“Anglish”

"contract" means to "draw/bring together a deal." Indeed, English didn't need this borrowed word. It must've been the overbearing Norman overlords strong stand that all things law must be written in Norman-French. O.E. handgewrit (> M.E. *handȝewrit/ *handywrit; E. *handawrit/ *handewrit) was the English word for contract. DEED also means 'contract', but today is mainly said about land dealings.

Instead of "let's sign the contract," I have heard it more often than not said, "let's do/sign the deal."

Today's French for contract is 'contrat'...the French tongue is infamously (straight from L. infām[is])known for losing bookstaves: spoken or unspoken. I guess it likes near, but I don't believe the everyday English speaker would understand that to be akin to 'contract'. At least in other Germanic tongues (Afrikaans, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, & Norwegian) it is written the same > contract or kontrakt, which is in keeping with L. contractus.

See here: "Nous devons écrire un contrat pour la maison."

Doesn't look manifestly English to me. Thoughts?

"Again, in romance and germanic tongues it is often possible to guess at meanings: that just doesn't seem to work once one moves east"
Not hard to link "Schaf" with "sheep" or come up with "ewe" for "owca" (polish=sheep)
but moving east, hard to guess that "domba" (Indonesian) means the same.
My own experience is that it takes three times as long for an "Asian" student to learn everyday English vocabulary, compared to a European. The reverse is also true. Finnish, Hungarian (or worse still tonal tongues like Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai) are much harder for us than easy-to-guess Italian or Danish.
French people can often write quite passable English sans difficulte', whereas it is rare indeed for ,say, a Korean to achieve the same level - the hurdles, the idiom, the way of expressing ideas are too "European" and far-adrift from their own.

And frith and froth be with you too.

"Nous devons écrire un contrat pour la maison."
= we endeavour to scribe a contract for the mansion. (endeavour

we also have "maisonette" and "manor" in English, both from Fr.

1983, Lawrence Durrell, Sebastian, Faber & Faber 2004 (Avignon Quintet), p. 1057:

That is the little bit of essential information which enables us to complete our devoir

Just astounding how much French there is in English!

@jayles:

Most folks don't know French like you do. I don't believe at all that most English speaking folks would understand "maison" to be 'house' without learning some French. If they did, then like you and I, they should see some likenesses. Indeed. most would likely mix Fr. maison up with the English word 'mason' (brick-layer) which is truly from Frankish *makjon. No sole English speaker is seeing that "endeavour

"Just astounding how much French there is in English!"

YES! Awkwardly afield, I say. It should become much, much less so, so the richness of true English can at last come to the fore unbridled and shine through.

Thanks for the kind words, Gallitrot!

"maisonette", in England, is a semi-detached or terraced house where the ground floor is one apartment and the upper floor(s) are another. There is no communal stairwell; each upper apartment has its own front door at street level and its own private stairs. Some were built this way; others converted from a large house. So the word is well-known.

**YES! Awkwardly afield, I say. It should become much, much less so, so the richness of true English can at last come to the fore unbridled and shine through.**

Again Aengelfolc, you hit the nail right on the head, and that's onefoldly what we're here for. Not to dance and juke about pointlessly exclaiming how much needless Latinate terms there are in our tongue - that's self-evident.

I wish we could revive Anglo Saxon words or at least use words of Germanic origin. I love languages, especially Latin, for it was my first beloved language. I listen to Gregorian chants because Latin is an incredibly beautiful-sounding language to me. But I do not want Latin or Greek imposed onto my own language: English.**

As a man who loves languages, I can proudly say that I can speak three languages! I have learned Spanish and Pashto. Pashto is a language in a similar situation as, English but not to the same extent. This is what I mean: The Anglo Saxons were invaded and conquered. Their language was raped by the Normans, raped again by the renaissance with Latin and Greek words, and is still being raped today. Pashto is a language of a people who were conquered by Arab-speakers who then forced their language and their religion upon the Pashtuns. Luckily, Pashto survived as language, but it suffered a huge influx of Arabic words for religion and other "high" level topics like pyschology, politics, government, law, medicine, and so forth. In addition to Arabic, Pashto even has Farsi/Dari words imposed on it. Pashto is a second-class language in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and its speakers--the Pashtuns--were geographically split in half by the Russian and the British with the Durand Line, which then became the national boundary between modern day Afghanistan and Pakistan. When I learn words in Pashto, I try to use the true Pashto words as the primary words rather than secondary words that are considered "meatier" or "simple" or "uneducated". For "government" I say "daolat" (Pashto) instead of "hokumat" (Arabic).

**I understand that English itself is a blend of two or three other Germanic languages, but at least they were very similar languages from similar ethnicities.

******* Forgive my rant and my disorganized writing. I have been dozing off for the last few hours due to fatigue. Good night, y'all!

" Pashto is a second-class language "
At the end of the day it is not the source of the word that matters; it is people's attitude to it. Some borrowed words enrich the language - "kindergarten" must have been brought in to fill a gap. It really makes no sense to say that "kindergarten" is okay but "au pair" is not - but "kinderschwester" would be. No, upper class English people have a "nanny", middle class, an "au pair", and lower class a babysitter if they can afford it. Rich people used to employ a nursemaid. Perhaps if we could all afford a nanny there would be no distinction. At root it is snobby attitudes not word origins that count.

Language has long been a function of social class stratification. Often class lines are only discerned by linguistic differences or social class identities separated along linguistic lines. Indeed, even national identity is often defined along similar linguistic boundaries: who is Basque if he can't speak the language and who are Bretons if not Breton-speaking Frenchmen? The same goes for accents. In Glasgow, speaking the Patter is a marker of social class as is the Boston accent in Massachusetts, the 'Yat' dialect around New Orleans, the Cockney accent in Greater London, and so on. Traditionally this is manifest in the U/Non-U vocabularies. Here's a good read on that: http://www.helsinki.fi/jarj/ufy/24991_s113_150Ross.pdf

But this social divide is rooted centuries earlier in English and is intertwined with the mixed pedigree of English-language vocabulary. This divide is exemplified in the differences between words for meats and words for beasts the meats come from. The working-class Anglo-Saxon farmers said 'sheep' raising them in the field whilst the Norman nobles said 'mutton', seeing them cooked on the plate. These discrepancies are widespread throughout English: cow/beef, pig/pork,
This disparity is not only a matter of social position but education: the Latin-literate upper classes would say 'urinate' whilst the lower classes would say 'piss' and over the years this difference became associated with the unrefined manners of working-class folks.
In a way, this enriches the language as the French only have the word 'boeuf' while we have both. In some cases, we have the Norse word, the Anglo-Saxon word, the Norman word, and the Latin word ( cast off, snub, spurn, shun, scorn, reject) each with a slightly nuanced meaning, influenced by various factors over centuries, and only possible with so many equivalent words. What I lament is the loss of great English words. I lament the loss of words that could add to the palette of English vocabulary or that have needless been thrown out for Latin or Old French equivalents.

There is beauty in words like 'piss' and 'shit' in English. The English language has suffered enough under the oppression of the prestige dialects. This, from the Oxford English Dictionary says it all: ORIGIN mid-seventeenth century, from French, literally 'illusion, glamour', from late Latin 'praestigium' 'illusion', from Latin 'praestigiae' (plural) ‘conjuring tricks'.
Prestige. Aptly yclept.

I recommend that y'gan and spend a couple of weeks in the toon of Newcastle in Geordieland. From Wikipedia:

The dialect of Newcastle is known as Geordie, and contains a large amount of vocabulary and distinctive word pronunciations not used in other parts of the United Kingdom. The Geordie dialect has much of its origins in the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxon populations who migrated to and conquered much of England after the end of Roman Imperial rule. This language was the forerunner of Modern English; but while the dialects of other English regions have been heavily altered by the influences of other foreign languages—particularly Latin and Norman French—the Geordie dialect retains many elements of the old language. An example of this is the pronunciation of certain words: "dead", "cow", "house" and "strong" are pronounced "deed", "coo", "hoos" and "strang"—which is how they were pronounced in the Anglo-Saxon language. Other Geordie words with Anglo-Saxon origins include: "larn" (from the Anglo-Saxon "laeran", meaning "teach"), "burn" ("stream") and "gan" ("go").[70] "Bairn" and "hyem", meaning "child" and "home", are examples of Geordie words with origins in Scandinavia; "barn" and "hjem" are the corresponding modern Norwegian words. Some words used in the Geordie dialect are used elsewhere in the northern United Kingdom. The words "bonny" (meaning "pretty"), "howay" ("come on"), "stot" ("bounce") and "hadaway" ("go away" or "you're kidding"), all appear to be used in Scottish dialect; "aye" ("yes") and "nowt" (IPA://naʊt/, rhymes with out,"nothing") are used elsewhere in northern England. Many words, however, appear to be used exclusively in Newcastle and the surrounding area, such as "Canny" (a versatile word meaning "good", "nice" or "very"), "hacky" ("dirty"), "netty" ("toilet"), "hoy" ("throw"), "hockle" ("spit").[71]

@John Gibson - I think you've got a very good point. Instead of trying to recreate some phoney purist language which never existed (there were Latin elements in the various languages that melded into Anglo-Saxon before they even hit these shores), why don't we cherish and nurture the very real heritage we do have: regional dialects. Those forms of speech that too often in these pages are referred to as "lazy" or "uneducated", by people who know no better.

