History of Anglish

The history of Anglish is almost a thousand years long and has taken on many forms throughout that time. Though the name Anglish was only invented in 1966, the core idea has been repeated by many writers since the 1100s onwards. The changing status and condition of English through the ages has necessarily influenced the viewpoint of commenters at any specific time.

The differences between these views allows the history of Anglish to be broken into two periods: ancient and modern. The former period was a time when English was a low-status language actively absorbing many words from French, Latin and Greek; and in the latter period, English had already been greatly affected by borrowings from outside, and yet had itself achieved the level of a high-status language.

=Ancient Anglish= Before the Norman Conquest, English was in the position of being the 'official language' of the English state. It was used in most civil affairs since the reforms of Alfred, and had a large and growing literature. Latin, as in mnay other countries in Europe, was the language of the church and religion, and though borrowing into English did occur, it was relatively small scale and somewhat restricted to religious terms. During the kingship of Edward the Confessor, more French people, and therefore more French language, was present in court. French words entered English, but again, not in large numbers, and mainly as 'additions' to the vocabulary, rather than replacements.

After the Norman Conquest, the top level of English society was replaced by people who spoke French. At first English was still used in many civil contexts, but in time, French essentially became the language of the state. It was expected that those engaged in higher cultural, social, and civil spheres would be able to speak French. It was necessary for those English people who wished to be active in those areas to learn French as an additional language. English people lower down the social scale did not have the resources to learn French properly or at all, and so were outside national cultural and social spheres. Many words of French origin filtered down from the elites to the common person, who adopted them in trying to achieve, or at least appear to achieve, the mark of a high-status language.

It is against this backdrop, which lasted until the mid-1300s, that the very first 'Anglish' writers appeared. Their work was aimed at providing literature to English people in their vernacular, which involved not only writing in English, but also taking care not to use any word of French (or other, such as Latin) origin, which potentially would not be understood by the audience.

Ormulum
The first example of this kind of work that we have is called the Ormulum, after its writer, a Lincolnshire monk by the name of Orm. It is a homily cycle, intended to be read in portions to accompany readings from the Bible. The audience, the congregation of the church, could be expected to include many people who spoke only English, and it is at these people Orm targeted his work.

=Modern Anglish=