Is English better for the all the import words? I personally think yes (the more words the merrier!). Let me know your opinion. And remember to head to to nordvpn.com/robwords to get the two year plan with an exclusive deal PLUS 1 bonus month free. It’s risk free with NordVPN’s 30 day money back guarantee.
Our imported words have given us the choice to use words that mean the same things to express different nuances of meaning. I adore the Anglisc community, for helping to point out and revive perfectly wonderful Anglo-Saxon words derived from Old English that have fallen to the wayside, not that they ought to replace our loanwords, but that these borrowings add to our witcraft and owntongue. Making language richer is a great goal. The creativity induced by attempting to "ban" loanwords enriches us all.
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. James D. Nicoll
@@rais1953why not frain? Etymologically it is directly related to the German Frage, Dutch vraag, Frisian fraach, (it was something like Frigian in OE) and means “to ask/to enquire”. Ask thing is a made up word that is not authentic English “without French”.
"English doesn't 'borrow' from other languages: it follows them down dark alleys, knocks them over, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar and valuable vocabulary." ~ James Nicoll
Close, but not quite. James didn't mention grammar. "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
As a norwegian, Anglish does not sound strange or unnatural at all. More or less every anglish word has a norwegian sibling still in common use, and the ethymology and meaning of phrases like "Elizabeth the other" and "Folk of the foroned riches" is crystal clear and make total sense.
thats funny because sometimes when there is a fancy latin word in an english text that didnt end up becoming very popular its very easy for me as a portuguese speaker to understand it, even when some natives dont
Anglish is interesting but in my opinion it isn't an English that could've been, it's more of a creative exercise in what English would look like without Latinate borrowings. A Norman defeat in the Battle of Hasting would have significantly reduced Latin and French influence on English, but it wouldn't have eliminated it entirely. Latin was the language of the church, science, and literature and French-language literature also enjoyed popularity and prestige, not to mention France's geographic proximity to England. We can't know for sure what borrowings would've occurred absent a successful Norman Invasion but without a doubt some borrowing would still happen.
A more likely scenario is that words that, in our own sooth, have been borrowed into the other Germanic tonges would also be borrowed into English. (Mark how I used “scenario” but not “reality”, as the first is the same as the word I’d use in Norwegian, but the other is not a wend of “virkelighet” or “Wirklichkeit”, which is what I would have said in Norwegian or German.)
For all that a decent amount of French entered English with the Norman invasion, the vast bulk of it (and of the Latin you'll find there also, that part that hadn't already entered long since via the church, or Roman influence on the Germanic peoples) showed up in later centuries when French was the language of the nobility from one end of Europe to the other, and thus a 'prestige' language that people used to show off how fancy they were (as well as being quite useful if one was traveling). Likewise much of the Latin comes from scientific endevours, where a combination of the prominence of religious institutions in early scientific advancement and the need for a common language (and it's nature as a mostly 'dead' language offering quite a lot of advantages in this role) saw it become another prestige language, showing off one's education and (pretense to) intellect. I can't help but imagine that the result would be less the loss of long, complicated words that are clearly thought of as French or Latin in origin today, and more the loss of the simple, basic ones people don't think about much, such as 'beef' and the like.
@@laurencefraser Henry and Eleanor would have done the job; they certainly boosted French throughout their (vast) kingdom. I also think that even if we did not grow all the French from them, there would still be a lot of Norse and Danish words. Stripped of all outlandish words, we would speak German, or Danish, I think. But I make it too simple.
I think this is a false premise. French has had some influence on other languages too, but if you look at what happened to Flemish and Luxembourgish. Some loan words, but not 2/3 of all words. But the 2/3 is a misnomer anyway, because of the 1/3 core English native words, most are more common than the core of the other 2/3.
Linguistically funny and witty as it may be (and is to me) - the real problem with the Anglish project (and the real reason for not showing the name and face of the strangely American interviewee) is the political implications that come along with it… The political implications of cleansing a language is at least highly problematical! Also quite strange to me seems the conception /necessity to purge the language of the first Normannic invadors (ie the Anglo-Saxons) from the influences of the other Normannic invadors just because the latter dawdled and dallied with their invasion some 500 years after loitering a little bit on the other side of the channel. Neither nor of them would relate to King Arthurˋs glorious Britannic past… so why not stick to the Celtic Languages to reclaim the „true“ language of the ISLES?? Hum… and there is another problem…. Before Arthur and all those horrible Viking tribes came from different directions, those darned Latinos and their emperors had already been here before for some 400 years…. Which leads to the sole and single possible conclusio: The only real and truly true rightful English would be pure classical LATIN . :-) -> If you do it for sports and leisure, all is fine…. If not - it will get most problematical…
Just noticed the use of the word 'outrageous' in Anglish Hamlet. Outrage has the appearance of a native word, but it's actually from Old French _oltrage_ (related to _ultra_) and not out + rage, as people later interpreted it. Rage was also another French loanword. Just goes to show how deeply French dug into English that it's not always easy to tell what's native.
One of the things I love about English is that we can - with a bit of stretching sometimes - say almost anything in either Anglo-Saxon or Norman French. The denotation might be very similar, but the connotation - the feeling that it invokes - can be quite different. It's the difference between a 'cordial reception' and a 'hearty welcome'. Literally they mean the same thing. But they also mean completely different things.
The word "cordial" is interesting because people use it today to mean politeness without warmth, and I don't know any other word that fits that particular meaning.
@@explodingmonad4535 One of the things I love about English is that we can - with a bit of stretching sometimes - say almost anything in either Anglo-Saxon or Norman French. The meaning might be nearly the same, but the feeling that it give - can be mightily other. It's the split between a 'cordial reception' and a 'hearty welcome'. Wordwise they mean the same thing. But they also mean fully other things.
As a Swede, this is hilarious and almost all these substitutions makes sense to me and is immediately intelligible. Cool! One think I'd like to point out in this context is JRR Tolkien who tried to write large portions of his works without the use of imported words, digging up long lost Germanic words anglifying them.
I've never studied Swedish. I once watched a YT video for learners of Swedish--so it was at a very simple level, of course. I understood it pretty well, actually--but one thing kept throwing me off. There were people in the video eating ice cream out of glass bowls. The narrator kept talking about "glass," and I was confused as to what she was saying, and frankly, why she was obsessing over the bowls. Then it hit me--the Swedish word "glass" means ice cream! It's obviously borrowed from the French word "glace."
@@johnnyrosenberg9522 fast meaning stuck, solid or still. Not at all the same as quick. However, the meaning of non-eating is the same in both languages.
9:19 As a native Icelander, the phrase “Elisabet the Other” made so much sense that I didn’t even notice it. In Icelandic we use “Elísabet önnur” where “önnur” translates both to “the second” and “other”.
Maybe harking back to a primal age (or even pre-human forebears) where Og the caveman couldn't count beyond two. Even "second" doesn't have any innate two-ness about it as its root is in words simply meaning "following". That "twoth" version discussed by Rob and guest has a more modern ring to it implying that it was a member of a numbering sequence that stretched ever upward.
That´s my thinking as well. Moreover, while (I believe) the other norse languages use the same construct as Icelandic and thus mix “the second” and “other”, I think Dutch uses the word “tweede” for the second. Given that Dutch is closer to English than the norse languages, “twoth” might be a more natural choice for Anglish.
@@murkotron Exactly - but my question is why, and what does it tell us about the way brains are wired up to deal with enumeration. Even sparrows (I hear) can count to three so their brains are capable of subdividing "otherness" and wouldn't conflate egg number two with egg number three. So their nest doesn't just have egg one and "the rest" as an amorphous uncountable blob. The most primitive part of the pre-brain ganglion was built around processing sensory apparatus that delivered information to it for recognising that organism's own physical boundary. That gives primacy to "self"" and "other". Maybe it was later on that the protoplasmic ganglion grew in complexity to effectively wonder why that non-me amoeba (to take a protoplasmic example) is "following" me around and offer a merger or beat a retreat. Which gives rise to the concept of "secondness" - the root of the word "second" being "following" - in order to conceptualise the universe minus me. Just musing on why "other" and why "second" or "following".
It is fun to watch this as a German. We do make strange things here, too. We have the "Farseer" (Fernseher) which we sometimes call "TV," but never "Television". And we have the "Telefon" which old-fashioned might call "Farspeaker" (Fernsprecher).
@@programmer1356 hmmm... An automobil would still be an automobil even with no gas. You would not change the name to "autostationary". So your device will still be called "Handy" in German. ;-)
@@Matahalii Thank you. I think 'Handy' is a good name for it, it's short and not ambiguous. I disagree about a car without petrol being a good analogy - I don't like analogies anyway but that's another matter. If someone said "Ah you have a phone, what's your phone number?" they would be quite justified and quite miffed to hear that my phone does not have a phone number (a necessary attribute of something that would be called a phone for almost everyone). Anyway, I liked your comment.
@@programmer1356 Actually, we use the word "Taschenrechner" in German which literally translates to "pocket computer". A "Taschenrechner" is a (hand-held) calculator so probably not quite the kind of device you're talking about, but something similar.
I'll screw you then Dictionary comes from the Latin dixit which is word but comes from saying (dicere) So you can say that a dictionary is a sayingbook
@@alfredorotondo But it isn't "sayingbook" in English; it's not a compound in English, unlike "wordbook". That's the difference. Someone learning a language with compounds, it's fewer things to keep track of. Swedish "ordbok" is 'ord' (word) and 'bok' (book), a book of words ... and "husdjur" is 'hus' (house) and 'djur' (animal), an animal of the house.
