The intention of Anglish is: English with many fewer words borrowed from other tongues. Because of the fundamental changes to our language, to say that English individuals at the moment speak Trendy English is like saying that the French speak Latin. The very fact is that we now speak an international language. The Anglish project is intended as a means of recovering the Englishness of English and of restoring ownership of the language to the English people.
The goal of the Anglish project differs from person to person, but mostly it is to discover and experiment with the English language. This exploration is driven for some by aesthetics, for the ethnic English by cultural wants, and yet for others it is purely an attention-grabbing diversion or pastime. Language performs a big role in our lives, so to be able to play with that language, and form it to our own wants or wants is very important. For this reason, writing or talking in true English is a positive finish in itself, in as much as it provides an different outlet for this need.
However there may be also the additional idea that Anglish is a recognition and a celebration of the English part of modern English. For, though it has borrowed hundreds and thousands of words throughout its life, there still exists a real English core to English, the most important everyday words which no sentence or uttering could manage without. By stripping away the layers of borrowings, Anglish lets us better admire that core and the role it performs in our language.
One of the best way to search out out the place a word comes from is to look it up in a dictionary. Most decent desktop dictionaries will include quick etymologies for a lot of of their entries, which give a little knowledge of the place the word arose from, and the way it was used or written in the past. Some on-line dictionaries have this knowledge as well, such because the Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com and Wiktionary. There are additionally dictionaries dedicated to word etymologies, which are a goldmine for knowledge about English words. The On-line Etymology Dictionary is probably the best available online.
But these will only tell from where and when a word came into English, but not whether or not it must be thought ‘borrowed’. Some immensely old and very primary words, corresponding to ‘cup’ and ‘mill’, are indeed borrowed from Latin, but nobody would say these words aren’t English. Conversely, words like ‘thaumaturgy’ and ‘intelligentsia’ are clearly not of English origin, and have been borrowed comparatively lately.
The place to draw the road between English and ‘borrowed’ is but an different space of personal choosing, and there are various views on this among Anglish proponents. A really broad rule says that anything borrowed from French, Latin and Greek in the final eight hundred years should be thought borrowed. A more discerning view would say that any word which was brought into English to fill a real need or hole in vocabulary ought to be kept, but these words borrowed to «adorn» or «enrich» the language but in reality push out current words, needs to be weeded.
Are there actually that many borrowed words in English?
Yes. English is renowned for having borrowed so many words from totally different languages over the last thousand years. The core of English is Germanic, but only about 25% of the words in English as we speak derive from such a root, and that features those of Norse, Dutch, German and others, as well as English. That will sound like many, one in every four words, but not a lot when one thinks that Latin and French every account for 29% of the English vocabulary. Greek yields an different 6% of words, with the final 10% being from different languages, derived from personal names, or simply unknown.
Nevertheless, as talked about earlier, the core of the English language still principally consists of English words, which makes an undertaking like Anglish possible.
When a word is taken out from English, where do replacement words come from?
There are various roots for words to switch these which have been removed from English. Typically, a word which is removed will have a commonly known English synonym already present. Words like ‘quotidian’ and ‘illegal’ can easily be switched for ‘everyday’ and ‘unlawful’ without dropping that means or intelligibility. When there’s not a readily available English word for use, a new word should be found or made. Some old or obscure words might be introduced back to life and reused; new words may be calqued from English morphemes utilizing the old word’s sample; different instances wholly new words, «neologisms,» might be put collectively from present words and affixes. None of those strategies are right or wrong, however every has its stead in making a wide and different lexicon for Anglish, and every is used in accordance with the context and particular wants of a word.