Aye, I agree. The Scots and Northern English dialects are truly wordhoards for this kind of exercise. Furthermore, Middle English still had thousands of survivors from Old English that could still be currency in Modern English. The OED still preserves many of these as 'obsolete'. Some of them are even still in usage in regional dialects. For me, Middle English is the true mother tongue. It retained enough of the original Anglo-Saxon and Celtic words that made it British and with some Norman or mediaeval Latin erudition but hadn't been so corrupted that it would employ Greek- or Latin-rooted words like 'place' or 'use' or 'poem' or 'music' in everyday speech to stand in for basic English words. But mediaeval Latin or even Greek ecclesiastical vocabulary serves a historic function in the English language.

@Holymackerel - As far as I can see, apart from poem (1540s replacing ME poesy), all your examples are in fact from the earlier part of Middle English or even earlier:

place - c1200 (or earlier) - conflation of Old English plæce and Middle French place, both < Latin platea < Greek plateîa (replaced Old English stow and stede);
use - mid 13th century - Middle English usen < Old French user < Latin ūsus (replaced Old English brucan);
music - mid 13th century - Middle English musike < Latin mūsica < Greek mousikḕ

Origins and dates from Online Etymology Dictionary and Dictionary.com.

Moreover, one person's 'corruption' is another person's enrichment, and what I personally like about English is the eclectic way it has evolved; the fact that is not pure bred but a loveable mongrel. It gives us more choice: climb or ascend, fast or secure, ask or question. A choice especially useful to poets and exploited as early as Chaucer, who used both Old English "hous" and "mansioun" recently arrived from Old French. To quote De Quincey - "Neither part of the language is good or bad absolutely, but in relation to its subject". According to David Crystal (The Stories of English) - "the main legacy of the Middle English Period was the enhancing of lexical stylistic choice. Lexical doublets became available ... in many cases there were triplets of the ask / question / interrogate type." "In 1200, people could only ask; by 1500 they could question (from French) and interrogate (from Latin)".

Why is it, I wonder, that English probably has more words than any other language? What's so wrong with glorying in the richness of the language we have, rather than wishing for some form of ethnically pure language that, thank God, we haven't?

http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/is-it-true-that-english-has-the-most-words-of-any-language

That's more or less what I was getting at in my earlier post. These words entered the English language around the Middle English period but hadn't killed out the English equivalents yet and represent a trend of a influx that eventually led to the loss of many good English words. The date these words entered the language is probably recorded in the literary language of Chaucer and other educated London or East Midlands dialects and the Chancery Standard. This isn't the language spoken, for example, in the West Midlands countryside that Tolkien so loved. But indeed the adoption of French and Latin terms certainly has enhanced the English language but also pushed out many others. You're right--it's a matter of personal taste. As a student of Old English I have a fondness for that lost English of . I mentioned before that I revel in the lexical choice we have in English but the beauty of a language is measured by how many words it has in its vocabulary. It is a beautiful language in part because of the foreign influence of French and Latin and Norse and Gaelic.

I meant to write, "the beauty of a language is NOT measured by how many words it has in its vocabulary." Sorry.

@HolyMackerel - The beauty, no, I grant you. But the size and variety of the language does reflect the diversity of sources, to which you are quite right to add Norse and Gaelic. The latter might not have much influence outwith Scotland and Ireland, but Norse languages had a great influence on English in much of England. And it's not only French and Latin, there are all those other languages such as Dutch and the languages of the Indian subcontinent which have also enriched our language so much. Should we favour Anglo-Saxon over them as well? What are yacht and hullabaloo in Anglo-Saxon? It is this very diversity I celebrate, not any so-called "linguistic purity".

Not that it would work anyway; as the French language authorities are finding out with their attempt to ban "hashtag" .

I can quite understand having an interest in Old English. It's the attempt to impose an Anglo-Saxon only policy on English that I hold no truck for. It suggests that after Chaucer everything went downhill, which is absolute nonsense. I'm highly suspicious of any sort of purity in these matters, especially when all the major English-speaking countries are becoming increasingly multicultural. I totally agree with JJMBallantyne and douglas.bryant on this one. But then those two usually do talk a lot of sense in these pages.

Erm, but Norse was very close to Old English - so the influence more obvious and natural. Plus the sheer amount of Scandinavian immigrants to the UK's shores were always going to have a naturally overwhelming effect on the language as it stood between the 9th-11thC.

French and Latin, however, never influenced English due to such a migrant-manifold, if you will. No, instead the former was imposed, albeit by attrition, through a 5% invasion force and the latter by ink-horn wielding snobs hell-bent on lauding pseudo-superiority through classic literature...I mention no names...but The Bigoted Idiot (aka Dr S Johnson) and his supposed comprehensive dictionary of English.

Caveat: All opinions displayed in this post are those of the author and are very, probably accurate

@Gallitrot - according to David Crystal, the period of greatest French influence was not that of the Conquest, nor that of the eighteenth century inkhorns (who were in a minority in the educated classes anyway), but from the 13th century, when Paris was the capital of world culture as they knew it at the time. This was not snobbery but a genuine desire amongst the educated classes to benefit from that culture. And remember, Latin was the not only the language of the Church, one of the most powerful institutions of the period, but also the language of international discourse. This was the way people like Erasmus and Thomas More could communicate, and many people at the time chose to be tri-lingual. Yes, there was social pressure to be considered educated, but apart from that, nobody was forcing anything on anybody.

Whether people like it or not, this all part of the rich fabric of the history of the English language. Why regret any of it? (Apart from two hundred years or so of prescriptivism, granted!) That's what I can't fathom.

For me, this is just an exercise in etymology and an appreciation for lost vocabularies. I have no intention to impose some kind of Goebbelsian prescriptive recasting of the language in line with linguistic purity. I like playing around with language and I like Old and Middle English. I agree with Warsaw Will in this but am perhaps a bit more wistful.

Linguistic prescriptivism is a tricky game. As with most things, it's best in moderation. The Icelanders seemed to have done all right with it from the beginning but the inexorable spread of popular culture has leaked in a few new words. I don't really have anything against that. 'Les immortels' over at the Académie française are fighting a ridiculous war trying to keep words like 'le weekend' out of common parlance. Dozens of rules were invented in English in the nineteenth century like those governing prepositions at the end of sentences and split infinities--both demonstrably and history fine in English but invented and imposed by academics modelling English on French. This annoys me a bit but I understand that these things are part of the history of the language. But sitting on the bus a few days ago and listening to some kids talking I remarked how bland their vocabulary was. This has nothing to do with education--I assumed that they were university students. Or a couple not speaking to each other at all but each of them looking at his or her mobile. Again, I don't really care. To each his own. Languages evolve. It seems sometimes that popular culture is having the same strong affect on language as French or Latin-language culture did in the Middle Ages. But nowadays it's not the writings of Thomas Aquinas or Boethius that are influencing the language. I understand the vast importance that Latin and French had on the history of the English language culturally and linguistically. It's not regret but celebration. I have no desire in stripping every word with roots in Nahuatl or Hindi or Xhosa or Cantonese or whatever from the language. I don't want to tell people how to talk. But sitting in a pub in the Gorbals and listening to some old-timer talking with such colourful language makes me think about nature of linguistic progress at the hands of contemporary culture.

@HolyMackerel - I understand your position, and certainly don't equate you with some of the loonier ideas on this page. But I do find this 'Anglish' business at best a fantasy based on a misunderstanding of how languages develop and the history of English, but at worst something rather nastier, bordering on linguistic cleansing.

Meanwhile, there's a real revolution to be made, viz. in the way we treat dialects, where as you rightly point out, many of these old words still exist. In a recent case in Teeside, a head teacher sent a rather condescending letter to parents, telling them to correct their child should they hear them say certain things, which included: 'nowt', 'yous' (like in the West of Scotland), 'gizit her', and 'he was sat there'. No doubt with good intentions she was trying to get them to use Standard English. But this can be done without denigrating their home language. Indeed studies on both sides of the
Atlantic show that a comparative approach enables students to handle Standard English better.

http://stancarey.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/theres-nowt-wrong-with-childrens-dialects/

Let's have more dialect on the BBC, for example, not less. It's already acceptable in drama and comedy programmes, and poses no great problems for viewers and listeners. This is the real heritage we should be defending.

Your talk of the Gorbals reminds me of a time I was sitting in a pub in the Borders and overheard part of a conversation between two men. One had said something that the other found difficult to believe. "Aye", said the first, "Ah saw it wi' me ane twa een".

'' ... impose some kind of Goebbelsian prescriptive recasting of the language in line with linguistic purity. ''

Oh God, here we go, wondered how long it would take before someone invoked Godwin's law on the thread. *yawn*

Just once it would be lovely to discuss the breadth, range and manifold strengths of English's own words without some self-righteous classroom- level b*llocks (excuse my French - and by that I mean 'class' and the -eous ending) being wielded. Always as though we'll all instantaneously don jack boots and slip on brown shirts if we dare bespeak the usefulness of words from English's roots (those being Teutonic - whether you like it or not) which were often wrongly and intentionally ousted in favour of flamboyant, wordy one-upmanship initiated by ink-bespattered, periwig-clad bigots.

