What Is Anglish
The intention of Anglish is: English with many fewer words borrowed from other tongues. Because of the fundamental changes to our language, to say that English folks in the present day speak Trendy English is like saying that the French speak Latin. The fact is that we now speak an international language. The Anglish project is meant as a way 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 principally it is to explore 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 attention-grabbing diversion or pastime. Language performs a big function in our lives, so to be able to play with that language, and form it to our own needs or desires could be very important. For this reason, writing or talking in true English is a positive end in itself, in as much as it provides an different outlet for this need.
However there's additionally the further concept that Anglish is a recognition and a celebration of the English part of recent English. For, though it has borrowed thousands and 1000's of words all through its life, there still exists a real English core to English, crucial everyday words which no sentence or uttering may manage without. By stripping away the layers of borrowings, Anglish lets us better admire that core and the position it performs in our language.
The best way to seek out out the place a word comes from is to look it up in a dictionary. Most decent desktop dictionaries will embody short etymologies for many of their entries, which give a little knowledge of the place the word arose from, and how it was used or written in the past. Some online dictionaries have this knowledge as well, such because the Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com and Wiktionary. There are additionally dictionaries dedicated to word etymologies, which are a goldmine for knowledge about English words. The Online Etymology Dictionary is probably the best available online.
However these will only tell from the place and when a word came into English, however not whether or not it needs to be thought 'borrowed'. Some immensely old and very primary words, resembling 'cup' and 'mill', are certainly borrowed from Latin, but nobody would say these words are not English. Conversely, words like 'thaumaturgy' and 'intelligentsia' are clearly not of English origin, and have been borrowed comparatively lately.
Where to draw the line between English and 'borrowed' is yet an different area of personal selecting, and there are many views on this among Anglish proponents. A really broad rule says that anything borrowed from French, Latin and Greek within the last eight hundred years must be thought borrowed. A more discerning view would say that any word which was brought into English to fill a genuine need or gap in vocabulary ought to be kept, however these words borrowed to "adorn" or "enrich" the language however in reality push out present words, needs to be weeded.
Are there really that many borrowed words in English?
Yes. English is renowned for having borrowed so many words from different languages over the past thousand years. The core of English is Germanic, however only about 25% of the words in English right now 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 every four words, however not a lot when one thinks that Latin and French each account for 29% of the English vocabulary. Greek yields an different 6% of words, with the final 10% being from different languages, derived from personal names, or just unknown.
However, as mentioned earlier, the core of the English language still principally consists of English words, which makes an undertaking like Anglish possible.
When a word is taken out from English, where do replacement words come from?
There are numerous roots for words to switch those which have been removed from English. Sometimes, a word which is removed will have a commonly known English synonym already present. Words like 'quotidian' and 'illegal' can simply be switched for 'on a regular basis' and 'unlawful' without shedding meaning or intelligibility. When there's not a readily available English word to be used, a new word should be found or made. Some old or obscure words might be introduced back to life and reused; new words could be calqued from English morphemes utilizing the old word's pattern; different instances wholly new words, "neologisms," will be put together from existing words and affixes. None of these methods are proper or mistaken, however every has its stead in making a wide and varied lexicon for Anglish, and each is used in keeping with the context and particular wants of a word.
