Talk:Main leaf

A discussion or talk leaf (page) on the ins-and-outs of Anglish. Feel free to voice your ideas. But bear in mind, this Anglish project is not an attempt at an alternative, what-if (the Norman conquest and so forth had not happened) language, but simply a clearer, plainer, more Germanic English, making better use of its Germanic roots. :) In effect, if "Anglish" is sucessful, one would never know, by definition (for instance, does one even note "foreword" as being odd or outlandish nowadays? Or indeed, does one think that of the word "preface", the Latinism that was replaced by it?)

THOU/THEE/YE/YOU
Oswax, I don't really see the need to write everything all "thou/thee". Those pronouns dropped out of use LONG after the Norman conquest and, like the dual pronouns, likely would have no matter what. -Bryan


 * I can't settle with that, for the habit of calling someone by the plural was borrowed from French (see thou for more info). We need to talk anent this further to come to some kind of settling whether it ought to be in Anglish or not. Oswax Scolere 18:51, 11 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Are we now to be excluding EVERYTHING that is of non-Germanic influence? That is certainly not what I thought we had agreed to ;) Do we now outcast all words of non-Germanic origin, and all words which have been influenced by non-Germanic languages (e.g. "tongue" with the meaning of "language"; a Latin influence). That is plainly absurd. Perhaps contentious areas should be left in limbo til we have drawn up some kind of acceptable Anglish rule/check list. By the way, I like "thou", "thee", "you" and "ye", but I just don't think it is prudent to exclude ALL things in our **tongue** which have the hint of forran influence. It's mad. Remember, the history of the English language IS one of forran influence. That fact just cannot be gotten away from. So we must decide whether we are trying to construct some "what if..." language that might have come about had not the Norman conquest (and so on) happened, or are we just trying to make English Englisher. -Bryan


 * I should clearen: I am not saying thou/thee/ye/you is not acceptable. What I am saying is that are we, on one hand, trying to make the most of the Germanic part of the England tung (e.g. formations such as "filmhouse", "forelast", "weaponhoard"), or are we trying to make a language that MIGHT have been had it not been for the course history has taken. The latter of these two is distinctly not what we are trying to do. Therefore certain things (such as the ressurection of thou/thee) is perhaps of little worth. - Bryan


 * We do need to clarify exactly what our goal is for Anglish. I hope we can come to an agreement on it. What I want is not to take out every word of non-Germanic birth, but rather to undo, as far as we can, the influence of history on English. What I mean, is that for many years the majority of speakers of English did not control their tongue, but rather others did, others who preferred French or Latin or whatever.


 * We need to think what would have happened had the everyday English speaker held on to control of their tongue. To do that we must think of which outside influence was brought in against our wishes, and which influence came in naturally, as part of normal language change. I would like to keep thou/thee as I feel it is a French influence propagated by the upper classes, but the loss of verb conjugations '-est' and '-eth' was spread by a normal process.


 * Certainly, strengthening the wordhoard that English has left is the first and main goal of Anglish, but surely when we do so, it means that a foreign word is pushed out? We cannot raise up the word 'playhouse' without killing the word 'theatre', can we? I think our disagreement is rather of extent, but even then, we only need to settle on which words we can, and then call that 'Anglish'. I would like to think we could hold all views on different kinds of Anglish.


 * By the way, if you have an account, I will make you an admin straight away as agreed. Oswax Scolere 23:23, 11 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Ah, but how can you get rid of the -est, -eth stuff when you are merely guessing that they would have dropped out? More to the point, who would find acceptable an English with thou and thee in it? We can hold different views on Anglish, sure. But if we are to have an online project like this, then we must come to a conclusion on which kind of Anglish is to be shown-off. In short, keep the thou/thee thing, but don't expect me to start using thou and thee in my writings. :D -Bryan


 * I know they would have dropped off for they did! The current verb conjugations were not influenced from France, but rather northern English. The southern forms began to be dropped in the 1400s, the current forms we have were standard in northern England, from many years ago. I think they have something to do with the Danes. Overall, the process of inflectional simplification was underway by the end of the Old English period, with the extant Late West Saxon texts preserving a far older tongue than what was common.


