Principals of Anglish

April 27, 2012

I have spoken before about how there are different types of Anglish; my experience, in fact, is that there are about as many distinctly different forms of Anglish as there are Anglish practitioners. A friend of mine over at the Roots English blog has recently posted a very small fragment of Darwin. The differences between the three translations (provided by three different people) are startling and informative:

…reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings… (Darwin’s original)

…imbthinking on the two-way sibreds of lifesome beings…

…backshining on the evenway akinness of lifen beings…

…thinking upon the shared likenesses of living things…

[NOTE 1]

 These fragments are a pretty fair reflection of my experiences on the state of “Anglish”.

But this post isn’t about setting out the different strains of Anglish. Rather, it is merely to outline what I mean when I say “Anglish”, it sets out Anglish as I practise it. It is, effectively, an outlining of my program.

Principles & Philosophy

My statement of intent, if you will, is as follows.

Anglish is English when it makes best use of its own native roots and word-forming mechanisms, relying on its own inbuilt genius rather than that of other languages, enlivening, where needed, those moribund or underused strategies that it possesses.

This, as a statement of intent, is not bad, but it leaves a lot of gaps. I will now try to flesh it out, point-by-point, so that you can get an adequate grasp of what I mean when I say “Anglish” and what I am aiming for specifically.

  • Only elements of the English language which are still alive can be used.

Example: “thede”, meaning “people, nation”, is dead and buried, and went out before the modern period. As much as I love the word, it just doesn’t make the cut. “Ruth”, on the other hand — meaning “pity, compassion” — I consider to still be alive as it is implied directly in the very much living “ruthless”

  • “Alive” means still in common use in either Standard English or in some dialect (if only in derived forms, e.g. ruth(less), reck(less), kith (and kin)).

Thus, the word “thole” (tolerate) is a possible word as it still exists in Scots despite having died out in England long ago.

  • The more vital a word is, and the closer to the present day in terms of its usage, the more acceptable it is; words before the modern period (c.15/1600 onwards) are almost entirely excluded, but dead words from the modern period may be considered under certain circumstances (e.g. if they are used in prominent literature, e.g., Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Dickens, and so on).
  • If a word still exists, but a particular meaning associated with that word is dead, we may still try to bring back that dead meaning (especially so if it is still intelligible).
  • Plainness and clearness are emphasised, but Germanic roots may be favoured.
  • Anglish is not an attempt to Germanise English.

Example: the word “discourage” could be translated as “put off”; a Germanising translation (as many Anglishes are) would likely say “offput” as this is more in line with German practice. The goal is to make English more thoroughly English, not to make it more German-looking.

  • Straight-forward loan-translations are to be avoided if they do not make any real sense or if better alternatives can be found.

Example: perhaps the foresaid “backshining” for “reflect” should be avoided when the meaning intended is ‘to think deeply on’, as opposed to the literal, i.e., to reflect as in a mirror, because “backshine” does not really suggest “think deeply on”.

  • Anglish attempts to retain the richness, and indeed, expand the richness of English; it does not attempt to strip layers from English (the non-Germanic parts) and leave nothing in their place. Thus, euphemism, register variation, slang terms, and literary forms are all needed.

Example: getting rid of Latin “penis” does not needfully mean only leaving in its place “cock”. Rather, “cock” and co could function as they do, but the “scientific”, “neutral” term could be replaced, as we need one; for the record, I use “pintle”.

  • The effect I’m striving for is that of almost invisibility, where people almost wouldn’t know I was writing differently.

Example: The Anglishism “handbook”, adopted in the nineteenth century after German handbuch, is a good example. Who today would say it stood out over “manual” as being odd? It has just become accepted. That is what I want to achieve (in theory); language which ends up sliding into English almost without being seen.

And I think that that fairly well sums up my goal. If need be, I will edit this list in the future to provide a clearer understanding of what I am going for.

 

Bryan Parry

April 2012 

 

[NOTE  1]

http://rootsenglish.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/oversetting-darwin/

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In the House of Sickness and Health

April 26, 2012

In this post I’m going to talk a little about words relating to sickness and good health. I will also speak about the word “house” and its uses in this topic area.

Death

“House” is a pretty handy word. It doesn’t just mean “place where you live”. It can also mean, amongst other things, “a building associated with or used for a specified activity, purpose, or occupation”. In this way, it often (in effect) functions akin to Latinate –ary and is very productive:

courthouse, dosshouse, guesthouse, lighthouse, workhouse, warehouse, slaughterhouse.

