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What's Anglish?

 

The purpose of Anglish is: English with many fewer words borrowed from different tongues. Because of the fundamental changes to our language, to say that English folks right this moment speak Trendy English is like saying that the French speak Latin. The very fact is that we now speak a global language. 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.

 

 

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

 

 

But there is also the further concept that Anglish is a recognition and a celebration of the English part of contemporary English. For, although it has borrowed 1000's and hundreds of words throughout its life, there still exists a true English core to English, a very powerful on a regular basis words which no sentence or uttering could manage without. By stripping away the layers of borrowings, Anglish lets us higher admire that core and the function it plays in our language.

 

 

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

 

 

But these will only tell from the place and when a word came into English, however not whether it must be thought 'borrowed'. Some immensely old and very fundamental words, akin to 'cup' and 'mill', are indeed borrowed from Latin, yet nobody would say these words are usually not English. Conversely, words like 'thaumaturgy' and 'intelligentsia' are clearly not of English origin, and have been borrowed relatively lately.

 

 

Where to draw the line between English and 'borrowed' is but an different area of personal selecting, and there are a lot of views on this among Anglish proponents. A very broad rule says that anything borrowed from French, Latin and Greek in the final eight hundred years ought to be thought borrowed. A more discerning view would say that any word which was introduced into English to fill a real need or gap in vocabulary ought to be kept, but these words borrowed to "adorn" or "enrich" the language but in reality push out existing words, ought to be weeded.

 

 

Are there really that many borrowed words in English?

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

There are various roots for words to exchange these which have been removed from English. Generally, a word which is removed will have a commonly known English synonym already present. Words like 'quotidian' and 'illegal' can easily be switched for 'everyday' and 'unlawful' without dropping meaning or intelligibility. When there's not a readily available English word to be used, a new word must be found or made. Some old or obscure words can be introduced back to life and reused; new words might be calqued from English morphemes utilizing the old word's pattern; other times wholly new words, "neologisms," will be put together from current words and affixes. None of these strategies are right or improper, however each has its stead in making a wide and assorted lexicon for Anglish, and each is used in response to the context and particular wants of a word.

Website: https://anglish.org/

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