France, Holland, Germany, Iceland have all tightened up the measures by which needless foreign words enter the language - okay, not always effectively, especially on a slang level. However, they tend to safeguard the administrative/ political/ judicial realms of the language from Latinate superciliousness and lexicographical trickery ( or Latin haughtiness and wordsmith's cunning, if you like).

Of course, no one here believes you could effectively cast out the whole plethora of Latin and French in the language - nor would it be wise or necessary in many cases. However, a pruning of needless 'sesquipedalian' usage would be a useful start **you see, that word would be one of the first to go** 'longwordy' would be way more recognisable, easier to remember and just as effective. Thus empowering ordinary native-English speakers instead of making them feel their own language is a minefield of 'learned' privilege.

''But this can be done without denigrating their home language. Indeed studies on both sides of the Atlantic show that a comparative approach enables students to handle Standard English better...'' '' Let's have more dialect on the BBC, for example, not less.''

Yes, I'm liking this. People seem to forget that Oxbridge English grew out of East Midlands dialect and Estuary Anglo-French.

@Gallitrot - you're quite free to use what language you want, and to avoid fancy foreign words if you like. I rather enjoy your use of words like "manifold", "bespattered" and "haughtiness". You're also free to campaign for others to do the same; I just don't want any restrictions forced on us.

Ever since people like Dryden and Defoe first mooted the idea of some oversight of English through an Academy or such like, the idea has been (rightly in my mind) rejected. The great glory of English is that it is 'We, the people', generation after generation, who decide on its development, not some authority, be it prescriptivist or linguistically so-called purist. The development of English has been closely associated with democracy; let its own development be similarly democratic.

And to say that English's roots are Teutonic, is for me a great over-simplification. Yes, it is a Germanic language, but right from the start, it had non-Germanic elements and later opened up to the international culture of its time. It is precisely this rich admixture, especially the French connection, which makes English so interesting, something I cherish.

There's also a small practical point. The Latin and French basis of many of our words makes it considerably easier for us to learn other European languages, and for speakers of European languages to learn English.

Finally, "sesquipedalian" may be a bit too "sesquipedalian" for you, but didn't you get a bit of a thrill when you first found out what it meant?

''Finally, "sesquipedalian" may be a bit too "sesquipedalian" for you, but didn't you get a bit of a thrill when you first found out what it meant?''

Not really, as I recall learning it from some jumped-up, haughty little turd using it for precisely the reasons I mentioned.

Haha, sorry about the Third Reich reference, Gallitrot. I didn't mean it to be too nasty. I suppose it comes with the territory of discussing the preservation of Teutonic linguistic purity. I certainly didn't mean to imply that anyone here has any devilish intentions.

There is certainly something exquisitely visceral about words that have a deeply-rooted connection with the language. Native English words have a richness that Latin loanwords will never have. And often it's unnecessary, insipid, and haughty to favour a long Latin-rooted word when a simple English one would do. I think people should take pride in the words they're using and there's nothing better than having an understanding of and using this kind of heritage language. Anything to keep the spark alive. I like the word 'guts' much better than the word 'intestines'. I like 'wickedness' much more than 'turpitude'. What I bemoan is the sterilisation of language with listless contemporary coinages. English is great partly we have the choice to use more evocative language or more sterile language depending on the circumstances. English has a long and wonderful evolution. Let's not forget that 'haughty' has its roots in Latin 'altus' but everything about the word shows how all kinds of factors have contributed to the building of our vocabulary. But nowadays so much of it is being lost across the board and it's a pity that none of it is studied or remembered. I imagine that this is the way so many English words went and I hope that we don't continue to lose more of the language to sterilisation. At this point I become something of a prescriptivist. It annoys me to hear people talking to me in such broken-down language. Someone told me that a night out was 'ridiculous'. What the hell was he talking about? Why can't people speak and explain things these days instead of using these trite, flat, colourless words? Few would shrug and let Roman ruins go to pot simply because that's the natural evolution of building materials. I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to preserve language. It certainly isn't questioned with endangered languages.

It's terrible that regional speech has been so extinguished. Having that strong connection with language as regions do with their own slang is beautiful. Certainly the teaching of Standard English is necessary for society to have some kind of lingua franca in which communicate but it does kill out a lot of local linguistic charm. That Lallans Scots is great. Sadly fewer and fewer folks are speaking this way with the influence of internationality. I've got a Scots dictionary on my shelf and I love it.

Everyone has the freedom to talk however he or she wants in the end. At least most of the time that's true. I don't think anyone here is advocating a practical overthrow of prevailing linguistic conventions in English such that words like 'university' or 'hospital' or 'government' would no longer be used. I don't think that even needs to be said. But everyone has his or her own thoughts on this business. I think a lot of it is fantasy and if we can't have fantasy why have anything? But some folks have real grievances with regard to usage and, fair enough, voice them here.

That reminds me of a conversation I overheard in a pub in Fife after every few words the speaker would interject 'ye ken'. It's great, that.

*". . . a conversation wherein after . . ."

It must be getting late . . .

"The Latin and French basis of many of our words makes it considerably easier for us to learn other European languages, and for speakers of European languages to learn English."
And the germanic-rooted words make it easier for central Europeans to learn English!
The latin and french ones only help romance-language speakers.
Perhaps we should write English with chinese characters: that would make learning Chinese, Japanese and Korean easier!

I am with Holy Mackerel on this: latin-rooted words often sound effete, elevated, and overly academic. Take another butcher's.

If one looks at ESOL textbooks like Headway, they often use "lead-in" for "introduction". Why ? Because it's easier to understand?

@jayles (who for some reason comes up in Google reader as jayles the unwise). I live and teach Poland (Central Europe), and while Polish has a few words of Germanic origin, it also has quite a lot from French, for example "etap, parter, ekran, plaża" and hundreds, probably thousands from Latin, many of them similar to the ones we have. If an English word ends in "ation", there's a good chance Polish will have a similar word ending in "acja".

It was one of the first things I learnt when I started teaching here: it's not the longer Latin-based words they tend to have problems with, it's the short Anglo-Saxon ones and phrasal verbs they don't get. In fact, I imagine "Introduction" would probably easier for most foreign learners than the phrasal verb based "Lead-in". That's rather an anglo-centric way of thinking, I would suggest. Actually, I don't see "lead-in" and "introduction" as being completely synonymous, but that's a different story..

Latin was not only the basis of Romance languages, it was the "international" and "official" language of its day in much of Europe, (to use a couple of somewhat anachronistic terms) - Domesday Book was written in Latin, for example. English was affected by this and the influence of medieval French, just as other languages today borrow words from English.

I've no objection to avoiding complicated long words, but what's wrong with doing this on a word-to-word basis, rather than this crude all Latin-based words are bad, all Anglo-Saxon words are good nonsense.

Actually, I think I'll start a campaign for Real British, that's to say the genuine native language of these isles, before that bunch of marauding foreign mercenaries, the Angles, Jutes and Saxons, led by Hengist and Horsa, brutally betrayed the trust of Vortigern, King of the Britons. This will be quite easy; only Brythonic languages, Welsh, Cornish and Breton, will be allowed in schools, and they will meld into one British language once again. Children will be punished for speaking any other, as they were for speaking Welsh and Gaelic a hundred years ago. Loan words will be allowed from the sister Goidelic languages, but from no other.

There's a lot of nonsense written on these pages about how wonderful the Anglo-Saxons and Norsemen were, and how awful the invading Normans were. But they had all been invaders in their time, and while the Norman invasion made life a bit awkward for a while, Anglo-Saxon culture survived. The Anglo-Saxon and Norse invasions, on the other hand, for whatever reasons, led to the almost total disappearance of Celtic culture in England. Nobody seems to be mourning that on these pages. Some people here seem to have a very selective (and I would say over-romanticised) idea of history, and of the history of the English language.

English is what it is in no small part as a result of the influence of other languages, especially French and Latin, but also Dutch and the languages of the Indian Sub-continent. For me, as an English speaker, this is something to celebrate, not something to moan about.

@gallitrot - (belatedly) by all means substitute Anglo-Saxon based words for Latin based ones if that's what floats your boat, but at least choose equivalents: "lexicography" is exclusively to do with the the theory and practice of compiling and writing dictionaries, a "wordsmith" is someone who an expert in the use of words or whose vocation is writing, as the use of the word "smith" would imply. Wordsworth was certainly a wordsmith, but as far as I know, not a lexicographer.

Incidentally, the word lexicography has apparently been around in English about two hundred years longer than wordsmith. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Well, admittedly 'wordsmith' may not be the best infill for lexicographer... but it leaves the way open for: wordhoardbuilder, wordgatherer, dictionarybuilder (if you want a wholly simple and straightforwardly understandable term - albeit Anglo-French).

Oh and yeah, I suppose the substitution does float my boat - otherwise I wouldn't be putting forward the virtues of Anglish and older more English based words.