However, it seems to be shied away from these days, with formations in –house often being replaced. For example, the above mentioned “slaughterhouse” is often rendered “abattoir”. [NOTE 1] Likewise, what were known in the nineteenth century as “deadhouses” are now euphemistically called “mortuaries”.

Now, I understand the sensitivity to death which gives rise to euphemistic formations such as “mortuary” (and “casket”, “deceased”, “abattoir”, and so on). And Anglish must also provide euphemisms, as euphemisms are a legitimate and important part of language. However, the problem is that “mortuary” has taken over and is no longer even euphemistic. I’d rather call a “spade” a “spade” and just say “deadhouse”, but if we feel the need to use a euphemism we could easily form them on English roots. Perhaps “gonehouse”, “lefthouse”, “Hereafter’s waiting room”; it isn’t difficult to think of potential alternatives.

Mental Illness

Let’s move on now from death to sickness. Firstly, to the phrase “mental illness”. “Mental”, of course, is Latin, and therefore no good for Anglish. So what can we call it? Let’s start by not trying to simplistically make a morpheme-by-morpheme translation of this phrase; let’s instead think about what the phrase “mental illness” actually means. Well, it is sickness of the mind, not the body. So it seems to me that “mental illness” can easily be glossed as “mind-sickness”. “Mentally ill” would therefore be “mind-sick”.

What is the name of the place where we often put mentally ill people? In Englandish we call it a “mental asylum” – more Latin! – but in Anglish we can already say “madhouse”. The problem is that “madhouse” seems somewhat pejorative (just as “whorehouse” seems to be; “brothel” being the “respectable” word [NOTE 2]). I personally have suffered mental health issues, and I have no qualms using the word “mad” of my own predicament; it was (is) my way of using humour to brush off the situation (‘Oh, I’m quite mad, don’t you know(!)’). But I appreciate that not everyone would want to handle their experience of mental illness in the same way. So let’s try to think of another word to replace “mental asylum”. Well, why not let’s, instead of saying “mad”, use what we have already come up  with – mindsick – and use “house” as we have been (that is, “a building associated with a specific activity, purpose, or occupation”): thus, a mental asylum is a “mindsickhouse“.

Physical Illness

Now, sicknesses of the mind are one thing, and another thing is sicknesses of the body. So where should these bodily sick people go? Well, a “sickhouse“, no? Or, as Englandish would have it, a “hospital”.

Incidentally, “sickhouse” is the word used in Swedish (sjukhus from sjuk ‘sick’ + hus ‘house’ [NOTE 3])

 One person who tends to you in sickhouses is the doctor. The word “doctor” entered our language around 1300, and by the late 14th century had come to mean “medical professional”. It essentially ousted our own word, “leech”, which has also stuck around in Swedish to the present day as läkare. I must confess that I’m so addled with Old and Middle English, so full of ye-diddly-de and hast thou-speak, that I’m not sure if “leech” is too far gone from our language so as to be unrehabilitatable. It does seem to have had some serious use until the nineteenth century, and continues even now as a jocular form amongst somewhat bookish types. However, “doctor” is, I would say, pretty well understood, and I’d reckon that 99 per cent of people on the street would never have heard of “leech” with the doctorly meaning.

The word for “doctor” is important as it leads us onto terms for other health professionals. For example, what do we call “dentists”? In Swedish the one says tandläkare, “toothleech”. But, as I say, I feel that leech is probably too far gone, and “doctor” is now so normal a word that we might be best to say “toothdoctor”. What about other types of medical professional, the podiatrists, psychiatrists, and even vetinarians? We should really think about these groups of professionals as a whole instead up coming up with individual terms piecemeal, but it is easy enough to see how plain English alternatives could be found; for example, footdoctor, minddoctor, and animaldoctor.

But let’s leave the names of professions for a separate posting, and instead move back to houses.

Spiritual Maladies

Sickness of the mind? Check. Sickness of the body? Check. Sickness of the soul?

The word “house”, unqualified and plain, can actually mean “religious building, house of God”. However, in this meaning it is usually put in the phrase “house of god”. The natural compound noun is, therefore, “godhouse” or “godshouse”. This is a good example of where using English roots can give us a neat word that we do not have an equivalent for in Englandish. What term do we have that covers churches, cathedrals, mosques, masjids, temples, and so on, if not “house of god”? Thus, godhouse.