 * It is alright if you do not wish to use thou/thee, there is no compulsion to do so, but I wish to. I understand that we will have to choose whether or not to use them on the interface, but if we wait until we have a few more members, then we can vote on it. We can take them off if everyone agrees. Oswax Scolere 13:27, 12 Dec 2005 (UTC)

One v. Man
Likewise and kin to the above issue, we have that of the indefinite kind of pronoun. The use of "one", instead of "man", is brought from forran influence. If one is to exclude the lack of thou/thee aso. on the basis that this is originally forran, then are we to say that "one" is no longer acceptable because it too displaced "man" (even tho "one" is a perfectly homeborn word). -Bryan


 * I do not know the history of that pronoun, but will look it up to see. Again, without a set ideology, we simply must muddle through. I have a fairly tight policy on which words I let in, but when needs must, I compromise, I'm not too dogmatic about it. Anyone can set their own limits for inclusion or exclusion of words and apply that to their work. Anglish is a cover term for everyone who wishes to speak English with less foreign influence, whether that be much less or a little less. Oswax Scolere 13:27, 12 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Of course, there is another alternative, and that is to say "you", as most English and Scots speakers do. :)


 * Note that the traditional "ye" is still in use in Scotland(not simply a modern corruption of "you"), and "youse" is standard enough to be spelt with an E (naturalised into extraphonetic orthographical standards). ~Inkstersco, 25 Dec

Words Whose Pronounciation Was Altered By Forran Influence
How are these to be dealt with, d'ya think? I am thinking specifically of "righteous". This WAS "rightwise", but the pronounciation and spelling was influenced by the forran "-eous" ending. I am in favour of keeping it "righteous", but what do you say, Oswax? BryanAJParry 18:57, 12 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * For me, it hinges on the word. 'Rightwise' is, I think, alright as a word for it can be understood without foreknowledge. But other words may be otherwise, and I will take them one at a time. Oswax Scolere 19:14, 12 Dec 2005 (UTC)

On rationale
Eew, sorry about the word. Anyway, I've been asked by Oswax to drop a few words about myself and my viewpoint. Basically, I think an actual what-if is futile; I'm not into fantasy games. Language is like weather. Remember also that even if the Norman invasion hadn't happened, we'd still have Resaissance-gained words and scientific words, not to mention pure Latin interjections and biological Latin. However, I think the true thrill of reading Anglish shouldn't be "cute, these are all Germanic", but instead should be "wow, this actually sounds very familiar, but there's no -ation or re- and all that stuff I've been taught is so special", as if they've heard it in another life. "Thee" and "thou" create the false impression that Anglish is a nostalgic language. I wish they hadn't gone, but there's a strange stigma attached to using them. I think Anglish is more of a con-dialect in that people can speak it to varying degrees of thickness against a backdrop of Standard English. If it has any real-world influence, it'll be in bringing the more bottom-drawer English words to the surface. The exciting diversity of modern English is something that is much overlooked nowadays.

I think a word in Anglish should be 1) Preferably attested even if it's obscure and dialectal. If not attested, very easily attestable. For example, we say "wear out" for erode, so an English teacher would not criticise "outwear" 2) Natural sounding, so that one cannot tell the real from the constructed. 3) Unforeign -- That also goes for stuff like Uber, which is worse than Super IMO. 4) Brief -- Let's not try and be too clever and tack equivilents of Re- onto words. Let's just put "again" before the word.

I suggest plunging the depths of our island's dialects(are we all British here?) for hidden treasures. I would *not* like to see English look more Germany-ish, and think Uber is as bad as Super, nor would I like to see too much loyalty to morpheme calquing, for that can be clumsy.

I think the best possible approach in creating words is _not_ to calque morphemes, but to calque definitions. Keep it short. Let's just convert re- into "again" as a seperate word. Instead of a pedantic Life-lore-ish for Bio-logic-al, let's have Lifewise, and then Lifelore for Biology. Isn't the ultimate aim to make English more like English? If this is the case, it shouldn't have quite the same long-winded methodology as German.

Anyway I'm rambling unforgivably. Note that I'm Scottish and so am a hidden tresure chest of obscure dialectal words which could be brought to the surface.

~Iain Dec 22nd


 * I can agree with not calqueing words straight from the Latin or Greek, for so many new words I have seen do just this, but fail to make a worthy or even understandable word. One example is the word 'understandable' itself. Some folk have given it as 'understandcan' which is truly awful to my ears. In truth, I do not think we have a word for the '-able' suffix, and must live with saying 'can understand'. Overbringing is never exact between 'true' tongues, and it need not be between English and Anglish.