That’s interesting you say that, as I’ve often wondered if modern English and modern Dutch would be much closer cousins were it not for the foreign influences. I wonder if there would be a lot of mutual intelligibility between the spoken languages as well.
Having learned English as a second language from German, I can truly attest to the matter that speaking an Anglo-Saxon English isn't too foreign to us, but once these latin and French derived words are introduced, it feels so much fancier. Like you were just using English before and now you're speaking a noble foreign language. truly an upgrade into the full grown-up English experience But this anglish is much simpler to comprehend in structure, apart from the very uncommon words
I studied Latin and Greek for a couple of years ... a million years ago, and my conclusion was that most fancy words are just composites of very simple words. Eg technocrat could be craftholder - artbearer????
Having learned English coming from French, Anglish seems like a foreign language to me. I have built a feel for English, but it goes all out the window when trying to read Anglish.
It is amazing how similar these ANGLISH words are to German. Farspeaker = Fernsprecher, Farseer = Fernsehe etc. Sometimes it felt more "familiar" than normal English. 😅
I was thinking the same thing! "Foresitter" (president) is similar to _Vorsitzender_ (chairman), "folk" sounds identical to _Volk_ (and the Anglish meaning of "a people" is also identical to that German word), and _frith_ (peace) sounds like a cognate of _Frieden._ Thanks for the comment! For my own comment, detailing this same phenomenon: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aMA3M6b9iEY.html&lc=UgwkvXYgHCmJyIY6EYV4AaABAg
Indeed! Just take the translated _Lawbook_ as an example: "ourselves and our offspring" is easier to understand than "ourselves and our prosperity", yet "foreoned riches" is not easily recognizable as "United States"! Thanks for the comment!
@@Hand-in-Shot_Productions whoever decided that “Foreoned Riches” makes any sense at all is full of linguistic shit. There are way better words to describe the USA- “Linked Lands” “Fellowship of Wealth” if you want to emphasize wealth. Plus, the word “rich” comes from French! Anglish is a linguistic trainwreck. -1/10 as a conlang
@Noah Rice As a fluent native English speaker, I can't be more embarrassed on how long it took me to realise I technically got a head start for learning the rest of the romance languages, plus Greek. No wonder non-native speakers from outside of that circle, like Arabic, for example, have such difficulty.
I find it comforting as a Romance language speaker to be able to understand Anglish because it makes me feel like I have really learned the language and have acquired a decent amount of vocabulary and that I'm not just "englishifying" Spanish.
@@mihanich wait, aren’t you russian? i’m not aware of much slavic influence in english, so i’m curious to how different it would be. could you explain?
@@thegyattiestmanalive22.2 there's no Slavic influence in English. Slavic languages are pretty darn far from the British isles. What exactly do you want to know? How different English and Russian are? Pretty different.
I've always found it funny how some german words were just compounding two words to give a literal definition to what they're naming. Turns out english also used to do that before adopting foreign words to make things more confusing.
I prefer the foreign words though. Words should be have their etymology layered in obscurity and allure. It's what makes trying to unravel their meaning more interesting
@@lordigwe3679 so basically you are saying that ways of communication that is, making other people understand you, should be "obscure and allure" because it's more interesting or fun to yourself alone That sounds pretty antisocial to me. You might as well just talk to yourself and entertain that way
@@fattestallenalive7148 ummm, I'm talking about the etymology of the words. Which do you prefer? Window or wind's eye? Television or farseer? I prefer the etymology of words to be obscure and not immediately discernible. That's why French is a pretty language
it depends on how far you want to go on this purging crusade... in the Churchill example, street actually also comes from the Latin via strata, which gave also strata in Dutch and Straße in German
Tolkien was a great master of Anglish. In fact the Lord of the Rings is written almost entirely in Anglish! There are some latin based words which he couldn’t reasonably avoid, but in the general case he always used the words with old English etymology. And he did it masterfully!!
@DoubtingThomas He did actually intentionally write in as reasonable (from both a literary and publishing standpoint) an Anglish as he could. And he had good reasons in his mind for doing so. Part of the reason why he wrote those stories was that he thought the English people lacked a solid mythos, a good collection of traditional lore, legends and stories that were definitive of them. Plus there was the fact that he could write in Anglish. He was a linguist by trade. The reason why The Hobbit has a particularly simple style is simply that he wrote it much before LotR for I think his own children. It had to be simpler.
@@doubtingthomas136 Most of Professor Tolkien’s use of language in his literature was _very_ deliberate, to the point where he was accused of writing the story for his constructed languages rather than constructing languages for the story. And they were likely correct.
Tolkien wasn’t anti-French so much as pro-English. Faramir calls Aragorn “puissant” when “powerful” would have been the more obvious word. It’s appropriate for the character, being a nobleman.
@@jslonisch It's interesting that you should pick out that very word. I actually think that puissant did not come from Tolkien. It is clearly wrong, and sticks out like a sore thumb. After reading hundreds of pages of carefully selected Anglish, we are suddenly confronted with puissant!! I’m supposing that he had originally written “high and mighty” and that, because of the negative connotation of that phrase in English, he agreed to have it changed, and that someone who was close to him suggested the alternative. It’s only a guess, but puissant is clearly one of the very few actual mistakes in LOTR.
It's not. 🙄 The more you go back in history the more Anglish you get. Shakespeare's English sounds much more familiar to a German than today's English, and still people didn't use that much French or Latin based words. Especially not in a Middle Ages set as Lord of the Rings, it would sound super unnatural and would kill the authenticity as Amazon did, it killed it and is proud of killing it with Rings of Power.
As a Spanish speaker I’ve always appreciated the Latin/French borrowings because it felt almost like someone just handed me a cheat code to learn English. At the same time it made English feel a little lame since a lot of the time practicing the more “learned” vocabulary felt as though I was just pronouncing Spanish words funny. That’s why Anglish sounds really cool to me. I’m not much of a History person so I couldn’t really describe the time period it reminds me of, but I feel like I’m reading English as some cool ancient warrior would speak it.
As a Spanish speaker myself too, my belief is unlike yours as for English being lame owing to the borrowings, but I understand how you could think that. Besides that, I do see eye to eye with you on Anglish being very cool and enthralling. (All above wordsets and this one are written fully in Anglish, by the way) ((a wordset meaning a sentence))
I'm Dutch and leaned Spanish after I learned English and I love how in many cases I can just give a Spanish twist to all the latin-based English words I know.
I speak Spanish but no Germanic languages and I once read that it's easier for a native English speaker to sound smart in a Romance language because we share the higher vocabulary rather than the lower. I could recognize academic vocabulary in Spanish but the equivalent words in German are those infamous long compounds.
I speak English German and Danish as my 3rd, 4th and 5th languages, so this version of English made sense to me. My native languages are Slovak and Czech. Thanks to Latin influence on English I have easier time understanding Latin languages. Thus I have a good starting ground in the 3 biggest European language families: Germanic, Latin, and Slavic.
Yup. Spanish is relatively easy for English speakers due to a huge overlap in vocabulary. And if you can speak Spanish you’re halfway to Italian and Portuguese. (Also French and Romanian) actually if I were you I would start with Romanian. You probably only need to study it for two months.
This American is both in awe and a bit jealous. I know what you mean, though. I basically had a conversation with a Mexican-American woman in a park in California. She only spoke Spanish, but my knowing some French was enough to get by. It wasn't a long or complicated conversation, but we genuinely communicated somehow.
I am a native Danish speaker, and while we certainly have a lot of loanwords as well, it is much closer to its roots than English. For instance, the word for “constitution” (which you proposed to replace with “lawbook”) is called “grundlov”, meaning the ground-law, i.e. the law that is the foundation of all others. Smart
As an American who knows a few words in other Germanic languages (especially German), that makes sense! In fact, I would add that the German constitution is called _"das_ _Grundgesetz_ _für_ _die_ _Bundesrepublik_ _Deutschland"_ (usually rendered as "Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany"), with _Grundgesetz_ itself, like _grundlov,_ literally translating as "Ground-Law". Hence, I would endorse such a term as a re-Germanicized replacement of "Constitution". Thanks for the comment!
Regarding the term "ground-law" -- A similar phrase, "ground rules", is already pretty common, at least in American English. You use it in situations where there aren't necessarily formal guidelines in place, and you want to be sure that everyone cooperates and is treated fairly. For example: "Before we start this meeting, let's establish some ground rules. First, only one person speaks at a time." It makes sense to me that "ground-law" would be the scaled up version of that.
You should look up Uncleftish Beholdings by Poul Anderson, I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned in this video. "The underlying kinds of stuff are the firststuffs, which link together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest. Formerly we knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from waterstuff, the lightest and barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest. Now we have made more, such as aegirstuff and helstuff."
@@Hand-in-Shot_Productions The German constitution is not called "Grundgesetz" because that's the usual word for "constitution" in German - that would be "Verfassung", which was the name of all other German consitutions before the Grundgesetz. The reason why it's called that is rather a historic one - when Germany lost WW2, it was occupied by Allied forces and divided into sectors. After a few years, the western allies decided to allow for a new, independent German state. The Germans were rather glad about that because they didn't like the occupation, but now they had a problem - the soviets weren't willing to play along and reintegrate Eastern Germany with West Germany, so they had to do without the eastern parts. To form a new republic, the Germans needed a constitution as well, but had they called that piece of legislation "Verfassung" (constitution), it would've meant that they considered West Germany a new, legitimate state instead of just a provisory solution until reunification was possible. Therefore, they decided to instead call that law "Grundgesetz", to make sure that it signified temporarity. When reunification actually came, it had worked out so well that they actually decided to keep it.