General Health, Diet

Moving away from ailments and on to aspects of life which may or may not have health implications, I want to list some more formations using “house”.

Alongside “slaughterhouse” and “deadhouse” (as being “house” words ousted from English) are “bakehouse” and “deyhouse” which have now completely been replaced by “bakery” and “dairy”. The ending -(e)ry is from French. I find “bakehouse” quite a strong and admirably plain word; it is, if nothing else, a house of baking. But what is a “dey”? You might as well ask what a “dairy” is (which uses the same root, “dey”, but with a minor spelling change from <y> to <i>).

A “dey” is a female servant or maid (particularly one working in dairy), and the word is related to “dough”. The Oxford English Dictionary says “dey” is still around in “parts of Scotland” (how delightfully vague!) But anyway, the point is that bakehouse and deyhouse are good, plain, Anglish alternatives to current “bakery” and “dairy”.

There are several other extant -house words which have some bearing on our diet:

teahouse, coffeehouse, curryhouse.

Interestingly, there are a profusion of words for “place where primarily coffee is consumed”, and I am going to go off on a slight tangent now to discuss them. These words are: coffeehouse, coffee shop, café, caff/caffie and its synonym “greasy spoon (café/caff/caffie)”. The difference in meaning between these words is quite interesting and I believe not fully settled – an opportunity to set them in an Anglish mould, perhaps(!)

In my area (working classWest London), a caff/caffie, known as a “greasy spoon” by some, is the “traditional” English café with tea, breakfast, and so on, primarily focusing on food. “Café” refers more to a coffee house of some good quality (or supposed good quality); say, café rouge. And a “coffee shop” is a populist coffee drinking house which is not primarily for food (as a caff is), such as Costa, Nero, or Starbucks. All three types (caffs, cafés, and coffee shops) collectively are known as “coffee houses”.

Now, like I say, this is not a settled or universal usage, but it is an understanding of the terms which seems to extend beyond my own bedroom rooms and close friends, at least. In any case, it is three quite different, albeit closely related, types of establishment. So how we would render these words (concepts) into Anglish? Well caffs are already known as “greasy spoons”, which is pure English; Starbucks et al are already “coffee shops”, the latter word being English and the former being the word borrowed by a great deal of languages; and café could remain “café” or else become “European coffee shop”; and “coffee house”, the overterm for all three things, could remain as it is.

Final Thoughts

House is a useful pseudo-suffix whose use can be extended beyond just places relating to sickness and health. For example, “library” could easily be rendered “bookhouse”, “restaurant” could be “foodhouse”, and many other words besides are already attested: brewhouse (brewery), playhouse (theatre), filmhouse (cinema), distilling-house (distillery), eating-house (restaurant), bath-house, tap-house, and so on.

Often, a subtly different word can be made by using “shop” versus “house” where this is appropriate (e.g. coffeeshop vs. coffeehouse), or by using “room” (e.g. bookroom vs. bookhouse, where the latter is perhaps a public library houses in a building, whereas the former is a private or subscription-only library based in a room or a small number of rooms).

I see no real need for -ery or -eria (pizzeria, cafeteria, and so on) when we have words such as “house”, “shop”, and “room” to take their stead. 

 

Bryan Parry

April 2012

 

Wordlist

abattoir slaughterhouse

bakery bakehouse

brewery brewhouse

cafe coffee shop; coffeehouse; greasy spoon

cinema filmhouse

dairy deyhouse

dentist toothdoctor, toothleech

distillery distilling-house

doctor leech

–eria –house

–ery –house

hospital sickhouse

library bookhouse, bookroom

mental asylum mindsickhouse

mentally ill mind-sick

mental illness mind-sickness

mortuary deadhouse

prostitute whore; (euph.) working girl, working man

restaurant foodhouse, eating-house

theatre playhouse

vet animal-doctor, deerleech [NOTE 4]

 

[NOTE 1] “Abattoir” is a euphemism I find rather distasteful since it further removes us from the reality of what is going on, that is, the slaughter of animals. And I do not mean to say that I am against the slaughter of animals, for I am not, but I think it’s important to recognise, respect, and remember where these little parcels of meat come from. Dressing it all up in words like “abattoir” smacks of being an animal equivalent of something like “collateral damage”.