 * Although, having said this, I do think that a set of prefixs and suffix is useful for Anglish to grow the wordhoard swiftly. The ones I like are '-lore' to show a science, which lets us make hundreds of words straight away. Also, '-lust', '-hate', '-fear', '-worship' and '-craft' can be wirtten like this. Oswax Scolere 16:00, 23 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * More-or-less agree with both of you. Altho we are always gonna disagree on the details, right? I think you two are slightly more "extreme" (not the best word, but can't think of another; you get what I mean, tho; and only SLIGHTLY) than me, but I think our views are still fairly close together (so as to make this thing work; for instance, none of us think English should be more GERMAN-looking). I take real issue with some of the words in the wordbook. But as I say, this will always be so; I think we should definitely clearly explain to outsiders or newcomers that a degree of tolerance (tholing?) is allowable (no, not "letsome" :P ;) ) in terms of the words used, as none of us are gonna agree TOTALLY on the details. I particularly agree with you, Ian, on the issue of "thou/"thee"; great pronouns, but the use of such pronouns makes us look cranky, to my mind. And this is what I meant before, Joe; surely we are not trying to make a "make if" language, and therefore "thou/thee/ye/you" paradigm is not good as it seems ot be stepping into that territory. My personal hope for "Anglish" is jsut everyday usage; if we can get people THINKING English again thru sprinkling our own speech which Anglish formations, and by thoughtful selection of our wording, we may be on to a winner. BryanAJParry 01:06, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * We can, and will, shift the 'thou/thee' back to 'you', give a little time to do them all thought. Oswax Scolere 14:36, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)

On special words
Words like Catholic, cent, boomerang, kimono, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Loch, zebra, ought to remain roughly as they are, wouldn't you agree? They are all specific to particular cultures, environments and cliques, and the way they name their jargon is part of the general aethetic presence of their environment, which I think we probably ought to respect. -- Inkstersco 24, DEC, 05


 * I don't think anyone debates this, Ian. :) BryanAJParry 00:56, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Au contraire, I think Oswax was interested in renaming Cent and Catholic(according to the wordbook), which seems a bit overboard to me, way beyond Hastingsless English. Currencies and religions are generally named by the organisations responsible, at least in part. ~Inkstersco Dec 25


 * The words 'catholic' and 'cent' are in the wordbook only for the most general meanings. Indeed, the word 'catholic' is an adjective in the wordbook, and not a noun. This means that there would yet be 'a Catholic church' but no longer 'a catholic church'. If you see the difference. Oswax Scolere 19:39, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)

On "-able"
My suggestion with dealing with the apparent lack of equivilent of "-able" in the Anglo-Saxon tier, is to

1) Describe the state of something being able to to do something with -some : Bothersome

2) Describe the state of something being able to have something done to it with   be-...-some : Beliftsome

Inkstersco, 24 Dec 05


 * Yes, I agree with this. But I think -able is on of those naturalised suffixes (probably aided by its connection with "able") BryanAJParry 00:56, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Acceptable use of Latin
I think in humour it is very funny (ergo, and so on). It has a real job there. Also, what about in certain technical fields? I don't, for instance, have a problem with those genus names, like catus catus and all that. Ideas, thoughts? BryanAJParry 01:24, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Merry Christtide!


 * If Velociraptor was Speedy Snatcher(the calque), that would "clutter" the language with ambiguity, don't you think? Are we talking about an animal or some sinister person? The drift between monosyllabic Saxon and long Latinate words in a single sentence is used by Shakespeare quite a lot; It is functional. It's like Burns switching between Scots dialect and very standard English in his works; The contrast is part of the language. The benefit of Latinate words is that they lack connotation and vividness, and so can be used for very dispassionate matters, such as the scientific and legal.


 * However, I think one point of Anglish could be to provide an extreme, that people can use to whatever extent. We can use Anglish to make Romance an option rather than a necessity. ~ Inkstersco, 25 Dec 05

Wordbook Entries Discussion
Let's talk here about specific wordbook entries any of us REALLY mislike so we can sort it out here (instead of randomly changing the articles/entries).

JAW = MOUTH I'm sorry, but no. Maybe I can be convinced otherwise, but if you ask me, this falls distinctly into the camp of stretching a word's meaning too far. In fact, you and I, Joe, have complained to each other how "mad" has lost the keenness of its meaning to a degree by use of it being overextended to mean "angry". Well, to say jaw means mouth is frankly an even more gross over-extension of meaning. :) Feel free to disagree. BryanAJParry 01:47, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree; I think it would disadvantage the language if we just let meanings swallow eachother up by culling the number of words. Do we talk about the jaw of a cave? A snail has a mouth, but does it have jaws? I think we need to deal proporly with the fact that sometimes there is no good Anglo-Saxon word for a concept. We might also grudgingly admit that Jaw is a perfectly nice word; For all I knew it was Anglo-Saxon. How we deal with it is the skill behind the making of the language, that I thing we need to flesh out.


