6 ms·
I have had a lot of fun with Anglish in the past, composing poetry and even attempting to write school assignments in it. However as I've grown as a linguist,
by triyambakam 4y ago
I have had a lot of fun with Anglish in the past, composing poetry and even attempting to write school assignments in it.
However as I've grown as a linguist, I now disagree with the direction that they've taken it, but I understand why.
That is, the Anglish project uses cognates and sometimes inventions from Old English, Dutch and German because most linguists (and people) consider English a West Germanic language, most closely related to German and Dutch, and more distantly related to Swedish, Norwegian and Danish.
But I'm convinced that Faarlund is correct [1]; that Old English is not the only ancestor of Modern English, and that actually Modern English is more like a creole of Old English and Old Norse.
So I'd like to see an Anglish project that instead uses the Scandinavian languages for word replacements.
[1] "English as North Germanic [Language]" https://brill.com/view/journals/ldc/6/1/article-p1_1.xml?language=en https://brill.com/view/journals/ldc/6/1/article-p1_1.xml?lan...
- epicureanideal 4y agoDo you have any examples of an English / Scandinavian hybrid? Also, I wonder if such a thing might actually arise in the Scandinavian countries in the future?
- OnlyMortal 4y agoYorkshuhman here… we say “ta” (tak) for thanks. We also say “cheers” (tschuss) for goodbye. Going a bit deeper, “dale” (daal - Dutch), “beck” (beek - Dutch). Having learnt (not learned) in Amsterdam, it’s very, very like the dialects of the north east of Yorkshuh. So much so, it’s rather a surprise.
- martynr 4y agoExactly my observation as a southerner who has lived in the north and Scandinavia
- simonh 4y agoNorwegians speaking their native tongue to me sound like they’re speaking German with a Geordie accent.
- permo-w 4y agoif you’re only half-listening to a Scouser, it could easily be Dutch
- permo-w 4y agocheers means goodbye in Yorkshire? In Lancashire (and elsewhere in the UK) I’ve never heard it mean anything other than “thank you” or the thing you say after clinking glasses the only time I’ve ever heard anything different is from foreigners learning English
- plugin-baby 4y agohttps://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheers https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheers “goodbye” https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheerio https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheerio 1. “Goodbye”, 2. “Hello” https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheero https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheero “A friendly greeting”
- permo-w 4y agoyes I’m aware of the dictionary definitions, that’s why foreigners say it, but not once have I ever heard an actual Brit use it like that. it’s a definition that has pretty much passed out of common usage, if it was ever in it
- ArteEtMarte 4y agoCheers is used as goodbye here in the East Midlands. If you were here, you'd hear plenty of Brits use it on a daily basis.
- permo-w 4y agoin what context? I could be wrong about this of course, but I suspect what you’re observing is people saying thank you as they’re leaving: e.g. getting off the bus, or after buying something, or after receiving directions
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThe phrase "Cheers for now" is less ambigous as a sign off or goodbye than cheers on its own.
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoAre you familiar with the Danelaw, and with Danegeld? I think that knowing "Danes" ruled much of mainland Britain for hundreds of years and provided kings of a unified-ish (pre-Norman) England (Cnut [Canute]) makes it less surprising?
- OnlyMortal 4y agoThe pronunciation of words between English and Dutch make them appear to be quite different. Once you’re used to hearing Dutch, which most British won’t be, the differences are much, much less than one might imagine.
- Eupraxias 4y agoAre you sure that "cheers" and "tschuss" are etymologically related? I would love that. Everything I could find points to a Latin cognate, "cara".
- OnlyMortal 4y agoMight be a common origin from Latin. It does appear to be more than a coincidence that my dialect and the modern German usage share a word that sounds the same and means the same.
