The goal of Anglish is: English with many fewer words borrowed from other tongues. Because of the fundamental modifications to our language, to say that English individuals right this moment 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 meant 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 person to person, however mostly it is to explore and experiment with the English language. This exploration is pushed for some by aesthetics, for the ethnic English by cultural needs, and yet for others it is purely an attention-grabbing diversion or pastime. Language performs a big role in our lives, so to be able to play with that language, and shape it to our own wants or needs may 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 other outlet for this need.
However there is also 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 hundreds of words throughout its life, there still exists a real English core to English, a very powerful everyday words which no sentence or uttering might handle 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 where a word comes from is to look it up in a dictionary. Most decent desktop dictionaries will embrace 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 within 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 also dictionaries dedicated to word etymologies, which are a goldmine for knowledge about English words. The Online Etymology Dictionary is perhaps the best available online.
However these will only tell from where and when a word got here into English, however not whether or not it should be thought ‘borrowed’. Some immensely old and very primary words, comparable to ‘cup’ and ‘mill’, are indeed borrowed from Latin, but nobody would say these words aren’t English. Conversely, words like ‘thaumaturgy’ and ‘intelligentsia’ are clearly not of English origin, and have been borrowed relatively lately.
The place to draw the line between English and ‘borrowed’ is yet an other space of personal selecting, and there are lots of 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 needs to be thought borrowed. A more discerning view would say that any word which was brought into English to fill a real want 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 totally different languages during the last thousand years. The core of English is Germanic, but only about 25% of the words in English at present 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 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 different languages, derived from personal names, or just unknown.
However, 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 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 easily be switched for ‘on a regular basis’ and ‘unlawful’ without losing meaning or intelligibility. When there is not a readily available English word to be used, a new word have to be discovered or made. Some old or obscure words will be introduced back to life and reused; new words could be calqued from English morphemes using the old word’s sample; different occasions wholly new words, “neologisms,” could be put together from current words and affixes. None of those methods are proper or fallacious, however every has its stead in making a wide and varied lexicon for Anglish, and each is used in accordance with the context and particular needs of a word.