Anglish

From The Anglish Moot

Eng	This article is intentionally written in English. Please do not translate it into Anglish.

Anglish is a kind of English, but without those words which have been borrowed from other languages. It has variously been described as anything from simply a form of constrained writing, through to being a separate language in itself. The reasons for Anglish, and the methods used in pursuing the goal of removing and replacing words, vary between individuals. There is also no agreed 'limit' as to what is andwhat is not a borrowed word, and how far Anglish should go in removing those words.

Anglish should not be confused with an English altlang, a 'what-if' language created to resemble what English would have developed were certain events not to have happened. Also, Anglish is not Anglo-Saxon, which is another name for the Old English language.

[edit] Name

The name Anglish derives from a number of articles written by Paul Jennings for Punch in 1966. They were written to commemorate the Norman Conquest, and posed the question of what England would be like had it not happened. They included an example of what he termed the 'Anglish language'.

Though the name is perhaps not the most descriptive, there seems to have been no common term previous to this, and thus it has stuck.

[edit] History

See also, History of Anglish.

Through the years there have been many folk who, in one way or another, believed in Anglish. The first was Orm, a monk in the 1100s, who wrote a book almost wholly in English, even though many French words were coming into the tongue at that time. Another was the poet William Barnes who was against the "needless inbringing of Greek and Latin wordings".

More recently, a famous work of Anglish is Uncleftish Beholding by Poul Anderson.

[edit] Reasons

See also, Reasons for Anglish.

Throughout its existence, English has taken in many outland words, mainly from French, Latin and Greek. The intaking of these words has shifted English away from how it was spoken by everyday folk, and towards the learned speech of those higher up. It is the belief of those who work with Anglish that it is good in itself to take the tongue back to its roots and build again that understanding and homeliness English once had.