[NOTE 2] We do also have other euphemisms and humorous formations such as “knocking-shop” and “knocking-house”, of course.

[NOTE 3] They also say “läsaret”, the etymology of which I do not know. Someone care to enlighten me?

[NOTE 4] Deer is the homeborn word for “animal”, still used in other Germanic languages (e.g. Swedish djur); the original word for “deer”, therefore, is actually hart.

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Outlandish Words

April 20, 2012

The game being “English purism”, we often talk about “foreign” language features imported into English. Therefore the word “foreign” pops up quite a bit in our discussions. However, I just wanted to make some quick points about the word “foreign”, its derivitives, and how we gloss them in Anglish.

Johnny Foreigner

“Foreigner” is easily translatable as outlander, which is attested with that meaning.

“Foreign country” is likewise easy to set over into Anglish with attested outland.

But what about “foreign“? The attested form is “outlandish”. However, the meaning of this word has shifted so much as to be surely unrehabilitatable; I suspect it will now always retain hints of derisoriness even if we were to reappropriate it for the meaning of “foreign”.

A couple of options, therefore, present themselves to my mind.

(1) Change the pronunciation. Outlandish with its current main sense to stay as it is; with the sense of “foreign” it could be pronounced with the first, not the second, syllable stressed.

(2) Use the wordoutland instead which has an attested adjectival meaning of “foreign”, attested up till this very day, indeed (so sayeth the OED (pbui)).

I suspect strategy two is more likely to suceed.

We do of course also have the word “abroad”. Abroad, abroadland, abroadish? Perhaps, but maybe not. I think I’ll stick with outland (adj. and noun, country) and outlander (noun, person).

Foreign Foreign vs. Anglosphere Foreign

A final note before I wind this quick post up.

I often find myself, much to the confusion of others, referring to “English” but meaning “anglospheric”; that is, ‘of the worldwide Anglo-saxon culture, community, history, and language’. This is a kind of “foreigner lite”, I suppose, where Spaniards, Brazilians, and Chinese are all ‘foreign foreign’, and Aussies, Americans, and Canadians being kind of ‘home foreign’.

I don’t really find “anglospheric” to be satisfactory; and certainly, on Anglish grounds it is unacceptable. So what to say? “English speaking lands” doesn’t quite tickle my linguistic g-spot. English outlands? Not sure. Need to think on it a bit more…

Bryan Parry

April 2012

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Spellings

April 18, 2012

I haven’t seen the subject of this post get given any real treatment by Anglish enthusiasts, so I thought I’d give it a (cursory) go. And that subject is spelling.

The English spelling system has been profoundly influenced by 1066 and its aftermath. I’ll give a couple of sets of examples before moving on to talk briefly about what this all means for “Anglish”.

The Great Vowel Shift & Anglo-Norman Scribes

Let’s look at the vowel sound in sound, found, and cow.

Over a very long period of time, the vowels in English shifted around quite a lot; the so-called Great Vowel Shift. [Notes 1, 2] Old English “long” i, as in the word min ‘mine’, which was pronounced like Modern English (ModE) <ee> as in “keep”, changed to the “eye” sound it has now. min –> mine, win –> wine, lic(an) –> like. And so on. However, the spelling of the vowel stayed the same. [Note 3] That is, we do not write <main>, <wain>, and <laik>. This reflects the inheritance of ModE “long” i from Old English (OE) long i.

A similar thing happened with OE “long” u which was pronounced as “oo”; after the great vowel shift it diphthongised, coming to be pronounced as “au”, or the <ow> of ‘cow’. The OE word was cu. Likewise, Old English mus, hus, and tun, pronounced “moose”, “hoose”, and “toon”, became, can you guess? Mouse, house, and town. Notice that, unlike with OE long i, the long u did have a spelling change. Namely, to <ou>. Why?

Simple answer, really. Let’s just say: bijou, Anjou, and Petits Filous. Yes, that formidable swinehoard France was to blame. Again. Basically, the Anglo-Norman scribes spelt English as they spelt their own language; thus “u” became “ou”.[Note 4]

If this change from <u> to <ou> seems trifling and marginal, then I would just say that it is the tip of the iceberg, an iceberg that we’ll come to look at from up a little closer later in this post.

