Anglish

Anglish is a form of constrained writing in English in which words with Greek, Latin, and Romance roots are replaced by Germanic ones. (See etymology.)

Sometimes this is achieved by use of synonyms and sometimes by neologisms. When merely consisting of synonyms, Anglish also functions as legitimate English.

In 1966, Paul Jennings wrote a number of articles in "Punch" in Anglish, to commemorate the 900th anniversary of the Norman Conquest. He gave "a bow to William Barnes, the Dorset poet-philologist". The pieces included a sample of Shakespeare's writing as it might have been if William the Conqueror had never succeeded: [cite book|title=The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language|author=David Crystal|url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Kh_RZhvHk0YC&pg=PA127&dq=anglish+punch&lr=&sig=mp5DcgO5rKE80B909CppJS0MSyo|page=125|year=2003|isbn=0521530334|publisher=Cambridge University Press]

:"To be, or not to be: that is the ask-thing:":"is't higher-thinking in the brain to bear":"the slings and arrows of outrageous dooming":"or to take weapons 'gainst a sea of bothers ":"and by againstwork end them?..."

(The fact that "outrageous" is actually of Romance origin—it is from Old French "outrageux"—seems to have escaped Jennings's attention. Additionally, "mind" is of Anglo-Saxon origin, so it had no need to change.)

The Australian composer Percy Grainger adopted a similar language, which he called "blue-eyed English", for his letters and musical manuscripts.

The name Ander-Saxon is used for scientific or technical writing and was coined in 1992 by Douglas R. Hofstadter as a pun on Anglo-Saxon, with a reference to science fiction author Poul Anderson. Anderson introduced the form in his article "Uncleftish Beholding," a treatise on atomic theory written in Ander-Saxon. (Interestingly, "ander" is the Dutch and German word for "other".) Here is a quotation:

:"The firststuffs have their being as called unclefts. These are mighty small: one seedweight of waterstuff holds a tale of them like unto two followed by twenty-two naughts. Most unclefts link together to make what are called bulkbits. Thus, the waterstuff bulkbit bestands of two waterstuff unclefts, the sourstuff bulkbit of two sourstuff unclefts, and so on. (Some kinds, such as sunstuff, keep alone; others, such as iron, cling together in chills when in the fast standing; and there are yet more yokeways.) When unlike unclefts link in a bulkbit, they make bindings. Thus, water is a binding of two waterstuff unclefts with one sourstuff uncleft, while a bulkbit of one of the forestuffs making up flesh may have a thousand or more unclefts of these two firststuffs together with coalstuff and chokestuff."

The techniques he uses include:
*coinages ("firststuff" for "element");
*replacements ("motes" for "particles");
*calques from the original language ("uncleft" from "atom" – Greek "a-" not + "temnein" to cut)
*calques from other Germanic languages like German and Dutch ("waterstuff" and "sourstuff" from the German "Wasserstoff"/Dutch "waterstof" and the German "Sauerstoff"/Dutch "zuurstof", themselves approximate calques of the neo-Greek "hydrogen" and "oxygen" — ‘υδρ–(udr), "water" and ’οξυ–(oksu), "sharp" + –γεν–(gen), from a verb for creation or production).

References

* Paul Jennings, "I Was Joking Of Course", London, Max Reinhardt Ltd, 1968
* Poul Anderson, "Uncleftish Beholding", "Analog Science Fact / Science Fiction Magazine", mid-December 1989.
* Includes a reprint of Anderson's article, with a translation into more standard English.
* Also includes and discusses excerpts from the article.

External links

* [http://www.geocities.com/bajparry/Anglish.html Anglish]
* [http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/Headside Anglish Moot wiki]

ee also

*High Icelandic
*Høgnorsk
*Inkhorn term
*Classical compound