It reminds me a time when I travel through Slovenia and listen to the radio. I never heard that language, but as a Polish speaker after some time I started to understand more and more. I had to "delatinize" my language and focus only on old Slavic words to understand more and more.
This is genius comment. I speak multiple Slavic languages and can confirm Slovene is extremely archaics in some words. They haven't developed the same as other Slav language groups. Also the usage of words that are common in other Slavic languages but changed meaning remained "faithful" to the roots. On the other hand they adapted tons of Latin words while preserving the original Slavic words as well. Homeland would be "Domovina" and home "Dom" which is directly from Latin domus. They also persevered "Ochetnyava" as original Slavic variant of "fatherland", but they lost Slavic variant of house hold "Dom". Another one is word for angel which they adapted straight from Latin "Angel" while also preserving orignal (but rare) "Krilatci" (aka. the winged beings from root "Krila" or "wings"). They adapted words "fant" for boy which is directly from Latin that also English adapted "infant" and same for the girl, while preserving old Slavic for both (usually in dialects). Not to mention Slovene as starting point to learn old Slavic and common Slavic. It's beautiful language tbh.
@@THELORDVODKASomething that I have to point out is that, dom is not a borrowing from latin, it is a word of slavic origin. They (latin and slavic) both developed from PIE afterall. The writting and soundings are just a mere coincidence.
As a poet, I love the versatility of English with all its loan-words: there is so much nuance to explore in meaning as well as in the sounds of words and how they interact with each other.
Understandable. It's also a shame though that so many beautiful germanic words got lost in everyday English speech. I'm a native Dutch speaker and sometimes I'm still baffled by old English words that us Dutchies can often understand better than native English speakers. They say in this video that germanic words often hit harder. That is my feeling too. Romance words are oftentimes beautiful and slightly mystical at the same time. It's also a cultural thing I think. Dutch has also been under foreign influence for centuries. Dutch does have many loanwords but those are mostly from other germanic languages. Also from French of course but those words are often perceived as a bit too chique by Dutch speakers (in Dutch they're called expensive words, not very fitting for a proper calvinist Dutchman). Or they're remnants from the time when French was the main international and diplomatic language in Europe and beyond (which is why SVP short for s'il vous plait, thank you or please in French, can still occasionally be found on signs in The Netherlands). Dutch culture in some ways is more direct than the somewhat more diplomatic British culture. Perhaps that's why the Dutch kept favoring germanic words more than the British.
@@moladiver6817 the majority of words used in every day English are actually the ones Germanic in origin, the foreign words are used to describe unique or complex things, quite like how you described French is used for "expensive" words. I recently saw a video in which several different European language speakers tried to guess Dutch sentences and I was surprised how easy it was for me to guess the Dutch sentences, sometimes they were almost word for word equivalents to the English just with their slight variation in spelling. You should check out Scots, it has a lot of the Old-English Germanic words that would be shared with Dutch.
@@LionXV1 Dutch has mostly germanic words for complex meanings as well. German even more so. They're European champion in having unique words and word compounds. That's the point. The idea of expensive words is meant to be read as redundant or unnecessary, only to come across as schooled often making it a faux pass (case in point) among Dutch speakers. Certain French loanwords are fine but at the level that English does it really doesn't work in Dutch. It's very well possible just not very much appreciated. People simply won't take you seriously. I know everyday English speech is still mostly germanic but it's very hard to avoid romance loanwords at all cost. The existence of Anglish proves that it takes a conscious effort. This is not at all the case with most if not all Germanic languages on the European mainland. Just a simple word as wordbook is natural to us. Technical terms from science and medicine are also almost entirely germanic in Dutch speech. Where the more official terms tend to be the norm in English in Dutch that's not at all the case. In Dutch we don't say pneumonia but lung inflammation (longontsteking). Not osteoporosis but bone de-calcification (botontkalking). And so on. The words basically speak for themselves. Again as they say in the video they hit harder. There's intrinsic meaning to the words whereas with osteoporosis you just have to learn the exact meaning of that specific foreign word. The people who do use the technical terms all have a degree.
Yes, the nuance of so many very similar words is wonderful, makes a much more flexible language. But sometimes I cannot see any difference, and am convinced people choose the longer word just to appear more educated. My pet peeve is "use" vs "utilize"; but references say "use" is from old French, Latin, etc, and "utilize" is from French. One Anglish dictionary accepts "use" as Anglish.
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 Appear educated aka posh. I feel the same thing. I just think that English has pushed the level of acceptance of foreign words to a whole new level. Native speakers usually don't seem aware of how far they push it. Especially in America it's as if it's a sport to expand your vocabulary (word wealth or woordenschat in Dutch) to extreme proportions, to the point and beyond where it's rather useless to know 6 words for the same thing. Nuance among those synonyms is often artificial and arbitrary. It's as if native speakers tend to put as much nuance into a single word as possible while forgetting that nuance can also come from context. It also requires your listeners to fully grasp the meaning of this linguistic monstrosity. Language should not be about showing off that you know so many words. It's about conveying a message and making sure the message comes across without confusion. A seemingly endless vocabulary doesn't contribute to that. Less is more.
As a speaker of Chinese and Japanese, I find it fascinating to learn about European languages. Enjoyed the video as well as the comment section. What a treat!
As an English as a foreign language (aka; not in an English speaking country) teacher, I take great pride in teaching my students simple etymology... Particularly when it comes to common prefixes and suffixes.
Ironically, probably far fewer than half the population of England would be able to articulate what the word 'etymology' means. It might bug a few on the borderline of comprehension by mistake too 🙄 We do have one useful phrase gifted to us by our cousins on the far side of the pond which you may find helpful in helping your students Its *KISS* .... Keep Its Short (&) Simple Afterall, excessive locquatiousness ambiguates communcation.
As a native French speaker, I found this video very interesting within the current context. You can hear many people complaining about how French is dying because of anglicisms, as we tend to use more and more in the current globalized English speaking west. It is funny to think that some of these are just words coming back to us after having spent some years in the English speaking world :)
Alternatively, you could say that it is fitting that the American Declaration of Independence uses a lot of French or Latin derived words, because they would never have beaten the British without French assistance, both direct help and indirect assistance because the French were distracting the British elsewhere. If it weren't for the French, America might still be British.
There was also a lot of French philosophical influences as well. An example would be Montesquieu who argued for a system of checks and balances in government.
@@samuelthecamel Interestingly enough, for much of its history, most of those imigrants were from various German speaking countries. Though it did absorb very large French and Spanish speaking populations by way of various wars and purchases leading to control of the land they'd settled on in the Americas (they weren't really immigrants, at that point). And, of course, in more recent times the immigrants have been form other places (mostly Asia (including the Middle East) and Mexico, to my understanding).
Good point! I might add that over two-thirds of the current United States were purchased or obtained from France or a Spanish-speaking country, Spain & Mexico. Only 13 of our 50 states declared independence from Britain, so the balance of words in the Constitution's preamble is about appropriate. 😃
So love your videos, my late father was a linguist who (bless his memory) drove me crazy with languages to the point that when I had to take a language in college and my only choices were German and French, I petitioned the dean to allow me to study Latin because no one spoke it! Finally I realized I can count to ten in 7 languages and etymology is a serious passion. Go figure. Life is a lesson! Thanks for the videos, very glad I found you.
I think the funniest thing is how these words that were originally borrowed by English from other languages ended up spreading through many other languages because of English speakers 😅
As a Dano-German, speaking 2 Germanic languages, The Anglish Version of the Declaration of Independence was really easy to understand. In fact, I understood it much better than the original, English version😂
Anglish is much easier to understand as a German without being able to speak French or Italian. The Anglish words feel familiar or can be easily deduced from familiar ones.
Exactly what I thought. It doesn't really come as a suprise ... if you take the piechart showing the origins of todays english ... if you strip away the 50% (combined) french and latin, from the remaining rest, german makes 50%. ... So, Anglish is 50% (old) german.
Yes, but almost all the "abstract" words in English are of French origin. The concrete words, house, mouse, week etc are very similar to those auf Deutsch. The abstract words you have learnt in English are the same in French or the other neo-latin languages. Of course, there are many French words in German as well, but the percentage is way down compared to English.
Many thanks for this gripping upload! ❤ I am a Dutchman 🇳🇱 with an overall knowkeen in speeches and folktung, in, and outlandish. Afterwards I looked up the Anglish word for mathematics. For the Netherlands is the only Germanic speaking land using a Germanic word for that which is "Wiskunde", freely translated as knowledge of wisdom. What I do miss in the build-up of Anglish is the old speechcraft or wordlaw of old English which was much nearer to that of German and especially Dutch.
"Wiskunde" might as well be a German word and makes total sense, although we'd spell it "Wisskunde". Strange it doesn't exist in German... I just found out that the German equivalent would be "Wissenschaft", which translates to science.
Burg/borg/borough/burgh also works in instead of Stronghold. Burg is another word of Germanic origin used for castles, also means fortress, which essentially what castle meant as well...fortress, especially if on a hill or mountain. The Old English version of the word is Byrig, which is shown in citys that end in -bury. Now if you consider the etymology on both Burg and stronghold.. Burg is there to keep things out like a fortress, whereas a Stronghold is defined to keep things in like a prison. So I would use Burg Balmoral, and not Balmoral Stronghold.
In Scotland the equivalent word is 'Dun', like in Edinburgh (Dùn Èideann) or Dundee. Since Anglish doesn't seem to remove Celtic influences, then I feel like Dun is also an option.