Hypercorrective Spellings (Hyperactive Monks?)

Many spellings were wrixled [Note 5], mostly to the effect of worsening the correspondence between sound and symbol, due to scribes attempting to make words look more like their (supposed) Greek or Latin forebears. In this way, “debt” acquired a <b> (despite coming from French dette), “receipt” acquired a <p> (altho the same root did not acquire a <p> in “deceit” or “receive”, none of these three words having a <p> in the French, in any case), and “admiral” acquired both a <d> and, ultimately, a spelling pronunciation /d/ sound [Note 6], to make it resemble the Latin word from which it doesn’t come; it actually comes from the Arabic amir-ar-rahl, by way of French amirail(!)

Now if this isn’t sheer idiocy, I don’t know what is. But I contest that this obsession with Latin and Greek antecedents, this fetish of the foreign, had and has its origins in the Norman Conquest and the culture-change it has ever stood for.

Anglish and Modern Old English

There are, in line with my previous analysis [Note 7], two main ways you could go with all of this (so far as Anglish is concerned). You could either go the “Modern Old English” route, or you could go a more “Anglishy” way. Let’s look at the possibilities.

Modern Old English

Here we try to undo all or almost all influence resulting ultimately from 1066 and all that . In this way, spellings may be even better at times: <qu> would be replaced by <cw>, such that we have something like <cwene>, <cwick>, and <cwoþ>. Which leads us onto <th> getting the old heave-ho in favour of <þ>; an “improvement”, perhaps, as it cleaves to the alphabetic principle of “one sound one symbol”: <þis>, <faþer>, and <wiþ>.

Some other times, spelling might not improve, but actually get worse!

Why not let’s re-instate the silent <w> in “lisp” which was probably lost from the spelling due to most <wl-> words themselves being lost from English, ousted by foreign counterparts! Thus, <wlisp>. After all, we still have the silent <w> in <write>, <wrong>, and <wretched>, a fairly analogous case.

How about shifting:

<house> and <louse> to <hus> and <lus>;

<boat>, <road>, and <stone> to <bat>, <rad>, and <stan>;

<yellow> and <yes> to <gellow> and <ges>;

<church> to <circe> and <chin> to <cinn>;

<ice> to <is>?

 

This is fun, actually!

But perhaps pointless.

Anglish

I think simply keeping the current system as it is, with all its French influences intact, is the plainest and therefore best thing to do. I would merely remove etymological and pseudo-etymological spellings which were designed to resemble Latin or Greek. Thus, we would write <stomack> and <anker> or <ancor>, not <stomach> and <anchor>. The reason? English spelling, despite having a French side, is understood by ordinary people, and works, quite well; <ch> is, well, ch, not k [Note 8]! Problems arising in the English spelling system are mostly due to three areas, areas I will not discuss further as that is a topic for another post: (1) spellings of the sort I have been discussing, (2) reduction of vowel sounds in English, usually to schwa, and (3) a lack of adequate representation for the “ow!” sound versus the “oh!” sound; does <row> mean an “argument”, pronounced “r-ow!”, or does it mean the thing you do on a boat, pronounced “r-oh!”?

Thus, I personally take the spelling system as it is, prefering instead to alter individual spellings which do not work from a phonemic point of view due to their being, in my mind, spuriously altered or modelled along French, Latin, or Greek lines; thus, I write <dout>, <det>, <ancor>, and <receit>.

But I feel I am now sliding towards a separate post on the merits of the English spelling system, so I will stop myself there. I hope this has been an interesting beginning to the debate, if only a beginning.

 

Bryan Parry

April 2012

 

 

[Note 1] The Great Vowel Shift at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

[Note 2] The Great Vowel Shift didn’t become “completed” in all English-speaking areas, however. In parts of the UK, specifically the north, “long” u didn’t diphthongise; or to put it another way, “There’s a moose, a-loose, aroun‘ this hoose! danDAHdanAH aDANAHdana adundundunnadun!”

[Note 3] Arguably, and it is actually my view, but the non-contiguous sequence <i…e> is in fact a single grapheme; thus, the spelling of the vowel did change, from <i> to <i…e>. But this is a complication stemming from a separate issue which obscures the matter at hand.

[Note 4] Note that we write <cow> not <cou>; the reason is the same as why we write <oil>-<toil>-<toy>. Essentially, <ow> is what I call an allograph of <ou> when representing the sound /au/ used in final position: <out>-<bout>-<bow>.