@Gallitrot - I'd also quibble with the word "supercilious" being the exact equivalent of "haughty". My dictionary defines "supercilious" as "behaving towards other people as if you think you are better than they are", and gives the example "The dress shop assistant was very supercilious." The important words for me here being "as if you think". Now I'm not saying the upper classes are in any way superior to the rest of us, but I can imagine a duchess being referred to as haughty, but probably not supercilious. On the other hand, a jobsworth might well be referred to as supercilious but probably not haughty. That same dictionary has haughty as being synonymous with arrogant, and supercilious as being synonymous with superior. It is this enlarged palette of nuanced meanings that is one of the things that makes English so fascinating for me, you have so many choices. If you reject all Latin-based words and French-based words, you lose these possibilities. Not to mention not having to repeat yourself.

@Warsaw Will As I said before, it's not the words themselves but the way some people use them; and often it's the latinate words in English which are used in a sort of linguistic one-upmanship game especially in academic circles.
I too taught in Central Europe for several years (not in Poland itself though) and it certainly seems like a boon and so easy to deal with latinate and french words that are in English too.
However for the past ten years I taught many Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Fiiipino, Indonesian, Hindi, Arabic and Thai speakers too; and when one gets to IELTS and academic English, all those latin-based words become a pain - moreso than phrasal verbs, although the latter are far more use in everyday speech. Words like "rural" - why on earth did this get borrowed, when "country" would be good enough. (Sometimes I feel like I'm teaching latin and greek! especially when explaining prefixes like con- syn-). So much of what is called the "formal" register is just putting in a latin-rooted word where a saxon one would do - "decapitated" instead of "behead" .
Korean does in fact have more than a few hundred words borrowed from , well, American I think. Alas the pron and meaning often somewhat changed too!

I do agree however that some latin-rooted words do add an other nuance.

You are quite right about Celtic tongues - perhaps one day there will be a revival in the west of England, everywhere west of Reading!

OK jayles, and I usually try to avoid these words, but in science they can sometimes add a bit of precision, no doubt. And you could say just the same (about one-upmanship) about business buzzwords, and very few of them are latinate, except for the habit of verbalisation, and even then the source words are often not latinate.

To me it's just another silly rule: don't use passive, don't use nominalisation, don't use any redundancy, don't use latinate words. What about just using common sense and good judgement instead? And you can see what this argument taken to its extreme leads to in Gallitrot's comments: all these artificial words, or using words like "infill" with a completely new meaning. It may be a fun parlour game, but it has little to do with modern English. I have to agree with a previous commentator (from about five years back). I find all these so-called "Saxon" revivals or neologisms rather annoying. And I find the use of some existing words words like "bespeak" rather more pretentious than

As I said before, it comes from a very selective reading of both English history and the English language. Serious students of the English language like David Crystal have very little time for these source-based prejudices. And I doubt if one serious scholar of Anglo-Saxon languages has joined this Anglish movement.

Damn, I hit the wrong button! That unfinished sentence should read - And I find changing the meaning of some existing words like "bespeak" really annoying and confusing. When I see it with its standard (literary) meaning of suggest - "His style of dressing bespoke great self-confidence." I just about understand it, but the way it's being used on this page, I have to stop and wonder what the hell's going on. I'm afraid the only word I can think for this is Latin-based - obfuscation.

''And I doubt if one serious scholar of Anglo-Saxon languages has joined this Anglish movement.''

Correct me if I'm wrong *I'm sure you will :)* So no one, without them being what you'd determine a ''serious student'' should be allowed to pass judgement on their native tongue??? And anyhow, trying to suggest scholars are somehow 'objective' due to their education is laughable. Seeing as most learned folk quite readily propone or denounce any observation that enters the realms of what they feel is their 'chosen' subject of expertise.

That's about right. I was under the impression that this was no more than an amusing exercise in etymology or some kind of language construction game. There is very little serious style and usage talk here. I don't see any practical application beyond something akin to the old Strunk & White commandment, V.14: "Avoid fancy words". There's not reason 'ameliorate' when you can 'improve'. They're both Latin-rooted but one often smacks of awkward pretentiousness. Each has its uses depending on whether you're speaking formally, dysphemistically, quaintly, or however. Strunk and White go on to write:

"Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able. Anglo-Saxon is a livelier tongue than Latin, so use Anglo-Saxon words. In this, as in so many matters pertaining to style, one's ear must be one's guide: 'gut' is lustier than 'intestine', but the two words are not interchangeable, because 'gut' is often inappropriate, being too coarse for the context. Never call a stomach a tummy without good reason. If you admire fancy words, if every sky is 'beauteous', every blonde 'curvaceous', if you are tickled by 'discombobulate', you will have a bad time with Reminder 14. What is wrong, you ask, with 'beauteous'? No one knows, for sure. There is nothing wrong, really, with any word--all are good, but some are better than others. A matter of ear, a matter of reading the books that sharpen the ear."

I think that's pretty fair. A bit dated maybe. I knew I'd read that 'gut/intestine' example somewhere. The only thing I advise or hope beyond that is that speakers keep a closeness or an affinity for the language they speak, its heritage and richness, and a respect for the regional speech that keeps language close to home. I'm not advocating that we lose any of it, if it's good, useful language. Where I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts my family called a refrigerator an icebox long after refrigerators ousted iceboxes and I always preferred the sound of it. Hell, 'box' is a Latin word but it's a much more colourful than 'refrigerator'. But I don't think I'll be trying to call a sickwagon to take me to the sickhouse anytime soon. This is a fool's errand. I mean, 'cheese' is a much more English-sounding word than 'etiquette' but 'cheese' is a Latin-rooted word and 'etiquette' is Germanic, related to Old English 'stician'. It's a wild goose chase through the pages of the OED. When you get back to the Frankish and the Old High German and the Old French, the etymology becomes so incestuous it's hard to make heads or tails of what's what anyway.

Most of these old Norman words sound more quintessentially English than anything else. All this talk about Anglo-Saxonness and people forget that what makes English special is that it's British. Where I live in Glasgow it seems that nothing is more native to the Western Lowlands than Scots but, despite its heavy Norse vocabulary, it's all Norman-riddled Middle English to its core. At that point, why don't we all just speak Pictish?

@Gallitrot - of course anyone can say what they like about the language, although I prefer to avoid passing judgement - I leave that to prescriptivists and pedants. And from reading some of what you've written earlier in this thread, you are obviously very knowledgeable on this subject, much more so than me.

What I'm saying is that serious historians don't tend to try and rewrite history, and I very much doubt that people who study Old and Middle English academically or professionally would have much time for this sort of thing. And yes, I do respect the views of people who know about these things. Take David Crystal, for example. He has recently been working with a theatre company in Canada to try and recreate exactly how the works of Shakespeare would have sounded in his day. That is a worthwhile exercise, as is trying to reconstruct what Old and Middle English sounded like, a the differences in dialects you were discussing above. That is what I call serious scholarship. And I'm sure that amateurs can add their bit. You have obviously made a deep study of the English of the period, isn't that fascinating enough?

I can see that recreating a modern Anglo-Saxon might be an interesting exercise, but where you lose me is when you try to extrapolate this to modern English, as if you would have liked English to have existed in some sort of cocoon. When you put it forward as an alternative to the English we love and speak, then you start standing on the toes of people like me who like our language just the way it is, thank you very much, and who just say or write what they think fit, without constantly thinking of the derivation of the words we use, who like having choices. And who disdain most of the other prescriptivist nonsense. For telling people they should use Anglo-Saxon based words in preference to Latin or French based words is just as prescriptivist as saying we must say "Whom do you love?" instead of "Who do you love?".

Of course you're free to say and write what you like, but as long as you use words which don't appear in my dictionary, like propone, I'm afraid I can't take you very seriously (especially when you then follow it with "observation", as Latinate as they come). I like good natural English, and this all sounds rather artificial to me. I'm sure it's all great fun, and intellectually challenging, but it doesn't have much to do with the English of the last five hundred years, as far as I'm concerned. And apart from Chaucer and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and one or two others you will know more about than me, that means the English of the bulk of English literature. My problem is that I was just never into fantasy. And I can't stand any sort of prescriptivism.

Ironically, looking back at this, I imagine that the vast majority of the words I've used are in fact of Anglo-Saxon or French origin, and not too many of them are "effete, elevated or overly academic", I hope. But that's just the way I write, there's no deliberate thought to it.

@HolyMackerel - I appreciate what you say, but I wouldn't rely overly on Strunk and White. Their bit on the Passive is absolute nonsense, and usage mavens of this sort rarely follow their own advice in their own writing. Orwell's famous essay where he both advises not to use the passive and to use Anglo-Saxon words in favour of latinate ones is riddled with passive verbs, and I''ve no doubt with latinate words. He was a good writer; he knew when to break his own rules.

Right, you need to pick and choose whose advice you heed. I hold none of these usage bibles sacred. I think here they're being somewhat fair but I see some of these rules more as guidelines and others completely unfounded and nonsensical. As from any religious text I can glean a lot of reasonable moral advice and a lot more mythology. Many of these rules rooted in erudition rather than tradition, books rather than speech, are absurd. I agree with you for the most part but don't share your complete disdain for prescriptivism. I don't want to tell people how to talk but I do have my own opinions on what is correct when 'experts' have set rules that I disagree with on historical or etymological grounds. I suppose it's more the prescriptivists that get my goat. As you say, some of their laws are nonsense. So who's correct? If there are to be rules, and I think there should be some things we can agree on for formal writing and teaching, they should have some kind of correlation with the spoken language or some historical reason for existing.