It is a pitty that latinisation made English words longer. Castle has more sillables than Burgh, Mountain is longer than Berg (I don't know the Anglo-Saxon word for mountain) and City is longer than Stat
Burg, Borough, Borg and so forth are not castles per se, "burgu" in latin as well, meant "fortress" in the sense of walled cities, if you want to have a better word for castle in Anglish, look at German and Norwegian/Danish. Both use Schloss/Slott which by the way is an actual english word, "Slot".
The biggest appeal for me is a more standardized spelling of words. With such an enormous amount of loan-words in English, you pretty much need to memorize each one because each of the derivative languages has different rules for how things are spelled. There are plenty of languages in the world that don't have spelling bees, because everything is spelled the way it sounds. People who try to learn English and are not familiar with one of the derivative languages have a really hard time with spelling and pronunciation of (written) words for this reason. I don't envy them one bit!
You would be surprised. My native language is Polish. I find myself at an actual advantage in comparison with the native English speakers when it comes to spelling. This is because when I see an English word written, I hear it in my mind pronounced both ways- correctly, as you would in English, but also in the way a Polish child only familiar with the rules of Polish pronunciation would mispronounce it (it was hilarious when I was teaching) it’s this mispronounced version that gives me a permanent reference for how the word is spelled.
@@Bizmyurt Makes sense. As I understand it, it was transcribed into the Latin alphabet very recently so that would have been an opportunity to iron out all the accumulated inconsistencies that build up over centuries.
I mean spanish solve this making all foreign word loans "spanish" in spelling and sound. This way you get Futbol from football (although Balonpié exists) Another example is how a spaniard would pronounce iceberg
I think it's great to have both the quick native words and long loanwords - sometimes you want punchy, sometimes you want scholastic/elegant! "We were slaughtered" and "We were decimated" feel very different despite the similar meanings. One's what the solider says, the other is what the commander says.
Nearly a thousand years on from the Conquest, and that class divide is still there. As the historian James Hawes put it (paraphrasing loosely from memory), all those Norman knights were 'up on their high-horses, speaking their fancy foreign, looking down their noses at the English'.
Massacred. The romance 'borrowing' for Slaughtered is Massacred, it doesn't sounds especially smarter than Slaughtered and this is all absolutely silly. Maybe that nearly thousand year of class divide wouldn't exist if the english didn't judge each other over anything down to the etymology of the words they use... Getting over a thousand year old war they lost would do them good too.
Someone can get technical and point out that you can use decimated if the object, place, people, etc is reduced by 1/10 of the original size. I saw it in an episode of “Monk” years ago.
5:59 One tiny thing: There are actually TWO non-Germanic words there, the other being "street", which ultimately comes from the Latin strāta. Churchill should've used "road", which you seem to believe is not Germanic 6:17, but it is - from Proto-Germanic raidō (ride).
As an Italian that lived in UK for almost 9 years, I’ve appreciated pure Anglish. I often felt like I was walking with a boot on one foot and a shoe in the other when speaking bastardized English. Anglish sounds unfamiliar initially, but then it makes complete and straightforward sense and it’s enjoyable to compose new words from simpler ones: “word book” instead of dictionary, “hundredyear” rather than century. I like it and I think it would be less confusing to learn Anglish because it would be more consistent.
As an italian, I think that we should do this with the italian too, maybe not like the guys of FeL, but at least to 1800s italian I love old Italian words quite a lot, but if i use uncommon ones while speaking, people usually don't understand them, expecially when there are English neologisms
@@alfredorotondo As an italian native speaker, I always thought English was similar to caveman language in our satiric comedy. Anglish is way worst. A beautiful mind exercise and nothing more. and somebody forget any language evolve, think Ariosto's or Dante's italian compared to us, we also have influence from other language who ironic derived by the same latin... what's the sense of it? anything evolve, and hopefully will evolve in a world language someday. Anyway one of the most used language in the world complain itself? As a mathician won't use 0 because it was invented somewherelse. the pure sense of comunication is comunicate, facts feelings emotions..., to more people possible... not closing in secret, less spoken, language like children speaking "farfallese" (sorry i don't know this world in english, anglish, but i know you children do it too)
Because English is mostly loanwords, the spelling and phonetics of the written language is completely inconsistent which makes it harder for non-native speakers to learn or master. It also has the added effect of the pronunciations being unstable and which can change a lot across time and place. That's why English and French each have so many pidgin and creole languages, so even speakers of said languages struggle to keep it together and just end up bastardizing it.
@@paolo7364 As an English native, Anglish is simpler, elegant, and concise. Current English is fine, wouldn't call it a caveman language since it is easier than Italian (look it up) and gets information across with words a lot more than it does with phrases that come from dialect contexts (don't need to learn special phrases that translates into something a foreigner can make nothing of). Anglish is entirely Germanic, so I can see why you think its stupid, but it would have made learning German a lot easier for me and would have made it easier on everyone learning English because of the sound foundation Anglish that it is derived from. Instead of learning 3 languages to speak English, why not just learn one? It makes a lot of sense and the Anglish translation isn't that hard to understand once you've used more than 2 seconds of thinking.
@@nallid7357 1st i simply cannot call simple a language who use different pronunciation for the same group of letters (...ough, how many way you pronunce this in different words?) you wrong to declare it simple, it is only BASIC, it's not simple at all! 2nd simple doesn't mean better, that's why Inuit have hundreds words for snow in a world where snow is important to distinguish, more a language is evolved better you can describe the nature around you (spaceship doesn't born with the language but you need a word to describe it now) 3rd simple doesn't mean elegant, put two words togheter to say something do not improve the communication (FIREMAN to say who extinguish the fire... i can easy understand fireman is who make the fire) world is not simple, that's why every language import some words from others to comunicate. that's why i say caveman, it's basic, like join togheter two or more word to say something. do not feel offended, do not say other to inform as an insult, just reply facts when you can, i just say facts and my opinion. I never meant to offend anyone. Anglish is simpler than English as you say, and english is simpler of lot other language. i intend more is simple a language less is evolved, right. I do not like to try understand words by context, (what's a tank? a container or a war machine? if i want to refill the container of my war machine?) I do not even open the chapter "verb conjugation" take it easy bro not simpe. goodnight, i'll wait your reply
As a Swedish speaker, this was really cool to see since Swedish is a Germanic language like English, but has nowhere near as many loanwords. Many of the Anglish words have a clear equivalent in Swedish with roughly the same meaning, and that Anglish constitution I could almost entirely translate into Swedish and make it sound very similar. Also as an Icelander (another Germanic language) in the comments said, using ”other” for 2nd is exactly what happens in Swedish too, where ”andra” means both other and second
Exactly the same in Danish, with the word "anden". However, whereas the Swedish "andra" refers to "other" in both singular and plural (I think), the Danish "anden" refers only to "other" in singular; the plural version is "andre", which does not mean "second".
@@DogeMcShiba and Dutch, though we do use 2nd. Other is andere (and anders means different) with the plural anderen meaning others. (-en is often used for plurality)
This appears in current German as "anderthalb", synonymous to "eineinhalb" (1½ = 1.5). It got its name from the idea that ½ is the first half-number, 1½ is the second one. Further numbers like "dritthalb" (2½) are uncommon and not understood anymore.
As an American, married to a Dutch woman (with family in Friesland) who once lived in "german-speaking" (ahem) Basel Switzerland, have friends in Bavaria, worked in Vienna, Manchester and Edinburgh, I thoroughly enjoy watching your channel. (whew - talk about a run-on sentence) The point being that I've experienced personally a lot of varieties of Germanic-based languages. Learning about the history of English has really been a big part of my adult life. I found a really interesting book, "The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way". I'm sure you're aware of it, but your viewers may wish to take a look. Thanks for the fun videos!
I very much understand why you quoted "german-speaking". While working in Bavaria I was once on a bus where I heard three other passengers speaking a cross between Klingon and a coughing fit. It took me quite a while to figure out they were in fact speaking German.
I like how Churchill's speech had a subtle jab of the French and their tendency to surrender, by making "surrender" the only non-Anglo-Saxon (in fact, the only French) word in his speech. So well done, so subtle and yet so brutal.
France doesnt have a tendency to surrender outside memes, so if that was his intention it seems like a miss to me and way too subtle to to expect anyone to pick up on. Its far more likely that he chose surrender over alternatives since he was looking for impact. While anglo saxon words can be more punchy surrender works very well here. He could have found an alternative, but if it works why chamge it? Remember he used anglo saxon for effect, not on principle.
As a native Swedish speaker, a lot of these old Anglish words are very familiar. For example, in Swedish there is no word for second, instead we just say “Elizabeth den andra” (andre also works in colloquial Swedish, but since Elizabeth is female, the correct term is “andra”), meaning: Elizabeth the Other. Same with noble, and Athle. In Swedish, a noble is just called “En adlig person” or “ En av adeln” meaning: “A noble person” and “one of the nobility”. Noble as a virtue still exists in Swedish, so being noble, and being a part of the aethle are two different things. ”Han är nobel” (he is noble) and ”Han är adlig” (he is a noble (athel)) are two different things.
