ANGLISH: English without the 'foreign' bits
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- Опубліковано 15 тра 2024
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What would English have been like if William the Conqueror had been William the Conquered? How would we be speaking if our language had never come under the influence of French, Latin or Greek? The answer is: Anglish.
In this video:
🏴 Learn to speak Anglish
🗣 See how great speakers (e.g. Churchill) make use of Anglo-Saxon words
📕 Hear about historic attempts to rid English of borrowed vocab
🇺🇸 Watch me REWRITE THE US CONSTITUTION!
==LINKS==
Paul Jennings' Anglish articles: anglish.fandom.com/wiki/1066_...
The Anglish Times: theanglishtimes.com/
Anglish reddit: / anglish
Loads more about Anglish: anglish.org/
Check me out on Twitter & TikTok:
/ robwordsyt
/ robwords
==CHAPTERS==
0:00 Introduction
1:00 What is Anglish?
2:55 "To be or not to be" in Anglish
4:03 The Anglish Times 1
5:03 Winston Churchill's Anglo-Saxon
6:25 NordVPN
8:22 How to write in Anglish (Anglish Times 2)
11:42 Inkhorn Controversy
15:02 Rewriting the US Constitution
16:03 Anglish Constitution
Is English better for the all the import words? I personally think yes (the more words the merrier!). Let me know your opinion.
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"Ask-thing" is so clumsy. Why not "That is the asking"?
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
A bit surprised you didn't mention Icelandic at all, given how hard they've worked on not "importing" new words.
@@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."
That’s what every language does when it borrows
Love it ❤️👍+1.
Well, it pretty much suits perfectly the British history and manners towards pretty every single foreing thing lol
It also takes their artifacts, dead ancestors and gold with them.
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…
For a scandinavian person, Anglish is very logical and easy to understand.
Same goes for me as a German
I learned swedish while I lived over there. Yes I can agree.
I was thinking that too. My Chinese friends learning English would find Anglish easier to learn.
Same for the Dutch, it's really intuitive
Italian and this was slightly harder than to understand
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.
In fact the word ''outrage'' exists in french, but the meaning is slightly different, it means roughly an offense
Anglo-Saxon isn’t native either, and Latin was here before that, then did an encore later.
Ye
And if you really want native British speak... Welsh and Cornish are the closest to it now.
And btw the suffix "-eous" is probably of french or latin origin
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.
This is exactly what I was thinking throughout the video as a Faroese speaker!
..and I as German speaker 😉
@@speedy6323 Dachte ich mir auch. 😉
I noticed the same thing.
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
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.
@@gislimasson8528 Is this where Tweedledee and Tweedledum came from?
"the second" and "the other" are the same in very many languages
@@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".
05:48 "...except for one...'surrender'...which comes from French" 🤣 that made my day 🤣
I think "yield" instead of "surrender" would be fitting.
That was intentional
@@magmalinI think it would be right to say that Churchill implied “We shall never (do as the French do and) surrender”
I feel like without all the anglo words, the "surrender" wouldn't have hit as hard as it did in the speech.
@@magmalin That is brilliant, I think yield is almost as hard-hitting as surrender!
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).
What would you call a pocket computer (my mobile is not actually a phone because it has no SIM)?
@@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.
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.
100%! A speaker can totally change the nuance of what they're saying by making language choices like this.
Hehe that’s a really cool observation.
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.
ok, now say that again with only Germanic words.
@@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 Dutch speaker, Anglish sounds very natural. We also literally say 'wordsbook' (woordenboek) instead of dictionary.
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.
@@Liggliluff wordsbook and sayingbook would mean the same thing
We're not that pure of a Germanic language though.
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.
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.
You are a real hero!
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.
That's impressive 👍 well done sir
One nice thing about translating works into Anglish is that it forces people to think about what the words in a familiar text MEAN. if you read in a second language, it's interesting to read works translated from one language you know to another, as things other than the specific words definitely change.
I love how Anglish makes things simultaneously harder and easier to read
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.
@Noah Rice For me as a German, Anglish was easier to understand than English.
To be honest, it kinda reminds me of Orwellian newspeak haha
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.
@@claeslillieskold2398 more like nordglish... as it is easier to understand for an Icelandic person too.
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."
I've studied a bit of Old English, I always feel like I'm speaking Icelandic accented Dutch or something.
@@claeslillieskold2398 I was also thinking about Swenglish when I saw those texts, for instance ”fast” not meaning quick.
@@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.
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.
Twa bonnie quines fae Stromness, bided in a hoose wi a moose, the moose flyt awa, nae queerly to say and the quines dreamt braw that nicht
@@antiwestminster Two bunny rabbits lived in a house with a mouse the mouse ran away and needless to say the bunny rabbits slept soundly that night?
@@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
@@miregal6969 Ahhhhh, that makes more sense, the "quines" was throwing me off 😂
In Afrikaans which is a Dutch descent language, we say. (Twee en Twintig) Which literally means Two and Twenty in a direct translation.