- martynr 4y agoNorthern English is significantly influenced by Scandinavian words today- for example the “-by” suffixes on town names is a direct use of the modern Danish word for town, Kirkby meaning Church Town in a direct translation
- triyambakam 4y agoI'm not aware of any natural or constructed English/Scandinavian pidgins/creoles, but that sure would be fun. The conventional wisdom is that it's easier for an English speaker to learn Swedish than it is to learn German. Regarding if that would arise in the Scandinavian countries in the future - it actually seems more likely in German speaking countries. There is actually a word for it now - Denglisch (Deutsch Englisch), similar to e.g. Hinglish (Hindi English). Basically using German grammar with large amounts of English vocabulary. I hear so many English words in German lately for which there exists a perfectly good German word already. Examples: Denlisch: "Bist du ready?" Deutsch: "Bist du bereit?" English: "Are you ready?" Denglisch: Joke Deutsch: Witz
- timeon 4y ago> The conventional wisdom is that it's easier for an English speaker to learn Swedish than it is to learn German. If we consider pronunciation then closest is probably Danish. As English pronunciation seems to be alien to most European languages.
- memsom 4y agoNot Danish. Danish is pretty alien. Norwegian is quite easy for an English speaker, plus all the dialects mean that even technicalities such as the tone accent can be "worked around". Swedish and Norwegian are both pretty easy to pronounce and pretty easy to learn as an English speaker. Most of the problem is vocabulary, not really so much the grammar.
- throwaway305235 4y agoNorwegian has several loanwords from English. Some are pronounced differently (such as "juice"), while others use the English pronunciation, but sometimes with a Norwegian ending. The latter is more common among the youth. An example: "Denne eplejuicen er helt fucka / føkka" -> This apple juice is fucked up. Gamers often talk about "lev'le opp" ("level up") for example, but it's not used that often in its written form. It just looks strange to me. Sometimes gamers even replace a Norwegian word such as "oppgradere" with its English equivalent ("upgrade"). In some cases it is pronounced as English with a Norwegian "e" sound at the end, like the "é" in French "café" We also have a few loanwords from German, such as: - "Vorse", from the German "vorspiel" (prelude). We use it to describe starting the evening drinking and partying at a friend's apartment before going to a nightclub / bar. - "Dass". from "das Haüschen" ("little house"). This is used as a slang for toilet. I don't see an end to this, as the Norwegian language is not as protected as Icelandic. The Norwegian language council sometimes tries to provide alternatives, but they are usually either too late or it just sounds silly.
- fsckboy 4y agonot a direct answer to your question, but there is a great youtube video explaining the reasons why English may be more Scandinavian in origin than we thought. has to do with... can't remember gotta search, brb How the Vikings Changed the English Language https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZV1BOcGiV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZV1BOcGiV0 this is lifted from the google closed caption "transcript": The argument was put forward by Jan Terje Faarlund, professor of linguistics at the University of Oslo. This is what he says: There are many English words that resemble ours, but there is something more. Its fundamental structure is strikingly similar to Norwegian. We avoid many of the usual mistakes because the grammar is more or less the same. Norwegians find it easy to learn English because of the similarities to their language. We often find that when grammar in modern English is different from other West Germanic languages such as Frisian, Our supposed closest cousin or Dutch is the same as in the Scandinavian language. It's very unusual for a language to borrow syntax from another language. For example, word order. In English and Scandinavian, the object is placed after the verb. I have read the book. Eg har lese boka German and Dutch and old English put the verb at the end. Ich habe das Buch gelesen English and Scandinavian can have a preposition at the end of the sentence. This we talked about Dette har vi snakka om English and Scandinavian can have a split infinitive. That is when we insert a word between the infinitive marker and the verb. I promise to never do it again. Eg lovar å ikkje gjera det igjen Group genitive. The Queen of England's hands. Dronninga av Englands hatt. All of this is impossible in German or Dutch. And these kind of structures are very unlikely to change within a language. The only reasonable explanation, then, is that English is in fact a Scandinavian language, and the continuation of the Norwegian Danish language, which was used in England during the Middle Ages. But why the inhabitants of the British Isles chose the Scandinavian grammar is something we can only speculate on.
- temp2302271148 4y agoA møøse once bit my sister... No realli!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fsckboy 4y ago>Do you have any examples of an English / Scandinavian hybrid? the idea being floated is that English is that Anglo-Saxon / Scandinavian hybrid.