If I had a nickel for every time a British English-speaker has told me that the way I speak or write is incorrect, I'd have a nice nest egg by now. Spelling is one of the big ones. I can see the etymological justification for Norman words like 'favour', 'colour', and 'labour' but also for 'harbor' and 'neighbor'. There's a similar argument for -ize/-ise. A lot of these accepted usage laws have the same kind of flimsy defence but we're told we're wrong when we disobey them. I know that this probably belongs in a different forum but discussing prescriptivism like this begs that question: whose Rx are we taking?

As a ground rule we mostly wish to be understood clearly so don't write anything that might be misunderstood in context. Thus "harbour" or "harbor" doesn't matter as both are understood whichever side of the Atlantic you come from. However, "subway", "vest", "4/5/2012", "3.08" (feet/inches/dollars/pounds?? are fraught.
Sometimes of course we wish to be vague, or smokescreen the truth, or to one-up, or break the norms, or inter alia sound like an academic prat. Or indeed sound like Chaucer.
Each to their own!

@Holy Mackerel - Here's one Brit saying that any Brit that told you that is talking out of their proverbial. Unfortunately, there are a few idiots in Britain who think that BrE is the "only true English", especially amongst Daily Mail readers, but sometimes egged on by the media.

Of course, people are most comfortable with what they know, and I have some problems with certain aspects of American English, especially in relation to group nouns (and dates - see below). But I understand that it is simply a different way of thinking, just as our national senses of humour differ.

Linguistically, no language or dialect is superior to any other. Whether it's a matter of BrE vs AmE, or standard dialects vs regional or ethnic dialects (including the much maligned in these pages ebonics or African American Vernacular English) . Anyone who says differently doesn't know very much about how languages work.

@jayles - There is one city in Britain where subway has the same meaning as for Americans - the official name for the underground line affectionately known as "the clockwork orange" is "Glasgow Subway". Dates are the ones that get me; I can never get my head around the American dating system.

Here's another little difference:
Brit - I got really pissed last night.
American - Who with?
Brit - Oh, there was just me. And a bottle of whisky.

@Warsaw Will Just teach your student to always write the month in letters like "Mar" when putting dates in emails. And watch the use of a comma for the decimal point.
I think one of the early Mars probes crashed because of the feet/meters issue in the software.
"My boss's car was kaput so I gave him an elevator to the airport" !!
With hearty greetings.

@jayles - you do know about grannies and sucking eggs, don't you? :))

When do you ever date an email? It's done automatically for you, isn't it?
Anyway, it's not an issue here, as other European countries use exactly the same short form as we do. I don't think many of them write emails to the States, unless they work for American firms, in which case they probably know anyway.

But I grant you the comma / decimal point thing can be a problem.

Awra best

@Warsaw Will: dinosaurs like me lay eggs
Ruthfully my career in business ended b4 some spider spun the worldwide web: quite how an office really works with emails is beyond my ken, although sometimes I write php, html, or javascript just while away a sunny retirement.

I've been living in the United Kingdom long enough to know how these things go. Mostly they have no clue what they're talking about. Sometimes I just want to be able to say 'sidewalk' with impunity while other times we all have a good laugh that the Yank said 'pants' when he meant 'trousers' and no one cares. I do wish the Americans would just switch over to the date convention the rest of the world uses and make it easier for everyone. I make a point of writing the date with the name of the month written out and the day-month-year order (26 February, 2013, for example) when I can to avoid confusion.

I know that spelling usually doesn't impede understanding but, then again, not many proper usage rules protect comprehension either. People want to be understand so they usually make an effort to avoid ambiguity. As French evolved and certain changes occurred others like liaison compensated for ambiguity. Liaison rules weren't set down they evolved naturally. At least in spoken language this is true; often written language can be frustratingly ambiguous with things like antecedents. A lot of the differences among dialects just have to be understood as part of tapestry of linguistic diversity. But the reasoning behind some of these things just looks wrong. As you say, even as a non-prescriptivist, you take issue with things like group nouns in American English. It'd be nice if we could come to a consensus on some of the unnecessary differences at least as the gold standard in formal writing. As unimportant as it may be, I'd like to see 'colour' in the States and 'harbor' in the Commonwealth. Oxford spelling nicely favours 'synthesize' but it doesn't seem to have gained currency in the rest of the United Kingdom and my compatriots extend the pattern to 'analyze' quite wrongly. It really isn't much of a cause for complaint but when one is writing transatlantically a fair amount and always thinking about what to write and why to write it that way, it begins to seem important.

I s'pose that the -ize/-ise disparity is ultimately the same argument about whether we want to go all the way back to the Latin (or here even the Ancient Greek) or take the Anglo-Norman or Old French spelling. When all of these differences in spelling began to be homogenized in the eighteenth-century there seems to have been no real rhyme or reason to much of it on either side of the Atlantic but there is some history to certain conventions. I'm not advocating a resurrection of variants like 'governour' or 'errour'. There's a reason for all of these forms to exist or not exist but in the Internet Age it seems like some of it could be codified.

@Holy Mackerel - "Mostly they have no clue what they're talking about" - Who would they be here, and what are they talking about? Just curious.

I've been doing a bit of research on the -ise/-ize business, and although I haven't got to the bottom of it yet, I'm finding it rather interesting. Although there was quite a lot of inconsistency, with the same word sometimes appearing with both spellings in the same work, -ize endings seem to have totally predominated in Britain until the end of the 18th century. But these -ize verbs were used pretty rarely compared with the French -ise verbs like surprise, compromise etc. until the end of the 18th century. Then two things appear to have happened. There was quite an increase in the use of -ize verbs, followed by very rapid changeover to -ise spelling, so that by about 1850, it seems to have dominated in books and magazines. Modern commentators say this is due to French influence and a mistaken analogy with the French -ise verbs, but I've found nothing contemporary to give the reason.

But whatever the reason was, the changeover was very rapid. The original editions of Jane Austen's six novels, published between 1811and 1818, have about 90% -ize endings, with about 10% of -ize verbs appearing with an S. But when they were all republished by a different publisher in 1833, they appear with -ise endings throughout. And most of Dickens seems to have been published with -ise endings, including those published in his own magazine. I'm not convinced that this was a deliberate bow to French influence. I think it's possible that British publishers realised they had to clean up these inconsistencies, and went with the flow of the more common French -ise verbs. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Noah Webster had decided to go the other way.

We are sometimes told that the -ize version is correct because of the Latin and ultimately Greek origins of these verbs. But one thing I've learnt, is that while this true for some of the earlier adoptions, already by 1600 people were creating -ize verbs from existing English words. Shakespeare is credited with five of them, including the wonderful "sluggardize". Probably the majority of the ones we use today are formed this way, without a Latin root at all.

I've written about on this my blog and am collecting material which I hope to put in a little blog dedicated to -ize/-ise verbs soon.

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2013/01/some-random-thoughts-about-ise-and-ize.html

addyatg! Welcome back. I see that you made it thru DLI. I'v been dealing with a few Persian friends and they too are trying to "un-arab" their tung … Like noting 'dorood' insted of 'salaam' and 'naam' insted of 'esm'.

Sorry about being away for so long but good to see that thred is still alive. I don't want to get between W.W. and Gallitrot but I will say that I'm with Gallitrot ... for me there is no notherness between haughty and supercilious. Supercilious is a snob word that ... thankfully ... I seldom see.

Oh, and don't get bent out of shape about haughty (from haught+y) ... While the "conventional wisdom" is that it is: haught - c.1400, haute, from O.Fr. haut (11c.) from L. altus "high"; with initial h- by influence of Frankish hoh "high". ... I can as eathly say that it is the other way. My guess is that maybe the 't' might hav come from altus otherwise this looks a lot like O. Fris hach and Goth. hauhs. So haut is likely at worse a blend of Frankish hoh and Latin altus.

Anent -ise; the Oxford Dict. Online clearly says that the -ise is from French:

The alternative spelling -ise (reflecting a French influence) is in common use, especially in British English. - http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/-ize?q=-ize

For that matter, the French inflow (influence) on spelling in English is strong and is the root of many odd and unfonetic spellings. If you want to note the French rooted spelling of colour (Middle English (as colo(u)r): from Old French colour (noun) … http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/colour?q=colour),for a Latin word, meh. But it's truly sad when you put it on an Anglo-rooted word like neighbor or harbor. Whenever you note the -our for these words, you might as well find the nearest Frenchman, get down on bended knee, and put a big kiss on his arse and thank him for teaching the dumb Saxons how to spell.

A deal of Anglish should be to root out some of the worst of the French spellings but that is even tuffer than trying to root out some of the French words.