This is an amazingly insightful comment! Im a native English speaker and have a question regarding meaning, here: I know it has been a little while since you commented, so an answer is kinda unlikely, but I was wondering what the difference between "Han är nobel" and "Han är adlig" is? Would it translate roughly to "He is noble" (for virtue) vs "he is *a* noble" (a class of person)? Or would it be more like "he is noble" (virtue) vs "he is royal" (an attribute related to class). Royal could be replaced by "princly" or "kingly" if it should be more specific. Thanks! :)
@@necroseus I messed up. Yes, it should be he is A noble, as in he is a part of the nobility, or aristocracy. I fixed it. What’s a bit cool, though, is that to say “han är en adlig” is incorrect. You’d have to say “han är en adelsman” (he is a nobleman). It might be that it became considered correct in English to take out the “man”, because of people getting lazy, causing the modern version to become commonplace, whilst it kept getting used the old way in Swedish. Another cool thing that still sticks around in Swedish is the use of “du”, and “dig” (though, and thee). We don’t have an equivalent word for “you”. However, we have stopped differentiating between “de” and “dem” (they , and them) In common parlance, people just say “dom” instead for both forms, but we still wright de and dem. I find it interesting that most of the time when people complain about weird spellings, it’s usually because we used to pronounce it a different way, but the last person to remember the change died 100 years ago, so people don’t know that there was a different way before.
@@Evan490BC No, just Elizabeth the third. It’s a weird rule. It goes: Första/förste, andra/andre, tredje, fjärde, femte, sjätte, sjunde, etc.. All of them end in ”te” except for the first two, which are exceptions… obviously. It would be like saying: “First, other, third, fourth, etc..
As a Spanish native speaker, with the anglish would be more difficult to me to learn English, but now I'm learning German and with it I understood the germanic core of the English, it's interesting
hola. english and German has the same roots. the roots are in niedersachsen. the saxons who go to britain developed old saxon to old english and teh to english. the saxon who stay in "Niedersachsen" dveloped old saxon to old german and then to a german dialect called platt. and this dialect is similar to dutch and english.
As a norwegian, i must say i fing anglish more intuitive and a lot easyer to understand when it presents new words to me, compared to english. Right away my brain could relax more, as the words are constructed the same way as my native tongue. Longer words are a lot of the time just shorter words put together to form a new meaning, and you can invent new words as you talk. I think it's safe to say it is the germanic connection showing itself.
I wouldn’t doubt that Anglish constructionists turned to other Germanic languages to see their alternatives for Latinate English words. Bear in mind, though, that Anglish is not English-only English is English. Languages evolve according to a million variables and what’s left after the dust settles is what most people want to use. A lot of that is determined by the influence of the powerful, though more so in the past, and fashion and media. There have been attempts to “purify” English in the past and all have fail because, ultimately, most people just don’t care. It’s easier to say taco (which I believe is an indigenous word from Central America) than “hard bread with ground meat inside.”
@@franksellers7858 Actually I think the deviation (particularly of spelling) of English words from the Old English origins amounts to little more than robbing the English of their ancestry. The English folk don't actually change their language as "fashions" come and go, and what ends up happening is that actual English speakers get told they're wrong in their pronunciations when in fact they are correct and the person correcting them is wrong. English is based on the principle of being concise, which is why kings and queens allowed many Latin and Greek influences, and also why the letters were cut down to 26. But, as a child, picking up from my English grandparents, I adopted the word "ain't " to my father's horror. And many others. I was then chastised for using "american" language. But their are many such words in English which are more properly English than their "more sophisticated" counterparts.
My grandfather was born in Scotland in 1902 and came to the US in 1904. He learned from his parents many old nursery rhymes and poems which he would repeat to us which sounded like a foreign language. One such word was the number two but it was pronounced with the letter w . We say the w in other old words dealing with duality such as twin, twelve (2+10), twenty (10+10), twine (two strands). Thus twoth would make perfect sense instead of other.
@@internetual7350 I don't think so. This is my guess: 'Two pretty girls from Stromness, lived in a house with a mouse, the mouse fled away, not strange to say and the girls dreamt well that night.' I know that bonnie means pretty (as in bonnie wee lass) and bra means good in nordic languages
As a Swede I see that Anglish is closer to Swedish even though we also use loanwords and especially in science and political texts. Very interesting video and think as I said that viewers from other Germanic languages might find it very familiar too.
Fun fact: In Danish, the word (or one of he words) for television is actually "fjernsyn" (literally translated into "far-sight"), and dictionary is "ordbog" ("word-book"). We rarely think of it. It is just the word for the thing... so yes, Anglish may sound funny now because we are not used to it, but had it been like this always, "askthing" would just sound obvious and right.
I dont think askthing would be a thing in truly latin-less English. The German word for "question" is "Frage", and I wouldn't be surprised at all, if old English had a (probably lost) word for question deriving from the same word as the german word.
This reminded me of Croatian effort to crate Slavic Croatian words for many things so to replace foreign words. As a Serb I actually love it! They saved Southslavic words from being forgotten. Even the old words for months is so beautiful ❤️
Ако будемо искрени, Хрвати већином уобће не избацивају туђице из језика, но просто кују додатне словијенске равносмислице / истозначенице, тако да на крају у словнику често поред туђице стоји још и домаће словијенско слово (нпр. повијест, историја). Та надалеко распрострањена тврдња да су они њекиј језички чистунски ekstremisti просто није истина. У књижном језику, а понекад и у говорном, се дакле обе иначице могу чути успоредно, туђица и словијенизам, иако су словијенска слова код њих чешћа. Код нас је обрнуто; ријетко ћеш слишати Србина да нпр. умјесто "perioda" каже "доба" или "раздобље", или умјесто "incidenta" изгред / испад /изступ / непредвиђен догађај. Код нас озбиљно језичко протусловијенство нам језик пустоши. Све, само да не буде словијенско ...
I was reminded of the formerly well-known "Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry Into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy" (1956) edited by Nancy Mitford which is a light-hearted commentary on the language of the working, middle and upper classes in 1950s' Britain and concludes that both the upper and working classes tend(ed) to use shorter words of Germanic origin in their speech whilst the middle classes were inclined to use the "fancier", usually polysyllabic French and latin-derived words, inspired by an aspirational but wrong-headed attempt to impress e.g. "purchase" instead of "buy", "residence" instead of "home" etc. It's heartening to know that the "U" word or phrase is often the germanic one and the "non-U" term is the equivalent French/latin derived one but also strangely counter-intuitive and ironic, considering that so many of the upper echelons owed their positions in British society to descent from invading Norman knights and nobles.
While I think that anglish has a wonderful sound to it and it is charming as a solely germanic language, I think that the ability of English to absorb words from other languages and cultures to more easily convey ideas is a huge plus. Some of the compound words in dutch, for example, can get super unwieldy compared to their (non-germanic) english counterparts. I would love to run a Dungeons and Dragons campaign where all of the NPCs and characters spoke in Anglish to give it that "earthy" feel you described.
The other side of that argument is that the meaning of the Germanic word is usually easier understood, since you can just break it down. (Is the Norwegian “høyesterettsdommer” more unwieldy than the English-via-Latin “supreme court justice”? They both consist of three parts.)
I honestly love German because of how you can assemble words together to make another word. This also happened in Latin, but now in English you wouldn't think of "constitution" as "setting up together" ("con-" is "with", "statuō" is "set up" and "-tiō" is "-ing")
All Germanic languages can do this, English just seems to have partly forgotten about it in favour of borrowing words from other languages untranslated.
@@LorenzoF06 But in German I can put together all sorts of words, while in your example the "con-" would just be a prefix, right? English has those too, like in forget, forsay, behead, ... but maybe you don't recognise them as such? And I think German even has more of those :D "versagen, absagen, zusagen, entsagen, besagen, aussagen, durchsagen, nachsagen, untersagen, aufsagen, ansagen"
@@aramisortsbottcher8201 "con-" is just a prefix and it's related to "cum" ("with"), but the "statuō" part comes from "status", which is the perfect passive participle of "sistō" ("I cause to stand", which is related to "stō" ("I stand, I stay"). In a Latin-derived/influenced language like English or Italian, you most likely don't recognize all the morphemes of a word like "constitution" or "experience" without having studied Latin because it is not the usual way of forming words. In Gemran, there a lot of prefixes and they're way more recognizable: "nachsagen" is "to accuse", from "accūsō", which if you studied Latin you'll recognize as "ad" ("to") and "causa" ("cause") but otherwise you just won't know. To me, German seems more obvious with these formations
@@aramisortsbottcher8201 I fiind this a fun thing to do in Dutch as well; every verb has a totally different meaning Werken, bewerken, bijwerken, verwerken, inwerken, uitwerken, tegenwerken, afwerken
As a German, I adore Anglish. It would be much easier for us to learn as well. The word "frith" which you liked a lot, is obviously a cognate of Frieden. I wish that at least some words could become more Anglish in the future.
And Far-seer is literally Fernseher. I was shocked when I realized that I understood that. Anglish would've made learning German unbelievably easier. I still prefer Hand-shoes btw 😁
@@feynstein1004 Haha yes indeed^^ I just love all the Germanic languages. There is another attempt to create "Folkspraak" a fusion of all Germanic languages.
My mother tongue, Tamil, went through a movement back in the day to remove foreign words and revert to existing native words. Personally, I think that the language sounds better and more accessible. The removal of many Sanskrit words made the language more coherent with its own grammatical laws and sound more natural. I feel that Anglish would also do the same. Great video as always!!
I will say that with Tamil from the research I have done, it seems like Sanskrit was never a huge part of the language, and remained limited for the most part. I don't think the same can be said with English anymore. Too much French and Latin has gotten into the language for that to ever change. Anglish just isn't understandable in numerous instances for the most part. I could see the long term benefit if the change did actually occur successfully, espcially in terms of spelling, but practially the change seems unlkeily because English is very widely spread. I am sure you didn''t need me to tell you all this, but just figured I'd say my piece.
@@lordofdarkness4204 I agree, inventing or reviving long dead words just for the sake of not having a foreign word goes a little far, yet where there is an established germanic word - why not use it more often?
