Methods in Anglish

Eng

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

Replacing loan terms by existing synonyms[]

e.g. predict (Latinate) >> foretell (OE); parchment (Latinate) >> bookfell (OE)

For help identifying loan words, you can use the Macro-Etymological Analyzer, which can automatically analyze a text and tell you which words are of Latin origin (though the word "as", for some reason, is wrongly listed as being from Latin). Other useful resources include Wiktionary and the Merriam-Webster , Collins and Etymology Online dictionaries.

Reviving obsolete and dialectal terms[]

eg. atling (Middle English word for 'intention'); shears, Scots word for 'scissors'

Reviving and remodeling Old English words[]

e.g. givel (meaning 'generous') >> from OE gifol

12th-century painters - Psalter with the Gloss - WGA15733 — Leaf with Latin writing and Old English gloss (from Fastchild)

After the hild of Hastings in 1066, many Old Norman words came into English at the cost of the pre-existing Old English words, which were lost. For example, the Old English word 'hild' was lost in favour of battle, a word stemming from the Old French bataille.

Before 1066, Old English was considered a noble tongue and had a wealth of literature, such as the tale of Beowulf, 'gloss' to Latin works ('gloss' is the English name for the explanations written above or aside a writing; link to the Wikipedia page) and the thoughts of learnedmen, such Ælfric of Eynsham (Fastchild link). Therefore, the Old English tongue has withstood its forslack and many wordbooks are available. Some are on the web, such as Dictionary of Old English, translator and many others.

Headwords are free at the Middle English Compendium (MEC), where rootlore is also given. To show one such Anglish word, the deed-word nitte, “to make use of, use, enjoy” is fully spelled out here with all its parts: nitten.

Also see this leaf for common errors in updating Old English spelling, such as forgetting to drop the -an for the bare form of a verb and so forth).

When in doubt, find the word in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

Finding real words[]

e.g. telescope -> farseer

Rest assured that any word you might think of already exists. Look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary. Word entries there are free, briefly defined, and correctly spelled. Use the correct spelling.

Never cite Middle English for the root of a word.

combining word particles (root words and affixes).

Calquing from related languages[]

i.e. like Frisian and other germanic languages
eg. metamorphosis (loan word) >> forwandle (easily calqued from German verwandeln, Swedish förvandla aso.)

This does many things. Speakers of other Germanic languages can easily work out the meanings of English words, for they look similar and also mean the same as the cognate in their own languages. It also means the reverse, so an English speaker with absolutely no knowledge of German can see a German word like Übersetzung (or översättning in Swedish) and be 100% correct in recognising that it is a cognate (exact equivalent word from the same origin) to English 'oversetting', which means 'translation'.

Translation contest[]

Often, a translation contest is held, in which each editor makes an independent translation of the given source.

As said before, no single translation is the only right one and many likely translations can be made. Different editors choose different words therefore comparing the different translations is both enlightening and useful.

List of contests:

Try brooking some words listed in your everyday mailings, and get a feel for how welcoming folk are of these new words. Don't only brook any one word once, no word will ever slip into the folk's every day speech that way-- brook these words often. And also, be bold, don't be afraid to brook these new words, you'd be amazed at how lightly folks soak up new wordstock-- speech always changes and folk are always looking for newness in it.

Bring life to our tongue[]

For the tongue to live, it needs to be spoken. There should be clubs for folk who wish to learn and speak our speech. Best, it has to be taken up as the everyday speech of the folk. Better yet, it has to become the speech of the theed of the English folk dwelling in England. For all others it can only ever be an outlandish speech. We will need to campaign for radio and television stations in England (in Leeds and Nottingham) dedicated to broadcasting in New-English, much as there are stations in Wales and Scotland broadcasting in the Welsh language and Scots Gaelic/Gaidhlig/Erse. Resurrecting English - Half the world's languages are at risk of disappearing over the next century. At least, we can resurrect English, in the shape of Anglish/New-English, as the national language of England as an alternative to all pervasive Ancwe (Ancillary World English) - see the 2012 United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-muun's announcement of 'the future we want', expanded in the UN's 2013 'Human Development Report', subtitled, human progress in a diverse world.

Going beyond Anglish?[]

“Boldly to fare whither no man hitherto was.”

We can go as far as we want. We could:

Dig up Old English grammar from the graveyard.
Stop using the Latin alphabet (the alphabet you see now before and use everyday to write English and many other languages) and start using Runestaff again (the ancient letters from Italic Latin, like what you'd see in The Lord of the Rings). This of course means a near 100% phonetic consistency and no silent letters, just like Old Norse and Old English. The runes are Latin letters only shifted a little bit, so they may be scratched in wood without splitting apart the grain. Cut your own trees and leave love charms in runes for your favorite teacher to find. You will get an “Āc !”
Always choose "V2 word order:" then shall your words sing.
Fatten your sentences with needless prefixes and suffixes, like "i-" for the past tense verb, and "-en" for the infinitive.
We could even bring back the case and gender system, along with English's true inflectional morphology, such as: “The fly flew on my sandwich—I hit her,” or “So fair was that maiden that I kissed it.”
ᚪᚳᛖᛚᚪᚾ: ᛗᛖᚾᛖᚾ•ᛖᚩᚹiᚳ•ᚪᛞiᚻᛏᚪᚾ•ᚢᚾᛞᛖᚱ•ᛖᚾᚷᛚiᛋᚳ.

The list can go on forever. Just remember that English is its own language, with its "brother," Scots. Other Germanic languages are sisters of English, but English is not a dialect of any of them!