Let's write with a few Latinates as we can. I'll note old words and put the Latinate in ( ) when I think you likely don't know the word. The gemean (common) lines that the Latin/French upholders (apologists/supporters) giv are:

1. The Norman-French Takeover didn't truly hav "much" inflow (influence) on English.

This is — eath-seen — bunk. The Takeover by Lucky Bill the Bastard had a mickle (enormous) outcome on the English tung. In the time following the Takeover, the Anglo-French two-tungness (diglossia) was open and unhidden with French taking over the “higher” notes (usages) by becoming the tung of rikedom (gov't) and of law. Eke to that that Lucky Bill bestedded the head of the church in England with a Frenchman and afterwards work on oversetting the Bible into English was stoppt. Thus was set the mindset that higher and better tungs were French and Latin while English was for the churl-folk.
Slowly it began to giv way to a hidden diglossia, as can be seen in the unfolding of the Middle English “high style” – the words noted by the word-sowers (OE wordsāwere, 'rhetoricians') of the Middle Ages to bewrite (describe) the writing way (literary style) deem'd right for ernest and high works. This enker (particular) way of writing can be found in English from about 1350 onwards, and in the fifteenth and early sixteenth hundred-years (centuries) it bloom'd into a truly showy, Latinate shape call'd 'aureate'.

2. Saxon (English) lackt the wordstock for … blah, blah, blah. Again, utter bunk. The Saxons had a rich wordstock and many words for things like lore (science), tungolcraft (astronomy), and many others.

3. Latin was the tung of science and French was the tung of culture … Yes and no. Latin was the gemean tung for science but other Teutonish tungs weren't flooded with Latinates. The flood of Latinates had little to nothing to do with Latin being noted for science. French as seen as the tung of culture by the French begotten athels (nobles) after the Takeover and later when the royalty fled to France (where else?) during the Cromwell years. The "Restoration" of the French begotten athels brought yet another flood of Latinates. And again, the other Teutonish tungs are not overloaded and belorded by Latinates to the depth that English is. As odd that it is, some of the Latinates in other Teutonish tungs hav come from English!

As this thread now seems to have left the realms of what I would recognise as English, I gracefully bow out and leave the field to the Anglish speakers. I would leave you with one thought, however. By all means choose short words over long, simple rather than over-complex. But is it any less pretentious to use words (real or invented) known only to a small band of enthusiasts (i.e. words that are foreign to people like me), than to use perfectly normal words that happen to have come into English from French or Latin, when they are the words everyone knows? Methinks not.

What differentiates English from other Germanic languages is that very admixture of Anglo-Saxon and French. To deny that is to deny linguistic history. Most of the great literature of English, from Shakespeare on, has drawn on that rich heritage, and its writers have profited from the broad choice of words that was available.

And like most languages, English is ruled by custom (and that includes British spelling) and the common sense of its speakers, not by the dictates of prescriptivist grammarians or the fanciful whims of etymological purists, of whatever stripe. "Custom", as the writer Ben Jonson said, "is the most certain mistress of language".

The perils of writing late at night. The second part of the first paragraph should have read something like:

By all means choose short words over long, simple rather than over-complex. Yes, it is true that the use of longer words, often of Latin derivation, can be pretentious (although it can also sometimes lead to greater precision or nuance). But is it any less pretentious to use words (real or invented) known only to a small band of enthusiasts (i.e. words that are foreign to people like me), rather than use the perfectly normal words that everyone knows, simply because they happen to have come into English from French or Latin? Methinks not.

@WW ... "But is it any less pretentious to use words (real or invented) known only to a small band of enthusiasts (i.e. words that are foreign to people like me), rather than use the perfectly normal words that everyone knows, simply because they happen to have come into English from French or Latin?"

Is that not how the Latinates came into English in the first place? Were not the Latinates pretentious (showy) and only known to the "educated" (learn'd) thus was ... and still is taken as ... a way to show off one's "education" (learning) by noting these words? I likely hav a bigger wordstock than most, yet I still come by Latinates that I hav to look up ... And when I do, more often than not, it's some showy word that could hav been written another and more understandable way.

Gemean is from OE gemǽne; adj. Common, general, mutual, in common; communis

Inflow is already a noun in English, the note of it is nothing more than a calque of the Latin influere, from in- ‘into’ + fluere ‘to flow’ which is a root of the Old French influence. One could also write inflowness but there is no true need to do so.

Two-tungness is a straight calque of diglossia a word which didn't come about til the 1950s! An academic made up the word from Greek ... in 1950s (that's from the Oxford Dict. Online)!

Tung itself is the older and the fonetic spelling: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tung

Note as both noun and verb for 'use', see etyms 1 and 2: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/note

One doesn't hav to truly make up words. Only need to edquicken (OE edcwician) words that hav a little dust on them and sometimes calqing the Latinate.

It's not Anglishers who are trying to naysay the history of English but the Latin and French lovers. Anglishers are trying to make folks aware that they don't need the showy (pretentious) Latinates to be smart. The heavy noting of Latinates is a token of snobbery. It's a kind of "elite speak". It means that one has, needlessly (mostly) learn'd a bunch of Latinates and thus they like to throw them out to show their uppityness http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/uppityness. Then these selfsame folks will snivel when you yank that rug out from under them.

There's no way to edquicken or dust off mostly unknown words unless one notes them ... and that is what we do.

"uppityness " : to me "uppity" suggests someone is unbiddable, wayward, or unwilling to take overlordship. I see the meaning "snobby" in the wordbook but I've never heard it.
How about "one-upmanship"?

Well, they're at it again ...

—The team calls its biological transistor the “transcriptor."— http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2013/march/bil-gates.html

What the heck kind of name is "transcriptor" ... that means "writing over ... writing across ... writing thru". It in no way describes what it is. It sounds like someone who handles students' transcripts.

Anyone want to take a shot at giving it an anglo name … or at least make it half anglo?

If Stormfront (the racist forum) supports Anglish something is wrong. I love English because of it's ability to absorb loanwords. You people are pretentious.

@Xen ... Stormfront also notes English ... Does that make English racist? Your lack of wit-craft (logic) is showing.

Speaking of "pretentious" ... You don't think that you're being showy by noting such a showy word as "pretentious"?

ability - wherewithal
absorb - soak, soak up, soak in
pretentious - showy
support - upstay http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/upstay

@Xen ... Stormfront also notes English ... Does that make English racist? Your lack of wit-craft (logic) is showing.

Speaking of "pretentious" ... You don't think that you're being showy by noting such a showy word as "pretentious"?

ability - wherewithal
absorb - soak, soak up, soak in
pretentious - showy
support - upstay http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/upstay

to shrepe - to clear: "The fog begins to shrepe yonder." … The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, p 238

fangast - a marriageable maid ... ibid, p237

support -> also underpin, underbear

The trouble about these equivalents is that many (perhaps most) of us use both the Latin-derived and Anglo-Saxon derived words, but with subtly different meanings and collocations. A showy car, showy clothes yes, but a showy word? Oxford Online has showy as "having a striking appearance or style, typically by being excessively bright, colourful, or ostentatious" - "showy costume jewellery" and pretentious as "attempting to impress by affecting greater importance or merit than is actually possessed" - "a pretentious film". Use an online collocation finder and "showy word" appears nowhere, nor does it make much inroads in Google Books.

Similarly, I use both "wherewithal" and "ability", but for most of us I imagine (and in dictionaries) wherewithal is more about physical resources, especially money. When talking about skill, ability is more natural.

I might well say something underpins somebody's argument, but I'm not going to underpin that person at the next election, I'm going to support them.

For me, to see these as simple equivalents is to grossly simplify the meanings they have acquired over the centuries. Unlike AnWulf I have no insight into how these words came into English, and if they have become the natural choice over time, I don't really care. I live in this millennium, not the last.

Take the word "dictionary", a word all you Anglish fans studiously avoid and probably think of as being somehow "foreign". It has in fact been in use in English since about 1520, rather longer than "wordbook"(1590s), and also rather longer than Europeans have permanently been in North America. It is as English as Americans are American!

Now look at usage: there is a 900-1 ratio dictionary to wordbook on the Internet, and something similar in Google Books. And if you discounted the other meaning of wordbook (libretto) it would no doubt be a lot higher. Dictionary is the word that is overwhelmingly used by English speakers. The every day words that the vast majority of us use totally naturally are apparently not good enough for you, simply because of their derivation. So yes, I do think the use of wordbook and wordstock (for vocabulary) is being pretentious. And no, I don't think it is being showy; that's something else.

But then I'm not one of the true believers.

@WW It is certainly true that choose Anglo-Saxon words often brings in an othersome nuance and/or usage. ManU supporters -> underpinners, upstayers ?? I thnk not!
"Underbearers" = pallbearers.

You do not have to be a "true believer"; but you might choose to use "ongoing" instead of "continuous" more often; no harm in that.

May frith and frothe be with you alway.

hearty greetings.

@jayles - but it is precisely because I'm a non-believer that I have neither the need nor the desire to replace continuous with anything. Sorry, but to be honest I think the whole idea is absolutely daft. I'm perfectly happy with both ongoing and continuous, they are both thoroughly standard English words. My only concern is with what sounds natural (ie used by most people) and apt for the occasion. And I have to say that the use of words like "othersome" simply sound twee to me. (Which is not surprising as I can only find two dictionaries that list it, and that as poetic and dialectal, and with a completely different meaning to the one you're using - "some folks do and othersome don't").