[Note 5] “Wrixled” means “changed”, remember?

[Note 6] A “spelling pronunciation” is when people pronounce a word as it is spelt despite this not being the ‘true’ way of saying the word. Essentially, the usual thing that happens is people believe that the way they grew up saying this word is wrong, the correct way being in line with the spelling. Which is actually a fairly reasonable assumption, and given the stigma and ill effects associated with “poor speaking”, it’s easy to understand how such things happen. And so they hypercorrect , thus resulting in things like “admiral” and foreign-ese “receipt” (with a /p/ sound). Interestingly, I’ve even heard some native English speakers, without joking, say “receipt” with a /p/. Hmm. A hundred years from now…

[Note 7] See my blog entry “1066 Wrixled Everything”

[Note 8] Or, more precisely, the grapheme <ch>, by default, represents the voiceless palato-alveolar affricate, whereas the voiceless velar plosive is represented usually by either <c>, <k>, <ck>, or <q>.

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“English”, “Anglish”, and “Englandish”

April 18, 2012

This post is just a quick note about terminology.

The English poet William Barnes (1801-1886) did more than probably anyone before him to work out a newly formed English English, an English cleansed of untoward foreign elements. Incidentally, a great book on him and his linguistic tinkerings is “The Rebirth of England and English” by Andrew Phillips which features a decent sized wordlist.

Barnes used the term “Englandish” to refer to English as it was actually spoken (as opposed to the true “English” which would not have such a profusion of Greek, Latin, and French). Likewise, I will sometimes use the term “Englandish” to mean “English as it actually is including all Greco-Latin and French elements”.

“Anglish“, as stated last time, means “English as it could be if we were to make better use of its homeborn roots”.

Come to think of it, I may end up amending this post to become a full glossary of terms I use in the course of this blog.

 

[EDIT]

Link to book by Andrew Phillips:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Rebirth-England-English-William/dp/1898281173/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334751270&sr=8-1

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1066 Wrixled Everything

April 17, 2012

1066 and all that. It wrixled everything, it did. Sorry, I mean, it changed everything. Wrixle was the Old English word for “change” (the noun form being wrixling, the title of this blog). One of the most obvious and longlasting legacies of Harold’s defeat at 1066, as you can see, was the English language itself. But how big a change was effected? Take a look at any Old English text, or a quick glance at German, Swedish, or Frisian, to get a clue. The changes affected the vocabulary (wordstock), the grammar, and even the spellings of English.

Many native (homeborn) words were immediately ousted — those relating to law and governance and suchlike — but the deeper changes to our language only came later after the influence of French grew deeper. A great deal of words were pushed out to the margins of our language or shoved out altogether. Many of these formations were of great beauty; how can we best threeness when trying to express the concept of the “trinity”, for example?

It even became illegal — or should I say “unlawful” — to speak English in English courts(!) Don’t believe historians who downplay the importance of 1066 and the wrixlings it brought; 1066 and its aftermath wrixled everything!

One thing that happened was a fetish grew for foreign (outlandish) borrowings. One commentator has remarked that English hasn’t so much borrowed words from other languages, but rather ‘chased languages down alleys, beat them up, and rifled through their pockets for spare vocabulary’.

Now, this all makes learning foreign languages all the more easy: we feel quite at home with Swedish man and kvinna (“woman”), hand, knä, or fot; likewise, Spanish cerebro (brain “cerebrum”), lengua (tongue), humano, and persona are easily intelligible to us. However, I can’t quite help but feel we do ourselves and the richness of our language down when we throw away our own gems, gems that other Germanic languages keep (e.g. Swedish befolkning “population”, from be- + folk + ning, which would translate almost exactly into English as befolking; that is, the noun form of ‘to folk’, i.e., to people, to populate).

A “Purer” English

I’m not the only person who has worked on creating a “pure” or more English version of English. There are many others out there (it turns out). However, when you find them and you speak to these, you would suppose, likeminds, you find they have some very different ideas indeed. This apparently clear goal of creating a de1066ified English is not so straightforward, after all.

There are, I think, two broad schools of thought which are quite different (albeit with a gray area in between). These are what I call (1) Modern Old English, and what is known as (2) Anglish.