In Tamil's case the removal of Sanskrit derived words may play a part in balancing the predominance of Hindi in India. There is an attempt to make India a Hindi speaking nation despite that language being a Northern regional language and the native language of a minority. Indonesia wisely avoided imposing Javanese, the language of the largest group and instead successfully adapted the Malay based lingua franca into a national language.
it's just power politics. there are never good linguistic reasons for it. everyone from the french revolutionaries to followers of the moustache man to the newly independent post-Soviet states tried to reform language to make it conform to some random standard of purity.
This is also what happened a century ago when Ataturk's purists transformed Ottoman Turkish into modern Turkish. And even earlier, Aasen created the Nynorsk language by applying those same purgatory principles.
Trying to totally undo “foreign influence” is kind of silly, but I do think as an exercise it is great because there is a grit to Germanic phrases in English. So if you are writing a speech or article, I think it makes sense to go through and find the Germanic alternate, it is often much more compelling if it isn’t ridiculously out of place.
One thing that annoys me about the *way* some people use non-Anglish words in English is that words may be chosen not for their ability to convey meaning, but for their inaccessibility. If you want to sound smarter, more academic, than others, -come on RU-vid and start correcting people's grammar- add a lot of Latin or French words to your rhetoric that you know some part of your audience won't recognize.
@@julianbrelsford Yes, Latinized diction in English is often associated with Academese. You can tell when someone is going out of their way to be overly technical and Latinized. I did not go onto RU-vid to relive graduate seminars.
Well looking at the Anglish words as a German I can say that many are really near to the words in German we can use for stuff today, like: farclanger: Fernsprecher, farseer: Fernseher. Of course we have got also telephone and television, but also the two native words. Also the word for peace, so "frith", this is really Frieden in German. "athel" is pretty near to Adel in German, which just means in general nobilityI guess the list can go on for a long time!
Mutual intelligibility is to be expected since the Saxons (Sachsen) are a Germanic people. Same with the Angeln and Danes. And there's still some degree of mutual intelligibility between the Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons since all of the languages from that part of the world are ultimately derived from PIE.
It's not near, it's exactly the same if you consider this: The origin of the sound is Proto-Germanic. Through Grimm's law, the Proto-Indo-European “t” sound was converted into a voiceless dental fricative. In other Germanic languages, the sound was lost and replaced by T or D.
@@sharontalbot8037 Quite true :) However, the many words from French/Latin allow more detail with few words per term: e.g. pig + pork -- in German Schwein + Schweinefleisch (pig meat)...
As an English learner, even from a Germanic language, I highly appreciate the diversity of origins that English words come from. It has made it easier for me to express myself back in the day, and many of the words I had an easier time thinking of were actually from Latin rather than from the Germanic root of my own native tongue. This did make me sound kind of arrogant, perhaps, because many of the words that were easy for me to use were quite complicated and academic. But it was better than not being able to converse efficiently at all.
something similar happens to me, where i just say latin based words because they come more naturally and my english native friends tell me i use fancy words
I feel you there, I tend to overcomplicate sentences and use "grand" vocabulary cause that's what I picked up on the most, taking lessons in Latin, Spanish and French in roughly the same time
As a both a Norwegian and someone who's learning German, both germanic languages, it's neat to see that the new Anglish words used literally tranlates the exact same way to these languages Like obviously these languages also borrow, but even a lot of the borrowed words have native alternatives. For television for example, us Norwegains usually just use the abbreviation of "TV", however the proper Norwegian word is "Fjernsyn", which in German is "Fernsehen", both literally meaning "Far sight" or "Far seeing"
@@sion8 Yes! We so delight in mishmashing the two. And thus, in its way, Anglish wins in the end. By taking those greek and latin roots and making them our own. And things like splitting infinitives, which we persist in to this day, despite generations of grammarians trying to enforce the rules of a dead language upon their very own, very alive language.
As an American who learned the preamble from the School House Rocks video, I had to sing the original and the Anglish versions to fairly compare. I still can’t decide which I like better! Great video, as usual. Thanks!
Thanks for this video, Rob. I always learn something from your videos. This one reminded me of the documentary from 2000, The Adventure of English, where they discussed the Inkhorn Controversy, and in detail how the language changed over the centuries. In every episode of the series the host gave examples of new words introduced into the language from extremely far and wide. Because of watching that series I tried reading an interlinear translation of Beowulf, and slowly started picking up on how the grammar and vocabulary changed between back then and today. I agree that the old words 'hit harder,' which can be important in certain contexts. The introduction of French in 1066 and beyond affected the grammar of Old English dramatically-- it's why we have the type of sentence structure we use nowadays.
As a German I can finally see why English is considered to be a Germanic language. Without words originating from French, Greek or Latin I could understand, read and speak Anglish with little practice, for it literally sounds like a slightly different sounding German. Not always of course; we do have our own affair with Latin and Greek... Greetings to all Anglo-Saxons from Lower Saxony
German Latinate words is surprisingly small when compared to English wish has 2/3 of its language composed from Latin words either from directly from Latin itself or Norman French plus words coming from Spanish. I was actually surprised to how little Latin words are in the German language because even if Germania was never conquered by Rome they had trade with it and later the Church was there.
@@Epsilonsama Your of course right about the level of Latinate words in especially the colloquial language, which is considerably low. However, the formal, education and sophisticated German is filled with Greek and Latin. An other very popular trend is "Denglish" or more formaly anglicisms, meaning German with (a lot of) English words or words derived from English (very common among the Youth, in universities, in Business and some what in politics). In the end this is just importing Latin and Greek indirectly.
It’s a very interesting topic and a good “intellectual fun”; as long as one doesn’t become too insurgent with it. Linguistic purism can be (and has been) accompanied by other, much less innocent forms of “cleansing”.
As an American, I was genuinely confused why English was considered Germanic a while back.There is an insane amount of French and Latin word roots. Would make my learning German a lot easier in some ways leaning Anglish, though that's got mixes of its own. (Norse,bretonic, vulgar latin, german, frisian, Gaelic, etc.)
Similarly, a lot of Chinese people hold the misbelief that Japanese and Korean are dialects of Chinese. Japanese and Korean both have 60%+ Chinese loanwords, but the basic words and words used most often in conversation are mostly native.
@@jonpetter8921 French mostly has Frankish - or Old Dutch - influence. There's an entire list on Wikipedia. It's pretty much what defines the langues d'oïl; the more to the north you'd go, the more Germanic influences you'd find (e.g. Walloon has even more Germanic influence than French does). Frankish and Old Dutch are practically the same language. Some High German dialects (e.g. Central Franconian) also derive from Frankish (equally), though have changed more drastically due to the High German consonant shift (as well as language standardization with other High German dialects, which are more non-Frankish e.g. have Irmionic origins). Do note that Dutch also has "some" Ingveonic/Saxon/Frisian influence, mostly due to the presence of Ingveonic languages in coastal regions and the coastal regions being culturally dominant in the Midde Ages (and thus their dialects having a greater linguistic influences - though even those dialects are mostly of Istvaeonic/Frankish origin). The High German consonant shift is a pretty big deal. Low German/Saxon (Ingveonic) and Dutch are both more similar to one another than to High German as a result of that.
Current English is lost and Creole, Neo-Latin, only the vocabulary is Germanic and that's very little already. If the Anglophone wants Germanic languages in fact speak Anglo Saxon and Old Norse. Forget the current English that he is very Greek and Neo-Latin and French at the base of everything. Even Anglish has French influences never deceive yourself.
I've nerded out on Old English for a while and I honestly do think "ask-think" is over thought. "An asking" seems to suffice and make slightly more sense linguistically in a literary sense. I totally understand why we use Latin and Latinic based words, it makes the Germanic elements sound less offensive.
This explains the fun that can ensue when a Frenchman and a German, both of whom are beginners in learning English and do not speak the other's language, try to communicate in English! Where there is a choice of word (and this is often the case), the word that comes to mind first is the closest to their own language and they are not able to help each other out.
Being a native English speaker is a gift because you don't just have an advantage starting off learning other Germanic languages, you also have a (smaller?) head start on the Latin ones. In my opinion.
@@shaddaboop7998 I think German.speakers have a better head starts than the English speakers have to speak French... Because German and French have a large range of common sounds and because French vocabulary is quite present in German (interessant, egal, etc.). In the other direction, ie from French to German, learning is less obvious because French has no German vocabulary in its lexicon (except a handful of rarely used words). Also culturally the Germans are closer (attracted) to the French than the French are to Germans.
What I like most about Anglish is , when I think in English it sounds strange yet comprehensible, but when I think in Afrikaans (descended from Dutch) it makes a lot more sense. Love it!
At the opposite extreme, check out the wonderful poem "Dolor" by Theodore Roethke. Every line is filled with multisyllabic Latinate words. That too can be beautiful and heartfelt in its own way.
English has become somewhat of a world standard. I think part (underline part) of that is because it incorporates the words of other languages so freely. I doubt Anglish would have been accepted so easily.
And yet, I understood most everything so it's very intuitive. One interesting observation is that my mother tongue, the Hungarian language is often a literal interpretation of something where the derivatives of more complex words or concepts are just amalgamations of two or more other concepts, nouns or descriptors. Quick example is 'testvér' which means sibling but the word taken literally means 'body-blood'. So it, too in some ways is hard-hitting or primal in its communicativity...if that's a word, and if not, it is my gift to you. ; )
I speak English almost as a native language as I've been learning it from a very young age in tandem. And I do think the English words seem to "hit harder". it's quite the fun exercise to write only in Anglish just after watching your video. On the other side of the world, Japanese, Korea, and Vietnamese had all wanted to get rid of their Chinese loan words and none of them prevailed. The truth is, human civilization have always mingle and borrowed from one another, whenever one feels the other is superior or yields a better fit. I don't see how we would ever go backwards.