And again continuous and ongoing are not often synonymous in my book. Road works can be ongoing, but the stream of traffic passing them is continuous. Police investigations can be ongoing, but the policeman conducting them is in continuous employment, but pissed off because the rain has been continuous all day. It's a matter of simple collocation, and the fact that ongoing is used about processes, rather than states. I (and I imagine the vast majority of English speakers) use words to express myself, not for what are patently ideological reasons.

Pretentious = "Marked by an unwarranted claim to importance or distinction."

One way to say "pretentious" in true English is highfalutin(g). There are so many other ways to say it, too.

wale - "Something/anything that is chosen as the best." < ME wal(e) < ON val "choice" < ON velja "to choose". Akin to German Wahl (< OHG wala "to choose").

"What's so wrong with glorying in the richness of the language we have, rather than wishing for some form of ethnically pure language that, thank God, we haven't?"

The thing is, everyone does not think that today's English has 'richness'. Rather, the other side is that English seems to be teeming with needless Latin-French/ Greek words. Some loans and borrowings are great when truly needed, and do help to make a tongue 'richer.' Too much, however, is... too much. Dare I say it....downright superfluous (< Latin). :-)

High-quality learning environments are a necessary precondition for facilitation and enhancement of the ongoing learning process.

-OR-

Children need good schools if they are to learn properly.

http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/examples/before-and-after.html

Which is 'richer?" The one that is easily understood or the one with too many unneeded fremd words?

'nuff said.

@Ængelfolc - why is it that when people want to prove something is bad in English they always choose the most preposterous example they can think of? And I'm sure you realise that "school" came into Old English via Latin from the original Greek skhole, and that "proper" came from the Latin proprius via the Old French propre. So what exactly are you trying to prove? Not to use long words? To cut down on nominalisation? No argument. But that doesn't mean you have to judge every word by how came into the language centuries ago.

And as far as I'm concerned, using words like "fremd", listed by the Free Dictionary as "Archaic - alien or strange" instead of foreign, or "othersome" instead of different (jayles) is indeed just as pretentious as using words like "enhancement", if nor more so. At least most of us know what enhancement means. Distinction can mean difference, and by using such words you are indeed differentiating yourself from the bulk of English speakers; your little band apparently know better than your fellow speakers.

And what the hell is "true English" when it's at home? Sounds too much like the "true religion" to me.

Hey WW,

Don't need to get your knickers in a twist. We'll see in due time whether this 'little band' is winsome or not to mother-speakers of English - who knows. Nearly all the words coming into every tongue have happened through hap or trend. Neither our strive, nor your chiding, on this site alone will alter whether or not a kindling of Old English words will come about in the next while or not.

Whew … Stay offline for a few days and things heat up. Where to start?

Go here to see a few byspels of fremd: http://www.wordnik.com/words/fremd

pretentious
adjective
Clytemnestra is a pretentious name for a dog: affected, ostentatious, *showy*; overambitious, pompous, artificial, inflated, overblown, … informal: flashy, highfalutin, la-di-da, pseudo.

ostentatious |ˌästənˈtāSHəs|
adjective
characterized by vulgar or pretentious display; designed to impress or attract notice … an ostentatious display of wealth: *showy*, pretentious,…

showy |ˈSHō-ē|
adjective ( showier , showiest )
having a striking appearance or style, typically by being excessively bright, colorful, or ostentatious … they spared no sequins or feathers in what may be the most showy finale ever seen on this stage: ostentatious, conspicuous, *pretentious*

Putting 'showy' next to 'word' shouldn't even slow you down.

What's next? … Oh, dictionary: dictionarius (liber) ‘manual or book of words’ from Latin dictio.

So, 'dictionary' is, more or less, Latin for 'book of words'. Thus you'd rather say a four-syllable latinate rather than a two-syllable anglo word? Heck, wordbook is even slightly shorter to write! Most of the time, not always but most of the time you'll find that the anglo words are shorter to say and, maybe half the time, they're shorter to write (that could be better with a more fonetic way of spelling). But if you feel the need to say wordbook in a fremd tung to feel worldly, there is always German: Wörterbuch.

With 'vocabulary' you hav five syllables (unless you note the slangier 'vocab') … wordstock is two.

"It's easiest to do between related languages, which means that English, with its varied wordstock, is a particularly tough language to translate poetry from or to." http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001464.php

I guess if you think that wordstock is 'pretentious', then you'll not be going to the yearly Wordstock Festival? http://www.wordstockfestival.com/

"Preposterous example" … Like "preposterous"? … Maybe outlandish?

For different one can note other, another, otherly, or otherish:
… sense of cultural pride, we have become fixated on the only apparent characteristic that labels us as *otherly*.
— "Warrior Lessons: An Asian American Woman's Journey Into Power", Phoebe Eng, 2000

This likens the insect to another *otherish* human …
— "Six legs better: A Cultural History of Myrmecology", Charlotte Sleigh, 2007

Or even "nother" but then that's a whole nother ball of wax!

I think Ængelfolc was quoting the website.

Most Anglishers are ok with fore-1066 Latin/Greek/French/other borrowings. Those were more 'natural' borrowings. After Lucky Bill took over, the game chang'd; Britain became an cultural outpost of France and the English tung took a hard, unnatural turn ... and not one for the better. English is now overly laden with unneeded long-winded words. English has chopp'd many of them up into smaller and easier words but even many of the shorter words besteaded (replaced) short or shorter anglo words.

At times the meanings are a shade otherly ... but most of the time it truly only in the mind:

"Road works can be ongoing, but the stream of traffic passing them is continuous. Police investigations can be ongoing, but the policeman conducting them is in continuous employment, but pissed off because the rain has been continuous all day."

From a thesaurus for continuous (highlights are mine): the rain has been continuous since early this morning: unceasing, uninterrupted, *unbroken*, constant, ceaseless, incessant, *steady*, sustained, solid, continuing, *ongoing*, *without a break*, *nonstop*, ... *endless*, *unending*, *never-ending* ...

So you see, there are many non-latinate words to chose from that won't change the meaning.

@Gallitrot ... It's hard for folks who hav spent years learning the latinates (as well as stupid spellings) to let them go. The latinates are a shibboleth. A way of saying, "Hey, look at me, I know these 'pretentious' words!"

Every field has its own jargon. As a soldier, I knew words that most folks didn't know ... and didn't need to know. Working in the air freight business, I knew a lot of words that others didn't ... and didn't need to know. Same thing for many fields whether it be medical or sports.

For academia and the burocracy (law and the rikedom), it was French and Latin ... While they no longer outright note French and Latin themselves, they're still heavy in the latinates. I was once asked to giv the meaning of "academic writing" ... I said it was writing with the longest latinates that one could find and that one gets bonus points for Latin quotes. That mindset is still with us:

"The every-day vocabulary of the less educated is of Old English, commonly called Anglo-Saxon, origin ..." from "The Romance of Words", 1912, Chapter 1.

@AnWulf - "It's hard for folks who hav spent years learning the latinates (as well as stupid spellings) to let them go." - Not only pretentious but condescending and insulting to British spelling.

@Galitrot - time will indeed tell

Meanwhile I'm going back to real English, as it seems a rational conversation is impossible here - I tried but all I get is preached at by the faithful. I respect your knowledge in Old English, but not your disdain for the natural language and vocabulary spoken by the vast majority of English speakers.

@WW When I teach academic IELTS and the two thousand must-have "academic" words, I wonder why we have and use them when for quite a few there are fairly straightforward Saxon words of the same-ish meaning. This is the nub of it.
Of course if one wishes to knowingly step outside the hidebound word-stock then and plough a new furrow so to speak, it does not of itself betoken disdain for the now-in-being collocations; just that there is a wealth of little-used older and dialect words which give us wider choices.
That being said looking at Latinate words with undersight and struggling to get round them is not always do-able; after all we are talking about a 5000-7000 word hole in everyday and academic word-stock. For instance we might use "hiree" instead of "employee", (hireling is to ill-deeming); "wageslip" for payslip; but "pay" and "payroll" are hard to bestead, so I think quite a few Norman/French words are best left to stand.

Sorry jayles, I'm not playing any more. I'm not a Saxon nationalist, so the whole premise of your argument completely passes me by. It seems that the Anglish supporters will brook no discussion except on their terms, and brand anyone who disagrees with them a Latin-lover or arse-licker, and think that telling people not to get their knickers in a twist somehow constitutes an argument. I've had enough.

Yes, I am aware of the background of the words 'school' and 'proper.' The thing missed here is that teutonic English words make the meaning easily understood by all. Think about this: What if all lawful writings were written in mostly English words instead of Latin-French words? What would the outcome of that be?

I don't believe anyone working this site now is for "English purism", and indeed no one seems to be, as you in a way put forth, a Jingoist. Our "little band," as you so scornfully wrote of us like-minded folks here, is about many things, and one of them is finding lost old English words and bringing the to the fore for new life. I think most, if not all, of us do not think ourselves as "Anglishers." Far from it.

Indeed there is room for these old words as many of the fremd* words are ink-horn and overmuch. So much so, that if one truly takes a good look at these words from about (which are mostly 'made up'), one would see how daft and droll it is to keep them, as well as to put forth that they make English 'richer." How does a tongue become richer when its first-hand words are swapped for outlandish ones? Doesn't seem thoughtful at all.

