This looks very much like Cowley's work who wrote 'How we'd talk if the English won in 1066' . I think he's an excellent linguist with cutting edge ideas on the make and mode of English as it stands and would have been. I do, however, believe that 'ednew' became the modern 'anew' thus, it should be Anew/ Anewed English.

@Hairyscot:

Ignoring all the reasons for unneeded doublets and triplets, and even quadruplets and quintuplets in English speech is what allows 'inkhorn' terms to be used by those shrewdly sly types, so as to make bureaucratic minced meat out of ordinary folk whenever their lives are touched by politics, law, medicine, etc... and most inkhorn terms are Latin or Old French. The terms may have been in our language for decades even centuries, but many are still impenetrable for the majority of native speakers.

Over the last 1000 yrs English speakers who have spoken a more Germanic form of English have often been treated as somehow 'base' or ' coarse ' for hundreds of years. Why? For no other reason than their forefathers were overcome by a small invasion force of French-ish speaking Vikings, and that they didn't have a natural Romance vocabulary of their overlords.

No matter what our stand-point now, lots of harm was done, plenty of people have been and are still being exploited due to jargon words and 'sesquipedalianism' , dare I say, freely allowed to enter be drawn-up in contracts and documents.

My question in return would be: Is it problematic if we started to shift our speech towards a more Tokienish style, as long as that speech brought more clearness, see-throughness and understandableness to the majority of native speakers, and even none-native speakers?

Hullo!

Good to see you fair chaps still wrangling and tussling the groundstones of our motherly speak.

h.b.t (harking back to) Anwulf's list:

preferable - rathered/ lief

I am seriously beginning to fall out with Etymonline - it links through to things such as dictionary.com and is beginning to become the authority on word history... not great... and by that, I mean poxy :(

Again, Anwulf, I find myself somewhat bedazzled by your skill at plucking out meaningful and sibly chunks of writing :)

Has anyone read this foreword on the OED site, as to the grounds for which Old English words are inbodied and which left out?

http://public.oed.com/aspects-of-english/english-in-time/old-english-in-the-oed/

Good on you, Anwulf!

That's actually probably more effective than musing about 'likely' modern Old English words. Anglophones tend to have a finite nostalgic streak and that runs reaches just far enough to start trendily quoting and using words-of-yore - especially as Barnes is aweheld/revered... however, trying to get them to think that bit more out of the box and resurrect Old English words is like trying to get them to eat horse meat - agonised faces and repulsion. A funny lot are Englishtonglers :)

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?

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.

''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.

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.