This will be a long post, but to catch your attention: do you want to change the way you think about our language? Do you want to broaden it and expand your vocabulary and open your imagination to be a better writer and create wonderful prose through careful wordsmithing? Do you love the writings of J.R.R Tolkien? Read on.
Anglish is something I’ve recently found. I was browsing a discussion on a literature forum and noticed someone mention English Purism. The movement is an old one, but it also current and active. It strives to foster a greater love for the origin of English and its roots. It supposes that the Normans never won the Battle of Hastings and that French never permeated the halls of English High Courts. It supposes that Latin and Greek never left the leafs of Monkish Bibles and befell common tongues. It strives to reintroduce lost Old English words and revive dead Germanic roots into English. After all, nowadays, a scant fourth of our words are from the original English of the Angles and Anglo-Saxons. The rest has been cast aside. Higher brow Latin offerings are preferred by scientists and scholars to sound more intelligent and take another fourth of the roots. French was preferred by the Elite and the Townsfolk to sound more noble (as the nobles were French Norman). And Greek was sprinkled in by the religious and educated. Our language, doesn’t sound very ‘English’, does it?
“I am of this opinion that our own tung should be written cleane and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borowing of other tunges; wherein if we take not heed by tiim, ever borowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt.” -John Cheke, First Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University, Provost of King’s College, and tutor to King Edward VI, ar. 1543.
Anglish is a thought experiment on what English could be today, and I have to say, I find it to be awesome and beautiful. The words flow naturally with a prose that is striking and descriptive. Our current language can only achieve what Anglish does through artificial and insincere means. It’s simple and efficient. It’s logical and follows Germanic tradition of building words with known roots and wordfastentings (affixes). It seems easier to learn for children and learners. As in order to properly decipher current Modern English, you need to know French, English, Latin, and Greek. With Anglish, only knowledge of English is required. Instead of ‘explode’ we could say ‘blow up’ or ‘outblown’ or ‘ablow’. Instead of saying ‘feline’ was could say ‘catty’ or ‘catish’ or ‘catlike’. These may sounds like thing we’d say as children, but if you think, that’s because these were the logical things to say when we were children. They may sound simple, but that’s only because you’ve learned a separate language within English: Latin.
“Bad writers –especially scientific, political, and sociological writers– are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones.” -George Orwell, from “Politics and the English Language”, 1946.
I will be striving to use a mild form of Ednew English in everyday use so I can still be understood, yet in a way where I can still draw out some of those old roots. I mentioned Tolkien because of this. If you've ever read The Hobbit or The Trilogy, you'd find a lack of Latin-based words. Tolkien's tales are a complicated retelling of the Eddas and the lore of the Northman. He favored Old English, Germanic roots, Nordic and Celtic. The way he wrote was evocative and I would love if I could sound and describe things as he did.
I will also definitely experiment with the more extreme form of it in some writing and poems that I may share with you all later (if there is interest).
And with that, I leave you with a Foreword of a translation of “On the Origin of Species” (On the Upspringing of Lifekin). Sadly, the writer remains unnamed or unknown to me. But it is a beautiful explanation and a wonderful example of mild Anglish:
Is not ‘aftertale’ better sounding and more transparent in its etymology than ‘epilogue,’ and is ‘lawcraft’ not more homely and English-sounding than ‘jurisprudence,’ and ‘wordbook’ clearer than ‘dictionary,’ and ‘manslaughter’ more image-evoking and powerful than ‘homicide.’ And some more examples of englishized English, or Anglish--fordo (destroy), forsend (dismiss), forespeak (predict), winterwone (hibernate), elderdom (supremacy), owndom (property), speechlore (linguistics), starcraft (astronomy), withfare (escape), withlead (abduct) and the list goes on. English is often obscured by our use of Latin and Greek words. So often a word newly met cannot be understood from its parts, and one must have recourse to a wordbook to find its meaning. ‘Consanguinity,’ for example. What on earth could that possibly mean? Says every english speaker upon first encountering it. We recognize that it is made up of several parts, the ‘con-,’ like in ‘confess,’ ‘concede,’ ‘conceive,’ and the ‘-ity’ we recognize. We know the -ity’ makes the word a noun (or how about a thingword), but the ‘con’ and the ‘sanguin’ we do not the meaning of unless we are familiar with a Latin language. So, how then are we to deduce its meaning? Truth be told, we simply cannot, not without the help of a dictionary, our beloved wordbook. This is a rather unfortunate thing, for what is the value of words if they are not understood? Forhaps we should be more like the Germans, or any other Germanic-language-speaking folk for that matter, and use more fully our native English morphemes— wordbits that English speakers can understand without the accursed dictionary that makes learning our tongue so detached, and so cold and intellectual. That way we could talk to any English speaker about virtually anything, abstract topics included, and use words like ‘samebloodedness’ instead of ‘consanguinity’ to express them. One could even speak to a five year old about samebloodedness and be understood. But how lofty and pretentious one seems when one uses words like ‘consanguinity.’ Consanguinity— bah, please, English, speak thine own tongue. Does ‘con’ not mean ‘same,’ does ‘sanguin’ not mean ‘blood’, and is ‘ity’ not alike unto ‘ness?’ And do they not all three— ‘same,’ ‘blood,’ and ‘ness,’ have as their sustenance the very depth and core of the soul of English? Do they not subsist on the flesh and blood of Englishness, and take it up into themselves, heralding the glory of its lifeblood and provider with every utterance of themselves that cometh forth out of the tongues of English speakers? And the same goes for ‘assume,’ translated from its latin parts into ‘take on;’ and ‘presume’ into ‘foretake,’ and ‘deduce’ into ‘lead off,’ and ‘anatomy’ into ‘bodylore,’ ‘dermatology’ into ‘skinlore,’ ‘biology’ into ‘lifelore,’ ‘aerology’ onto ‘skylore,’ ‘transcribe’ into ‘yondwrite’ and ‘compare’ into ‘aliken.’ In almost all cases the Anglish word simply makes more sense, the meaning of the word can be seen in its parts, without knowledge of Latin or French or Greek, without a dictionary that shows etymology, for its parts are English indeed. This makes English more transparent, and for the aesthetically inclined, more beautiful, as it connects structure (English structure) to meaning.