* FREMD is still said by the Scots and likely a few others, and is in every foremost wordbook; so it is a living English word and makes me no never mind that it is not said by throngs of English-speakers. 'Academia' as a whole is manifestly blameworthy for this.

That said I could have written:

Children need good learning-houses (< OE lārhūs) if they are to learn right.

-OR-

Children need good learning-halls (or halls of learning) if they are to learn right.

Lārhūs is the first word for 'school' in English. It seems 'school' in English came to mean "house of learning" sometime about the year 1300.

"True English" here, as I wrote above, means "Germanic English words;" not borrowed; not fremd. After all, English is, first and foremost, a Germanic tongue.

"...using words like "fremd", ... ,or "othersome" instead of different (jayles) is indeed just as pretentious as using words like "enhancement", if nor more so."

Here we seem to have rotten, sour grapes. I cannot understand how using a first-hand word (albeit old, not trendy or broadly in everyday speech) could be thought of as haughty(*) put-on.

So, the French, Welsh, Irish, Hawaiians, Israelis, and Icelanders, among others, are all to be thought of as - how does one say it in the tongue of the learned high and mighty - "preposterous, pretentious, racist, nationalistic, xenophobes" because they are working hard to bring their tongues back without too many loans or borrowings?

By the way, 'haughty' is a great showing of the true 'richness' that comes from free and easy fremd inflow. This Germanic/ Latin-French word is a free blending of Frankish *hauh, hōh (OE hēah, G Hoch, Du. hoog asf.) “high, lofty, proud” and Latin altus “high, deep” which gave Old French hau(l)t “high, lofty." [*hau(l)t(us)]

Frk. *hauh + L. altus -> O.Fr hau(lt) -> E. *hauteinness(e) [haughtiness] -> ME hautein, hautain -> haughty (spelling shaped by the word 'naughty' owing to the way they both are said)

Two folkways coming together lead by the mingling of folks in everyday life, not by overbearing "royal, governmental, militaristic, academic, religious" might. Words like this are what I think of, when I think of words growing/building the 'richness' of any tongue.

Again, ink-horns are not needed and words that were bereaved from the tongue should be brought back and spoken anew.

My bad! "Academia" might not say 'racist', since the word race is likely from a low-brow Germanic tongue called Lombardic (see raiza, OHG reiza, ON rīta "line" -> It. razza)

So, instead maybe "intolerant" and "prejudiced." "Instantly", an "abundance" of "contemptuous, imperious," and "just supercilious sentiment necessarily levied" against those "dispassionate" of the "foreign language influences" and the "vanquishment, subjugation, appropriation," and "annexing" of the English "language, n'est-ce pas?"

[all fremd words in ""]

Too cheeky? ;-)

"...insulting to British spelling."

The truth hurts. One of the biggest gripes folks learning English have is that the way words are spelled. It is downright awful.

Who or what is to blame? I think everyone here knows.

Haughty Ink-Horn of the Day

CONTUMACIOUS (yuck!) - Instead say, in good English, headstrong, pigheaded, stubborn, unyielding, willful, untoward, froward, balky, among others.

What would be the outcome of Englishing writings of law?

MORTGAGE word for word means "Death Wage." So, buy a house and work to pay it off until you die!

[E. Wage, Gage

@AnWulf: "The latinates are a shibboleth. A way of saying, "Hey, look at me, I know these 'pretentious' words!""

Hear, Hear!

"Meanwhile I'm going back to real English, as it seems a rational conversation is impossible here - I tried but all I get is preached at by the faithful. I respect your knowledge in Old English, but not your disdain for the natural language and vocabulary spoken by the vast majority of English speakers."

What is the "real English" of which you speak? Globalish (World English)? That can be barely seen as English. Academia is guilty of watering-down English for the swarms of folks in the World that do not know any better. Your whole, "everyone else is doing it, so it's right" whitewash is utter balderdash.

Here, we moot openly about a great many things having to to with English. All are welcome, but don't think that hearts and minds can be so easily swayed with a few lofty words and mainstream beliefs and ways of thinking.

To put forth that all here are "irrational," is wholly ill-willed, benighted and unwelcome.

Today's English did not take shape as "naturally" as you seem to think. That is one of the things that it seems those here are keenly aware of.

"continuous" < L. continuus "uninterrupted" (< L. interruptus "unbroken") - is an unneeded ink-horn. There are many, many ways to say "unbroken length of time" in English.

"And I have to say that the use of words like "othersome" simply sound twee to me."

Talk about boorishly "pretentious" hued with a bit of British wit and drollery! Anyone else one call HUMBUG here?! LOL

"Take the word "dictionary", a word all you Anglish fans studiously avoid and probably think of as being somehow "foreign". It has in fact been in use in English since about 1520, rather longer than "wordbook"(1590s), and also rather longer than Europeans have permanently been in North America."

Isn't this a "judgement" of a word founded on how it came into English long ago? Why is it okay for "foreign" words that came into English after its founding okay, but new English words - made out of "native" (here Germanic) words/wordbits - not okay if they come into the tongue later than the borrowed word? More HUMBUG anyone?

"DICTIONARY" > is a fremd word from Latin. It means "book of word meanings." Odd how true English words have to be brooked to tell what the fremd word means, right?

@WW oh dear! I did not wish to nettle you. Many of the points you make are quite valid.
It seems to me sometimes that what we have here is more of an anti-establishment or anti-academic protest or outlet than a nationalistic feeling.
I am not anti-Latin - indeed I wrote an email in Latin a few months ago - it's just not very useful unless one is a priest, medic, or botanist. Nor am I a great fan of German - it's just very Teutonic! My real interest lies more in Russian and Hungarian (despite the Jobbik). However delving into the roots of English has made me more aware when teaching: for instance, "when push comes to shove" - push from French and shove like schieben in German.
Na zdrowie!

@Ængelfolc Whilst teaching in Central Europe, I sometimes pointed out that there is an alternative to head-on rebuttal; alternatively one can stand alongside the other person, acknowledge the world as they see it, and only then begin to show them the way to one's own little world. The latter often works better with some English people.

folytatodik: it's all cultural you see - de gustibus non est disputandum, multo in parvo, paulatim ergo certe, gloria in excelsis, kyrie eleison - it's all greek to me.... who needs Saxon?

deadly deathly mortal lethal fatal - is this "enrichment" or just overkill?
What new meaning-shades do mortal/letal/fatal bring in?

---@AnWulf - "It's hard for folks who hav spent years learning the latinates (as well as stupid spellings) to let them go." - Not only pretentious but condescending and insulting to British spelling. ---

I said nothing of nationalities ... Americans do seem to be more open to more fonetic spellings but there are too many stuck on stupid there as well. Both GB and Australia hav livelier spelling groops. Many, not all, of our odd and non-fonetic spellings are from French ... that inholds the -our, -ise (rather than -ize), ou for u (as in through ... OE þurh), the parasitic 'e' like in have, give, o for u as in monk (OE munuc), love (OE lufu), above (OE abufan) ... f = v in OE but French back then spelling didn't let u before v, n, m ... and others.

@jayles ... payroll is good and short but one could note 'wagelist' (list being both OE and there is a Germanic root for the French liste as well).

A forgotten workhorse from OE and ME ... bego (be+go) ... seen mainly nowadays in 'begone'.

to bego:
go over, traverse; get to, come by, fall into
to go to, visit, care for, cultivate, affect
to occupy, inhabit, dwell, surround, besiege, overrun
to practise, do, engage in, perform, commit, exercise, attend to, be diligent about, honor, serve, worship, profess; pledge, devote, train oneself

As an adj begone … cultivated, tilled, adorn'd

forebego (OE forebegān) — to intercept
misbego — to disfigure, mar; waste; cultivate badly
unbegone — uncultivated, untilled, unadorned

To followup on Ængelfolc's inkhorn of the day ...

crepuscular – resembling or relating to twilight … So why not note twilight or twilit?

Some quotes from "Dictionary of Worthless Words: 3,000 Words to Stop Using Now"

acquiesce - Showy word for accept, agree, comply, or consent ***[one could also say: allow, giv the nod to; giv in to, bow to, yield to, submit to; go along with]

activate, actuate - 'Begin' or 'start' say the same thing in simpler words.

advise us as to - The phrase 'let us know' is less formal.

affinity - Stuffy word for 'likeness'.

analogous - Large word. Try the simpler words 'like' or 'similar'.

apprehension - Bulky noun for 'fear' or 'worry'.

approximately - Big word. The smaller words 'about', 'around', 'nearly', or 'roughly' mean the same.

@Anwulf "payroll is good and short but one could note 'wagelist'"
In truth "wagelist" is mostly good but does not sit well in the wordstring "payroll software", where 'payroll' inholds all the reckoning and scot-unfree withholdings, that is a software-linked meaning. (see wiktionary.org for the othersome meanings). It's a shame that 'scot-free' still lives on but 'scot' has died ... it would be muddled with Scot. As for pay itself, 'he yielded the bill' ?? Sounds as if he handed over the bill rather than the gelt. But there seems little else ... ME schotten died too.

Regarding an insteader for 'pay' , don't we have some link words to 'tally' or 'teller', like bank teller, or till? I mean surely: betell / betally/ betale/ betill/ till/ bedeal all hold some likelihood?