 * Basically, the question of whether to keep words such as "jaw" goes hand in hand with whether is it the aesthetic or the pedantic consequences of Hastings you wish to undo.


 * I like a challenge, and if we can come up with or find natural replacements for words like Jaw, that would be brilliant, however bear in mind that it is a *mammoth* task of good judgement to do so to the extent that a newspaper article could be written in Anglish and understood by a learned reader unversed in it. ~Inkstersco 25 Dec


 * Interestingly, according to etymonline.com, "jaw" replaced the word "cheek" in that sense. If we WERE gonna get rid of jaw, saying "chek" would make more sense than "mouth", as both jaw and cheek refer to the side part of the face. BryanAJParry 15:46, 26 Dec 2005 (UTC)

COLOUR = HUE

A colour is hue plus shade plus degree of saturation plus some other stuff. Similar to the Jaw\Mouth thing, in art, colour and hue are two different things. The language would be prettier but less useful if these words were fused. I suggest hueshade for colour. Colour, is, pretty much, the shade of a hue. ~Inkstersco, 25 Dec


 * I'm not disagreeing with anything written here in as such, but I think that these dicussion would be better had at the talk page of the respective letter. Oswax Scolere 14:37, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Also, I think that general discussion anent Anglish ought to be on the talk leaf of Anglish, or, if the subject is important enough, be taken to a leaf of its own. We ought to keep this leaf for only talk anent the headside. Oswax Scolere 16:36, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)

On the Wordbook in General
There is a probable cross-section of readers who would like to use the Anglo-Saxon as much as possible without crossing the line into the world of neologisms. It is for this reason that I suggest a simple indicator on whether the word is established(e.g. waylay), half-established(e.g. fewfold), or coined (e.g. withreckoner), and perhaps whether it is dialectal. If it is established, they can check a dictionary to help them decide.

The Anglish wordbook has all the potential of a sort of contrained thesaurus, but would repel some readers who see it as a Roald-Dahlish exercise of word inventing. Consider that I don't think anyone has ever published a Romance to A-S thesaurus before, so I think a large niche would be filled if we could somehow isolate that capacity from the larger con-lang, by means of simple annotation. ~Inkstersco, 26 Dec 05


 * I agree. If wikicities supports colour, I would suggest no colour (that is, black) for the established words (that is, ones in the OED, collins and dictionary.com, for instance), red for new words, and green for archaic, literary, or dialect words. BryanAJParry 12:01, 27 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * How about a class for unestablished words that are implicit in established words, such as "fewfold" as an opposite of "manifold", "yaysay" as an opposite of "naysayer", and anything-goes morphologies like "Lifewise"?


 * Where Anglish falls short as a language it can be a very nice thesaurus-like tool ~Inkstersco, 27 Dec

Outlandish Wordbooks
This may be a stupid question, but why oh why have we go the beginnings of a French wordbook? BryanAJParry 17:55, 27 Dec 2005 (UTC)
 * For we need it to do overbringings. I can read a little French, and so I am slowly building a French wordbook to help me. It is better for us to do overbringings from a tongue like French or Latin or German, rather than straight from English, so that we do not get 'interference' from today's English. Also, the English wordbook only holds word for the Anglish word is otherly. In the French, or whatever, wordbook we can have every word, from 'I' and 'and' onwards.


 * If thou can speak another tongue it would be good to make a wordbook for that tongue here and publish any overbringings thou might have. Otherwise, doing an overbringing from English would be good. Oswax Scolere 20:16, 27 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, it's your call, Joe. I like French, but I don't speak it and so won't be adding to it at all. I'll focus on updatign the English workbook and maybe adding to the articles. :) BryanAJParry 21:34, 27 Dec 2005 (UTC)
 * It's our call. But it is cool if you don't wish to add anything. BTW look at your email. Oswax Scolere 21:42, 27 Dec 2005 (UTC)
 * Let's just define Anglish relative to English and then let French-to-English knowhow handle the rest of the problem. Thankfully, we know how to translate French to Anglish inasmuch as we can translate it into English. It's a big enough task creating a big enough Anglish vocabulary to be comfortably useable. Anglish is a kind of English dialect, and so the French wordbook is no way to run a railroad. There's nothing at all wrong with what you're doing, but the French stuff looks a bit of a distraction to me. There are many Scots dictionaries, but you'll never(easily) find a French to Scots dictionary for a very similar reason. Once you can translate Standard English to Scots, the rest pretty much falls into place. ~Inkstersco, 27 Dec