Japanese had partial success. I don't know about the Vietnamese. One who was really successful was Romanian. Spanish as well, but that one happened 1000 years ago. The moment Iberia was free from Arabic oppression, the people started shedding the plethora of Arabic loanwords all on their own. Now, only like 1-5% of the dictionaries in Iberian languages are from Arabic, sometimes less. If Hitler had risen in France, English would've shed away most of their loanwords pretty quickly themselves.
@@crusaderACR While it's fun to write and speak Anglish, I still prefer the modern English where there's a lot of loan words from Latin and French. I find it super helpful when I was learning Spanish and Portuguese. I don't know much about Romanian, I thought they had a lot of Slavic loan words. Moreover, Japanese has a LOT of loan words from Chinese and I don't think they can function without these vocabularies. Additionally, modern Chinese has hundreds of compound words that they adopted from the Japanese as well because they didn't have modern concepts back then. Like the words for police, government, politics, economy, philosophy, etc.
I like Anglish! As a Swede, I find it mostly very easy to understand. Take "frith", for example. It is clearly the same word as the Swedish "frid" or "fred". Understanding the meaning of "Queen Elizabeth the Other" wasn't hard, but I was stumped at the word "Atheling", until I realized that it is the same word as the rather old-fashioned Swedish word "ädling", nobleman. Anyway, the Danes that conquered much of English back in the tenth century - and of course you should say "hundredyear" instead of "century", like we in Sweden say "århundrade" - Well, back to my point: When the Danes conquered much of England, they could supposedly speak to the English - or Anglo-Saxon? - people living there and make themselves understood, because the English and Danish (and Swedish) languages were so very similar back then. This was before the time of William the Conqueror, after all, and the first huge influx of French into the English language. Ah, Anglish! ❤
Actually, they borrowed loads of Scandinavian words into English during the Viking-era. For example clay, cloud, slaughter, loan, husband, window, Thursday, call, crawl, get, give, well the list goes on! As a fellow Swede I choose to feel privileged that they don’t count all our ancestors’ contributions to the English language as foreign words 😁.
In this video, they didn't really address how Norman French also changed the pronunciation of Old-English (Anglish) words as well. If pronounced in a pre-Norman accent, they would likely be even closer to other North Sea languages! In my part of Canada, we were heavily settled by Gaelic and Irish-Scots settlers and the Gaelic/Brythonic influences are still here. Sometimes other English speakers have difficulty understanding us because of the accent shift, and the use of Brythonnic words like 'Ceillidh' for party, 'glen' for valley, or 'shindig' for dance, or 'loch/lochan' for a pond. Some tourists even get a culture shock when they hear old folks speaking straight up Gaelic or Scots and they think its French (because there are a lot of French speakers here as well) lol. Language mixing is fun.
@@Kaarver Well they weren't that different to begin with. slaughter already existed as Slahten probably, loan well and give all existed the same but pronounced differently (give was pronounced as yeven spelt as giefen for example), call existed as "clepe/callepe" as for window and husband these are compound words, meaning you sorta gotta get them together to make sense but if you break them down the Saxons would have no problem understanding them Wind - Og (older spelling) (Wind-Eye) Hus - band (House-bond) so yeah they are still the same language by those standards.
@@unsrescyldas9745 window in norwegian (or atleast in new-norwegian, is vindauge.. or vind auge if you don't want to compound them :) ) husband would translte to "the man of the farm" :) (husbonde)
As someone that has studied historical linguistics in university, "Anglish" is not how English would be like without the French, Latin and Greek influences. This languages didn't only influence English in borrowed words, but also they changed how the grammar, spelling and reading of the language changed throughout the years. Real Anglish would sound unintelligible to an English speaker of today. For a proof of that, just look at the English spoken by the people in England in the 10th and 11th century (aka Old English) and compare it to something like the Canterbury Tales. Even though there is a lot different and it is a bit harder to understand something like the Canterbury Tales if you're not used to it, you can read it OK, but try to read something in Old English and you'll probably not even recognise it as English at first look, and you'll probably not be able to read at nearly at all (maybe you will understand a few words here and there, but enough for the text to make any sense without a translation)
Who knows which way english would have evolved without french influence on the language, so I dont think it would at all sound like one thousand years ago english sounded like, when it would evolve in its own directions without french influence on the english language.
@@Scarlett.Granger Modern German is high german. English is like dutch a low german language. Western Germany was speaking low germany a few hundred years ago. But when germany became one country all people were forced to learn and speak high german (Because most germans like the saxons, the prussians and bavarians spoke high german)
As a determined Polyglot, I enjoy learning NEW languages. Anglish would be a fun exercise. Of course you realize that if Anglish were our official language it would make learning other languages all the more difficult, which might be a isolationist goal hahaha. Thank you for this excursion into island living....All the Best from Jim Oaxaca Mexico (good luck anglicizing that hahaha) To answer your question more is always better, it's like imagining that converting everything in math to base 8 would simplify things
I’m learning Norwegian, and it’amazing how if you translate it litterally into English, it matches Anglish, or Old English for that matter. Not the first time I’m noticing it all the similarities, I would love to see a video about the scandinavic influences on the English language, and the other way around too ! You would probably have a lot of fun with that ☺️ awesome video !
True - and the same thing applies to Danish, which just looks like slightly misspelled Norwegian - and vice versa - most of the time ( 95 % or so ) with a very similar grammatical structure, but a slightly different pronounciation - and with Swedish as well, which is very similar (c. 85 %) to the other two Scandinavian languages, just spelled and pronounced somewhat differently to some degree. The many deep similarities between the basic vocabularies and several of the grammatical features of English and the three Scandinavian languages still make English a surprisingly "easy" language for Scandinavians to learn - as if we by magic already "know" half of a simplistic older core English in advance and then "just" need to fill in the gaps 😊
Anglish is a lot more similar to German ,that's interesting. Also interesting for me is that "athel" means noble and in Germany we have the "Adel", a term used for the noble families of which some ruled over the various states of Germany (and other parts of the world like England for example). It's also wonderful to see that English has "Frid" as a word for peace and German today still uses "Frieden"
Was ich mich frage ob es sowas wie anglish auch für deutsch gibt? Ich weiß gab mal eine Zeit da ersetze man wörter. z.b. hieß die nase gesichtserker. usw. Fenster was ja von lateinisch fenestre entleht ist. hieß da auch anders.
@@OmegamonUI Anglish ist ja keine wirkliche Sprache, sondern der Versuch, Fremdwörter so gut es geht aus der englischen Sprache zu entfernen. Das gab es bei uns auch und manche Wörter benutzen wir immer noch: Weltall statt Universum zum Beispiel. Man müsste allerdings ähnlich wie beim Englischen früh in der Zeit zurück, um solche Worte eventuell zu entdecken. Fremdwörter sind denke ich sowieso unvermeidlich. Man nehme nur mal das Wörtchen "egal"; das kommt aus dem französischen und heißt gleich. Allerdings hat es sich so eingebürgert, dass da kaum einer drüber nachdenkt. Oder "malträtieren" kommt von franz. Mal trait-> schlecht behandeln, was sich wiederum bei den Engländern in form von "treat" findet.
@@andreasmetzger7619 Das stimmt auch wieder. daher finde ich isländisch so faszinierend. weil diese Sprache sich seit knapp 1000 jahren kaum verändert hat. und heutige schüler die eddas vertsehen und weil es dort nicht so viele fremdwörter gibt.
Some years ago I did (what I thought was) an original exercise just for fun: translate the Nicene Creed (Credo) from Latin into English, but taking care to use only English words in my translation that were already present in the language before 1066. I didn't know about the existence of "Anglish" at the time, but what I did was very similar to this. What fun! Thanks Rob for a lovely video.
somewhere on the net i ran into The Godly Folkworship of Holy John Goldenmouth the High Shepherd of Micklegarth. twas years ago, and i haven't found it since, more's the sadness.
I feel like Anglish sounds so silly at times because English has lost not only vocabulary over the centuries, but also structure and noun genders. Had Anglish tried to re-introduce these it might sound much more germanic, yet this might chase away any interest from native english-speakers, since the lanuage would become harder. Awesome video! Nicely complements Langfocus' video!
I certainly don't want noun genders back. For all english's weirdness, almost completely ditching gramatical gender is about the one thing we've done right.
I was honestly sad when you started closing out the video. The way you explain these things really connects with my innate curiosity about etymology and I found your channel not long after I started learning Spanish. Now, I've taken on Latin, German, and Romanian to get more of that rush I feel when I recognize another pattern. Thank you so much for your effort to share your passion with us!
I think it's useful to have multiple loanwords that mean basically the same thing as a native word, because from there people can fine tune distinctions to add layers of nuance, connotation, context, and register (formal, casual, scientific, etc.). Foreign-origin words also provide adjectives: for example, _heart_ (noun, native origin) versus _cardiac_ (adjective, Greek → Latin → French). None of {heart-like, heart-shaped, hearty} meant exactly the same thing as _cardiac_ ("pertaining to the heart"). You could let the noun double as an adjective, but maybe it is better to have another word (cardiac).
