The purpose of Anglish is: English with many fewer words borrowed from different tongues. Because of the fundamental modifications to our language, to say that English folks today speak Fashionable English is like saying that the French speak Latin. The actual fact is that we now speak a world language. The Anglish project is intended as a method of recovering the Englishness of English and of restoring ownership of the language to the English people.
The goal of the Anglish project differs from individual to individual, however principally 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 purely an attention-grabbing diversion or pastime. Language performs a big function in our lives, so to be able to play with that language, and shape it to our own wants or desires 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 additionally the additional concept that Anglish is a recognition and a celebration of the English part of modern English. For, though it has borrowed thousands and thousands of words all through its life, there still exists a true English core to English, a very powerful on a regular basis words which no sentence or uttering might manage without. By stripping away the layers of borrowings, Anglish lets us better respect that core and the role it plays in our language.
The perfect way to find out where a word comes from is to look it up in a dictionary. Most first rate desktop dictionaries will embrace quick etymologies for a lot of of their entries, which give a little knowledge of the place the word arose from, and the way it was used or written in the past. Some on-line dictionaries have this knowledge as well, such because 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 On-line Etymology Dictionary is probably the most effective available online.
But these will only inform from where and when a word got here into English, however not whether it should be thought ‘borrowed’. Some immensely old and very fundamental words, comparable to ‘cup’ and ‘mill’, are certainly borrowed from Latin, yet nobody would say these words will not be English. Conversely, words like ‘thaumaturgy’ and ‘intelligentsia’ are clearly not of English origin, and have been borrowed relatively lately.
Where to draw the road between English and ‘borrowed’ is but an other area of personal choosing, and there are many views on this among Anglish proponents. A very broad rule says that anything borrowed from French, Latin and Greek in the last eight hundred years must be thought borrowed. A more discerning view would say that any word which was introduced into English to fill a genuine want or gap in vocabulary needs to be kept, however those words borrowed to “adorn” or “enrich” the language but in reality push out current 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 completely different languages during the last thousand years. The core of English is Germanic, but only about 25% of the words in English right now derive from such a root, and that includes these of Norse, Dutch, German and others, as well as English. That will sound like many, one in every 4 words, but not a lot when one thinks that Latin and French every account for 29% of the English vocabulary. Greek yields an other 6% of words, with the final 10% being from other languages, derived from personal names, or simply unknown.
However, as talked about 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 exchange these which have been removed from English. Typically, a word which is removed will have a commonly known English synonym already present. Words like ‘quotidian’ and ‘illegal’ can simply be switched for ‘everyday’ and ‘unlawful’ without dropping that means or intelligibility. When there may be not a readily available English word to be used, a new word must be found or made. Some old or obscure words could be brought back to life and reused; new words might be calqued from English morphemes utilizing the old word’s sample; different occasions wholly new words, “neologisms,” will be put together from current words and affixes. None of these methods are proper or mistaken, but every has its stead in making a wide and various lexicon for Anglish, and each is used in keeping with the context and particular needs of a word.