The goal 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 actual fact is that we now speak an international language. The Anglish project is meant 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, however largely 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 yet for others it is only 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 needs or desires is very important. For this reason, writing or talking in true English is a positive end in itself, in as much as it provides an other outlet for this need.
But there may be additionally the additional idea that Anglish is a recognition and a celebration of the English part of contemporary English. For, though it has borrowed 1000’s and 1000’s of words all through its life, there still exists a real English core to English, an important on a regular basis words which no sentence or uttering may manage without. By stripping away the layers of borrowings, Anglish lets us better recognize that core and the position it performs in our language.
The best way to find out the place a word comes from is to look it up in a dictionary. Most respectable desktop dictionaries will embody short etymologies for many of their entries, which give a little knowledge of where 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 as 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 perhaps the perfect available online.
But these will only tell from where and when a word came into English, however not whether it needs to be thought ‘borrowed’. Some immensely old and really fundamental 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 road between English and ‘borrowed’ is yet an different space of personal selecting, and there are many views on this amongst Anglish proponents. A really broad rule says that anything borrowed from French, Latin and Greek within the final eight hundred years needs to be thought borrowed. A more discerning view would say that any word which was brought into English to fill a genuine want or gap in vocabulary needs to be kept, but those words borrowed to “adorn” or “enrich” the language but in reality push out existing words, should be weeded.
Are there actually 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, however 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 each four words, but 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 simply unknown.
Nonetheless, as mentioned 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, where do replacement words come from?
There are many roots for words to replace 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 which means or intelligibility. When there may be not a readily available English word to be used, a new word should be discovered or made. Some old or obscure words will be introduced back to life and reused; new words may be calqued from English morphemes using the old word’s sample; other instances wholly new words, “neologisms,” may be put collectively from existing words and affixes. None of these methods are proper or wrong, but every has its stead in making a wide and varied lexicon for Anglish, and each is used based on the context and particular wants of a word.