Another topic is that not only is English verry different from other Germanic languages, but French is also the odd language among the latin langueges.
It's a topic, but not for this channel, which focuses on English.
@@allendracabal0819The point is that because of the French influences, English is even weirder
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 That's just adding complexity for the sole reason of wasting time layering away the complexity.
@@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
@@landkonnudur I love complexity and I'm sure there are others who agree. Languages are bound to be complex as they become more advanced
"Surrender" coming from "french" had me laughing on the floor
--you guys don't know how to take jokes--
yeah me too
Omg
Same haha 🇫🇷🏳️🇫🇷🏳️🇫🇷
Napoleon might say otherwise
The word “victory” also comes via French :)
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.
In Afrikaans we say Wiskunde too
03:34 In German "Klang" is the noun and “klingen” is the verb.
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: ua-cam.com/video/aMA3M6b9iEY/v-deo.html&lc=UgwkvXYgHCmJyIY6EYV4AaABAg
This is why english is technically a Germanic language!!
That's one thing I noticed. Old English sounds a bit like German.
The Angles moved to England from Germany, Technically English people are half German.
German is literally the mother tongue of English
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.
I felt the same when I learned German after English. Learning German felt like I really learned a language
Teach( learning) Ænglish ( English) so that you can communicate with people who speak it.
@@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.
"anglicizing" Spanish
I can confirm that Old English derived words hit me harder in a primeval way than romance language derived words.
Lol.
I disagree generally, and there are plenty of counter examples that can be cited, but they do have a way of working in a cadence with each other that can be powerful in speech.
Listening to Old English from videos of Beowulf and other old literature from the era made me realise how beautiful a language it was.
Well primeval comes from Latin based languages. As do does POWER and loads of other words you learn early. Trying to imply certain words are more powerful based on who spoke them 100s of years ago is just going to be used for racism.
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.
IKR im surprised not a lot of people mentioned this in the comments
that's wicked 😂
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.
@TheKripox you must be a hoot at parties and people must just adore you ruining every joke...
Subtle ,tendency ,in fact, brutal. Street.
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.
@@erikthehalfabee6234 Jejejeje
"El giro español" XD
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.
@@CarMedicine “español” es de origen francés, sería “giro hispano”
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.
@@hildebrandgotenland4823 That sounds interesting. Make English German Again 😂
@@hildebrandgotenland4823
I look forward to hearing it
As a portuguese speaker, i adore english how it is now. I mean, i still despise this language but at least it is easier to learn
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.
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
Use the Macht, Luke.
Hate to say it but I agree. The French win this time.
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.
@@PaulvonOberstein nah those French and Latin words make the language look grim
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 😅
This comment needs at least a thousand likes.
english
@@kargaroc386 anime?
@@SuperSMT waifu my friend
@@kargaroc386there’s a rotting corpse outside my house
12:29 'this abomination' thats why germanic english hits harder. we all know most of the foreign words are tied to academics. we have no emotion tied to those words. we all learn all our emotions and thoughts in germanic first, and that bond of self and language only happens once for most people.
basically its because kids say theyre happy, not elated or ecstatic
There is something I found interesting between English and Spanish speakers. For some reason, French and Latin are still enjoying high prestige for English speakers, whereas, in my country (Ecuador) the English is the prestige language. People here are replacing words of Latin origin for those of English origin (for example: "taller" for workshop or "conjunto/indumentaria" for outfit).
That's why when I found myself with Anglish for the first time I could see how wonderful it was and I thought that Spanish speakers could do the same in order to connect much more to our Latin origin.
As someone who also speaks Dutch, German and Norwegian, Anglish feels familiar despite its differing to English. Many Anglish words feel like translations of other Germanic language words. I think for native speakers of Germanic languages, Anglish would be incredibly easy to learn, easier than English.
Now that we know English, it is not more easy. "Anglish" gives me headache. And you have to consider: the other germanic languages use foreign words, too. Replace a non-germanic word in English by a "germanic" one and you have one that german or danish or whatsoever do not use since they have imported a latin one, too.
@@kellymcbright5456 that’s true, but for someone who didn’t know English yet, but speaks a Germanic language, I feel it’d be incredibly easy to learn. Yes, other Germanic languages also have loan words, but I know that in Dutch for instance, a lot of those loanwords have Germanic synonyms. What really leads me to consider Anglish easy to learn though, is the amount of direct translations it has to other Germanic languages. To take an example from the video; Foroned = Verenigde / Vereinigte.
@@sanderbenning1182 Maybe, if i was 10 years old and had to start once again with it. Lots of thing appear different then.
Anglish will never catch on.
@@franksellers7858 Is that a challenge you're presenting?
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😂
As a Portuguese native speaker and as someone who is learning English (at a beginner level), understanding Anglish was a real struggle for me
Makes sense. Portuguese is a latin-based language like French, so you would understand the French and Latin-based words well. I speak French so I can easily see where the two languages overlap. Words like “structure” “solution” and “content” certainly are not Germanic!