- tsm 4y agoI think Shetlandic is the closest you'll get: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland_dialect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland_dialect
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThey'd probably get some of that for free if they leant on Scottish and Northern dialect words, like they give the example of Famous > Nameknown is one of the examples, but perhaps Wellkent would work better if they're otherwise using ken for knowledge.
- triyambakam 4y agoThat's true! I forgot about Scots
- forgotusername6 4y agoPerhaps the word bairns for children could have been used instead of the word offspring. The word is pretty similar to the Scandinavian words for children
- pantalaimon 4y agoWellkennt is closer to the German Wohlbekannt too
- philwelch 4y agoIt’s not clear to me why the project should seek to revert the linguistic influence of Norman invaders while enshrining or even amplifying the linguistic influence of Norse invaders.
- ineptech 4y agoWhat is the "Anglish project"? Do you mean people who write in it for fun, as one might write a short story in Klingon? Or are there people advocating that we should adopt it, by avoiding romance-language words? Something else?
- triyambakam 4y agoSorry, by project I mean community, i.e. yes the people who use it for fun
- mc32 4y agoI think it depends on what region of England or the UK at large you want to consider. If you're NE England into Scotland, yeah, Scandinavian languages had influence and that's is reflected in their current vocab. Other areas may have retained more of the original dialect with fewer Scandinavian influences initially though those would return via the Norman invasion with added French vocabulary.
- spokesbeing 4y agoOld Norse accounts for about 5% of English vocabulary, including very common everyday words, not regional. Examples: egg, knife, sky, skill, etc, etc. Tons of core vocab. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Old_Norse_origin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Old...
- dghf 4y agoAnd "they", "them", "their", which is really interesting. I can understand a language borrowing nouns (or verbs, or adjectives) from a neighbour, but pronouns?
- gerdesj 4y ago[flagged]
- legostormtroopr 4y agoIts odd that you immediately paint this as racist, when it is exactly what the "Académie Française" does and has done for centuries. And, if you read into the site even a little they define Anglish inborn terms as those in use prior to 1066 after the Norman Conquest [1] of England. This is an innocent conlang designed to highlight some interesting historical circumstances around a bloody and protracted conquest. That some people with Inborn Anglish ancestory have an interest in their own history is innocent and given current trends, perfectly reasonable. I would suggest you examine you own biases before jumping to conlcusions, as I doubt you would make the same statements against any other culture seeking to document their history. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Conquest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Conquest
- permo-w 4y agohow are you defining “racist”?
- hetman 4y agoI don't think this has anything to do with Brittain or geography but rather the language of the Angles, which is posited to form the primary substrate for modern English.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> But I'm convinced that Faarlund is correct [1]; that Old English is not the only ancestor of Modern English, and that actually Modern English is more like a creole of Old English and Old Norse. But your link says the opposite of that: > In the book, we show that both synchronically and historically, Middle (and Modern) English is unmistakably North Germanic and not West Germanic. (Uncontroversially, Old English, just like Dutch and German, is West Germanic.) That is, Middle English did not develop from Old English. > We claim that Middle and Modern English are instead direct descendants of the language spoken by Scandinavians who had relocated to England over more than two centuries prior to the Norman Conquest. We refer to this earlier language as Norse. The model there is that you have Angles in England speaking English and they get so badly overrun by Norse settlers that their language is replaced rather than influenced. None of them realize that this has happened; everyone blithely continues to refer to their language as "English" even though they've switched what language they're speaking. That seems like a difficult case to make.
- permo-w 4y ago>> … English is unmistakably North Germanic and not West Germanic … that’s exactly what they were saying. English is traditionally described as West Germanic with German, Frisian and Dutch, but as a creole with Old Norse it could be instead described as North Germanic
- thaumasiotes 4y agoThe link says that Old English is not an ancestor of modern English. triyambakam says that it is. A creole would be neither West Germanic nor North Germanic; creoles are new. The grammatical structures of a creole are, in general, not inherited from any of the "parent" languages.
- permo-w 4y agoit’s a synecdoche. the link is saying it didn’t solely develop from Old English, not that it didn’t at all