Modern Old English

What I call “Modern Old English” is a language that could have been, it’s English as it would have been had Harold not lost the battle of Hastings. This involves, in effect, creating an alternative history, a timeline of the word different to the one we have had over the last 950 years.

This is a very fun project, but quite different to the beast commonly known as Anglish.

Anglish

Anglish is an attempt to make better use of the resources we still have. So this could even include grasping enthusiastically foreign words as being thoroughly anglicised.

Modern Old English versus Anglish

If you still aren’t sure on the difference between these two projects in real terms, I will illustrate it with a couple of choice examples.

(1) Face it

Modern Old English (ModOE) supporters might insist on chucking out “face” because it came from French. The word we used to use was onsyn which evolved into, and would still be today if it were used, “ansene”.

Anglish-ers might just say, ‘well, “face” is pretty basic and highly naturalised, so let’s just keep it’. They might respell it “fase”, though.

(2) Starry-eyed Surprise

ModOE proponents might say ‘let’s replace “astronomy” with “tongelcraft”‘, which is a modified form of the word in Old English.

Anglish folk might say, ‘”tongel” is deader than the dodo — quite literally — so let’s just stick with originally foreign “star” and say “starlore”, “starcraft”, or even “starology”‘

Dialects

There are, of course, many, many possibilities even within these two schools of thought. For example, do ModOE proponents start their alternative history off from 1066? Or do they start it earlier from before Edward the Confessor? Perhaps they go back to the before the Danelaw, or maybe they start after 1066, having Hereward the Wake overthrow William and take the throne back for an English king.

Schools?

And of course that is assuming that people even recognise these schools; from having spent quite a bit of time on these projects, I feel as thought most people likewise engaged have actually not stopped, in their passionate rush, to think about what their own goals in fact are. And so they end up with an ever-wrixling, hodgepodge mess.

Conclusions

I think that, before we can even discuss the project of a “pure” English (or whatever), all people interested in such things should really think about what it is exactly that they themselves are striving for. Why? Well, otherwise, there’ll never be any progress on this matter, and these projects, whatever forms they may take, will never become greater than the sum of their parts; rather, we will remain with isolated eccentrics and their yellow, stained notebooks.

So, yes! These English “projects” of mine are open to dialog with likeminds. Join me!

Bryan Parry

April 2012

14 Comments | 1066, Anglish, artlang, conlang, Germanic, glossopoeia, inkpot, Old English | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by bryanajparry

The Secret Vice

April 13, 2012

So, what’s this blog all about, then?

Well, unfortunately, I am a rather sad little man who derives pleasure from making up languages.

Wot??

Yes, I invent languages. For fun(!)

What’s even more unfortunate is that my name isn’t “J. R. R. Tolkien”, and so I won’t make a penny from this. It really is a total and complete waste of time(!)

J. R. R. Tolkien, author of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit”, spent most of his life creating languages. You may not know this, but he didn’t make up his languages in order to flesh out his books; rather, he wrote his books in order to flesh out his languages! Yes, read that sentence again. Y’see, languages, real languages, actually have speakers and peoples and cultures behind them. So, Tolkien’s approach may seem perverse, but it actually makes sense; Quenya, Sindarin, Westron and all his other languages could never hope to achieve any authenticity or depth unless there were people to speak the languages. And people have cultures. And nations. And religions. And history. Lots and lots of history. And thus an epic was born.

Tolkien called his hobby the “secret vice”. It’s my secret vice, too. I used to think I was the only person in the world who did this type of thing. And then I discovered Tolkien (aged eleven or twelve). Since then I’ve found out that there are plenty more odd-balls like me out there. They mostly call it “conlanging”. So I guess I’m a “conlanger”.

But I don’t just make languages up from scratch. I like playing with language in all sorts of ways, including “legitimate” hobbies like poetry writing.

So then, this blog will talk about “conlanging” and creative and artistic use of language and linguistics. I’ll mostly focus on my own projects which include: Germanic / “Pure” forms of English, international auxiliary languages, and “artistic” languages for my own fantasy world. I’ll also make forays into other people’s projects and languages and linguistics in general.

So if that sounds like thrilling fun, then stick around! But if it sounds like the deranged ravings of a tedious bore, then you probably aren’t reading this sentence, anyway.

Enjoy!

Bryan Parry

April 2012

5 Comments | artlang, auxlang, conlang, glossopoeia, quenya, Tolkien | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by bryanajparry

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