yes, the first time you encounter "CD" spelled out in your native language, it's jarring, but over time the benefits of this add up.

Both English and French fail miserably at pronunciation consistency. See this for English: https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html

If you aim to make your language as phonetic as possible, suddenly acquiring the language is much easier. Still very hard, but a degree of difficulty easier.

junon• 3 years ago

Anglish seems just to be literally translated German, and still uses borrowed words (book, for example).

It sounds almost like the handbook from Severance or something quasi-fanatical, fictional religious texts or such.

kitd• 3 years ago

Americksland

This reminds me (a Welshman) of my favourite theory for the origin of the name "America":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Amerike

fumblebee• 3 years ago

This reminds me of London slang, or what I now know is called "Multicultural London English"[1], which I was introduced to when I moved to London. A friend asked me:

"Ey, wagwan fam, bare man gwarn dis flick, whatchu sayin'?"

Translated, this means:

"Hey, how are you? Some folks are headed to the cinema. Would you like to join?"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicultural_London_English

kwhitefoot• 3 years ago

The example of the preamble to the US Constitution is a bit poor really because the Anglish version doesn't properly convey the meaning of the English version.

A constitution is not merely, and not entirely, a book of laws. My lawyer wife had a great pile of law books, but none of them were a constitution.

And the idea that one can sensibly revive Old English words to use in Modern English grammar is a bit odd, they are after all related languages not the same language. The first is inflected, the second mostly not.

In my opinion, contrary to that of John Cheke, the great strength of English is precisely that it is so willing to borrow from other languages. It is one of the defining characteristics of English that a foreign word can be adopted, and adapted, very easily so that after a relatively short time it doesn't feel especially foreign.

maksimur• 3 years ago

I'm curious to discover if an Anglish opposite favouring phrases from other languages in lieu of native ones exists.

jonnycomputer3• 3 years ago

This is very reminiscent of 19th and 20th century European ethno-nationalism, or how cultural movements centered around language, religion and myth, were particularly instrumental in the formation of ethnic national identities, and what that inevitably entailed for those not in the hegemonic majorities. Nor how the invention of the past, construction of new "ancient" traditions, and a nostalgic longing for an imagined more pure mythic past served nationalist agendas among competing European states. And of course, all of this is still going on, in all sorts of places other than Europe (e.g. Africa, Asia).

Ethnonationalism, Nationalism, Empire

- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/11287462.2006.10...

Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe - Language Chapter

- https://ernie.uva.nl/viewer.p/21/56/object/122-159898

Linguistic Purism in the History of the German Language

- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291539411_Linguisti...

Revisiting Key Debates in the Study of Nationalism

- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01432-w

glonq• 3 years ago

I fully endorse harmless lingustic/academic antics, but some of the people behind "linguistic purity" also seem like the kind of folks who endorse cultural and racial purity.

timonoko• 3 years ago

Ænglish is the language of Ænglanders, who live on Ængland, an island with lots of Ængs. They used have trees, but fools burned them all down. Reason for this is of course that there was too many Ænglanders for normal slash and burn agriculture. And reason for this overpopulation is that they were living on remote island, so there were not enough wars.

What Is Anglish?

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