"I think it's useful to have multiple loanwords that mean basically the same thing as a native word" I think its stupid and harmful. "because from there people can fine tune distinctions to add layers of nuance, connotation, context, and register" Or you could just use conjugation of native words. Instead of having half of your prefixes effectively mean 'no'. "(formal, casual, scientific, etc.)" Utterly unecessery. "Foreign-origin words also provide adjectives: for example, heart (noun, native origin) versus cardiac" No! Use your own damn words. Heart, heart failiur - makes much more sense and is much easyer to understand. "but maybe it is better to have another word (cardiac)." It isnt, its absolutely stupid and unecceserry. My language has no such word and my language is much more expressive (no my english skills are not lesser, I infact write english more often than my native tongue).
Having emigrated to a country whose language doesn't have this noun/adjective dual origin - particularly in medical terminology - I find it refreshing that these things don't need explanation. Thus, 'heart' and 'cardiac' unmistakably refer to the same thing... etc.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 I can see both sides of the argument. I imagine every person learning English as a foreign language must despair at times due to the to the number of synonyms we have; yet as a native speaker I appreciate the richness and precision those synonyms give that language. I'll also note that having technical language that is more or less the same in different languages can be useful. It makes communication between specialists with different native languages much easier.
Counterpoint: as the constitution was basically the followup to "We don't want to be a part of England anymore," I think it makes a lot of sense that we might have wanted to minimize the amount of words with Anglo-Saxon origin. That said, thanks for introducing me to this! Anglish fits right into my interest in conlangs and other fun linguistic experiments. If you're also interested in linguistics and conlangs, you should check out Toki Pona, a fully functional language with only 130ish words.
On top of that, our country did successfully break away from Angleland with the help of mainly the French, but also the Spanish. This definitely adds to the disregard for the Michigan sized island, that we would use latinized words.
but the constitution is a reassertion of the proper values of an English folk. it's like the Americans are telling the English that they're twice as English as the English will ever be, so Anglish is appropriate :D.
The Dutch word for ‘other’ is ‘ander’. In one phrase ‘ander’ is still used in the sense of ‘second’. In auctions the autioneer will say: ‘eenmaal, andermaal, verkocht!’ Literally: ‘one time, second time, sold!’. In ‘atheling’ Dutch speakers will recognise their word for nobelman: ‘edele’ (less known: ‘edeling’) and German speakers their word ‘Adliger’. And in ‘frith’ Dutch speakers will recognise ‘vrede’ and German speakers ‘Frieden’. This word is also found in the first name ‘Frederick’, Dutch ‘Frederik’, German ‘Friedrich’. The word ‘foroned’ seems to be al literal translation of the Dutch ‘verenigd’ and even more the German ‘vereint’. (One = 'een' (Dutch), 'ein' (German).
Compare our language to the more pure German (Deutsch haha) and ridding Dutch of all the French, English, Malay, Yiddish, Latin loanwords would be a fun exercise too.
This is really interesting as a thought experiment and a way to play with language, but the practice seems like a breeding ground for nationalism, racialism, and racism. Even the phrasing of borrowed words as "foreign" suggests that they don't belong which, as Rob has shown, they clearly do. To reject these "foreign" words (outside of playing with language) suggests that there is some Anglo-Saxon purity that should be pursued.
Agree this video as a little uncomfortable for me. Also, it was weird of Churchill to use exclusively Germanic words in a speech against... the Germans.
@@steveb9542 Germans are just a subgroup of Germanic peoples and so are the English, Dutch, Icelanders and so on. Unfortunately in English both terms are similar which clearly causes some confusion, and some people even think that English is derived from German, when in fact, they just have the same, Proto-Germanic ancestor.
Yeah, I got very much the same vibe. It reminds me of when a few years ago, my family took a trip to L'Anse Aux Meadows in Newfoundland - the settlement of Vikings from the 10th century or so. So many trumpy confederate flag wavers that the whole trip was very much sullied by the experience. This strikes me as the linguistic equivalent, and if it's not today (I'm not diving deeper to try and find out thank you very much) it's like honey to a bear and will very quickly become so.
American here. The anglish version of the preamble is actually really beautiful. I like it a lot. It sounds so poetic, yet it’s even easier to comprehend. Much more straightforward, oddly enough
@@dinonuggiesguy4847 I'm not a Vinlander myself, but I would much prefer to be one than to be from the 'foroned riches' lol. There has to be a better way to write that in Anglish!
It reminds me when in late 80s or early 90s, when a computer mouse periphery was becoming more and more common in Poland, some folk were thinking how to translate the word "click" (and "doubleclick" as well). Fortunately they settled on just taking pronunciation of "click" and just write it in phonetic Polish (klik), because another popular idea was to use a pre-existing translation of the word "click" that was used in the study of lingustics and phonetics, the click consonant as in e.g. Xhosa. That translation was "mlask" and it's extremely "moist", onomatopoeic word that is used outside of phonetics only to describe "unpleasant, disgusting open-mouth chewing sound". And of course you had the double-click: "dwu-mlask" which is just vomit-inducing xD
As a native french speaker that explains why I tend to sound wordy in English (a lot of it pure snobbery on my part u.u but I guess I'm more drawn to words that sound more familiar to me🤷) learning anglish might really help me achieve that "native intuitive" vibe i'm aiming at As a dutch learner it felt somehow odd to hear wordbook in this context
While the concept of Anglish make for a funny joke it also seems based in a weird kind of linguistic nationalism were “English” words are seen better than loan words. When the thing that makes English so interesting as a language is the fact that it’s basically four (3-5 depending on what you want to count) languages in a trench coat.
Oh my goodness. The section about Queen Elizabeth the Other has totally struck a chord with me. Throughout my readings of ME texts, particularly early 13thC to early 14thC liturgical MS such as 'Ayenbite of Inwyt' and 'Ancrene Riwle', the authors are hell-bent (no pun intended) on making lists and categorizing all sorts of things. From lists of virtues, lists of sins, to mundane lists of how to eat or meditate, etc. There are clades and clades of taxonomies. But in none of them do they ever say 'second'. It's always, First, Next (or other), Third, Fourth, and so on. Now it all makes sense.
A little problem: without the urge of communication between Anglo-Saxon folks and medieval-French speaking aristocrats, the original highly-flexive grammar of Old English wouldn't have been stripped down so much. Therefore, Anglish would also retain a greater grammar complexity, it isn't just a matter of vocabulary (by the way: the word "street" was already in use in Old English, but was a Latin loan 😁)
I think the Vikings had already stripped English grammar down plenty by 1066. Scribes just kept writing with the Old English grammar because it had the snob appeal of implied purity. This has been deduced from the fact that English wasn’t written down much for about, what? The next 250 years or so? When people did start writing in English regularly again, the changes from old English were too profound to have taken place in such a short time span.
I have my 8th grade US History students memorizing and translating the Preamble into their modern language right now. You did a terrific job with the Anglish version, and I like it just as much as the original.
The Gettysburg address (actually one of the minor speeches at the opening of the cemetery and much criticised at the time for its simplicity) is another example of clarity and power from use of Anglo-Saxon derived words. I encourage my (law graduate) students of the skill of advocacy to use this style and also to write that way in legal writing.
You should be encouraging older language though. Young people have it rough with their outlandish pictographs and so forth. One might argue that to encourage lesser thinking in terms of slang and corrupt short-form would lead to the retardation of the mind in many a student.
I like anglish because it often gives you a better grasp of what you are actually saying without a background in romance roots. Though Idk if Id go so extreme as to always go to pre norman sources and instead track how things probably would have shifted over the next thousand years as well given more modern preferences of german routes and looking at other germanic languages. For example, wouldnt the equivalent of prince be first? like how principle means first and the german word for prince is first I think as well.
Exactly right. It's a bit ridiculous that someone learning English has to also have a background in French, Latin, and Greek in order to understand the language at a decent level.
As a Canadian, I am exposed to "foreign" words more often and earlier than someone from "Angleland". French, Afrikaans, Ojibwa, and Chinese words were in my vocabulary before starting school. I believe that the adding of non-Saxon words has made English a more colourful and adaptable language. The result of that has made English the most popular choice for a second language, in the world.
As a non-native English speaker - I won't call English the most popular second language, because it is hardly a choice if you want to communicate freely with almost anybody and English has been in this point for centuries probably due to colonial conquest rather than being chose for being flexible and easy to use. English word pronunciation is a chaotic mess compared to most non-phonetically spelled languages. By phonetically I mean that alphabet of the language allowes for 1:1 letter sound match - 1 letter, 1 sound. English has 44 sounds and 26 letters, so that is impossible.
I think it depends. In the UK we have plenty of non native English speakers. We have a large amount of peoples from Europe (we had one of the largest Polish populations outside of Poland for a while before Brexit), Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh), Chinese, African, Turkish, and Arabic. We also have Welsh, Scottish Gaelic (programs in both streamable on the BBC iPlayer app now) and as a child I regularly heard people speaking in non English languages. I think in a modern world this is just “normal”.
@@marko19914 English has really only been in this position since the end of the Second World War, when the USA emerged as the only major nation not to have had its economy (let alone infrastructure) devastated by the war. Before that, French was the prestige international language, although English and Spanish had been creeping up on it for about 150 years.
English has become the most popular choice for a second language for the same reason Latin once was: colonisation and empire. It's the language of business enforced by the war machines of Western capitalism. It's people's "choice" for that reason, not because it's "colourful and adaptable". Honestly, where did you buy those rose-coloured glasses?
@@SuperDoNotWant Yes. This is what I was imply without saying outright--much like how the American empire is largely a covert rather than an overt one.
The meaning of "other" for "second" is still used in Scandinavian languages today. In Danish, for example, other = "andre" and second = "anden/andet". In Swedish, both is "andra".