@@lukek1949 Sure, I can notice it in the most of time. There are some exceptions like "arrive", which is latin-based but it is not present in portuguese . But I do not have a hard time trying to understand difficult english literature since those fancy words are very close to portuguese. The meaning of sagacious and effulgent are trivial, so to speak
@davib.franco7857 There is a portuguese cognate with "arrive", but it's not a verb, but an adverb, "arriba" (up, over there). Riba (ribanceira). Both arrive and arriba come from the latin phrase "ad ripa". they happen to mean completely different things now
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
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.
dutch: Grondwet
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.
Anglish would be easy to understand for North Germans. Interesting how English could be without romantic influence.
Strange, as an Englishman, I dislike using French influences, I prefer Germanic influences, or origins.
@@krazytroutcatcher yet
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.
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).
I thought the same bc in Italian we have Strada, which sounds like Strasse= street
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.
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.
Plus, the fact that the US would later become a "nation of immigrants" would make it very fitting to have words derived from multiple languages
@@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. 😃
I was thinking that, too. :)
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 :)
We accept your surrender.
@@indubitablymydearwatson This is a place for educated and mature adults, not immature kids. Go to your room.
@@Skanzool Careful, the self proclaimed bourgeoisie don't do well in France.
@@indubitablymydearwatson Let me guess, yankee ?
@@jonpetter8921 Guess again Petter.
Anglish in some ways reminds me of newspeak. Words like askthink and name-known evoke a similar sense of the familiar but strange
I think that language evolution is what makes us different when we speak, and is totally natural. What would be the point in speaking a dead tongue in a modern society? It is interesting to know how the influences of other lands can impact in the development of a languange, not by imposing vocabulary, but by making it far more rich.
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.
I did that for 16 years in France 🇨🇵. 👍+1
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.
@@babboon5764 Taught to me as KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID! +1
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.
I speak polish as a 2nd language, and can understand spoken czech almost perfectly.
@@JacquesRiceHow come? I'm a native Polish speaker and have problems with understanding Czech, especially spoken.
@@maciejn5920 Just listen faster,
@@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.
When being mentored for writing fiction by a Canadian author, she told us that if you want to make a bigger impact for the reader with more clarity, 'delatinize' your 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
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 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.
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.
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).
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.
@@asdfxyz_randomname2133 old english frāgian
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.
Turkish is maybe the easiest language to spell.
@@bizmyurt8582 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
Huh
As a Russian, words with Anglish make more sense with each other. It's easier to understand, no language stealth &c. Thanks for teaching this! I wonder what the word "phenomenon" means...
it's objectively superior. I enjoy and utilize the great flourishes and flexibility provided by English but Anglish is dramatically clearer.
As a fellow Russian, I might put forward that it would be "thingshow' . As it was drawn from the Greek tongue from words with akin meaning.
All culture and lan=guage is fluid. To try and hold it back is like Canute trying to defy the tide. It is the progress of history.
As someone who is fluent in American Sign Language, it is interesting to note that many of the translations of English words and phrases into ASL follows a similar pattern to many of the Anglish words and phrases. For example, "Orthodontist" can be translated in to ASL as "teeth straight maker/dentist".
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
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.
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.
As someone who speaks a Germanic language, Anglish makes so much sense and I almost don't have to think about the meaning.
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.
Balmoralburg sounds german and i like it
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.
Balmoralsbury, or Balmoralsborough sounds quite neat too!
Borough in English is like a town or neighborhood.
Barrio means neighborhood in Spanish.
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
When I saw your entire channel is about words, I ‘askthinged’ if that was a sustainable idea. You’ve managed to keep it every ‘short film’ so interesting. Well done, my friend!
I was almost a minute into the ad read before I knew i was being advertised to. Well done.
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.
Linguist here.
One of many problems with Anglish -- the notion of it -- is that the [Norman] French influence on English influenced English sounds (think Great Vowel Shift and similar changes) and syntax as well. The pronunciations of Anglish words, and the order you'd put them in when using them, are all the result of that language contact. In other words, there's no stripping English of foreign influence because it's built into every aspect of the language. You could go back to speaking Old English, I suppose, but even that language is the product of prior contacts, and you could make the case that it's actually even more closely related to French in the sense that it's closer to the common ancestor language Proto-Indo-European.
Thank you for that! It's so frustrating when people think that stripping some words from a language means you're taking out all the influence of another. It's not how it works!
To say nothing of how English has stripped a number of grammatical features from itself that are still widely present in other Indo-European languages. No one in the Anglish community is seriously considering bringing back gendered nouns, case inflections, and adjective declensions.
i’m studying linguistics right now and i love your perspective really interesting!
No shit Sherlock. You just had to come here with your know-it-all bit. It’s still interesting, and makes for a alternative.
I sincerely hope your mother grows terribly sick with dementia.
@@fshoaps That's a very specific insult. Perhaps you're coming from a place of hurt yourself. I can only wish you the best.
Oh, you need to check out a television program from Denmark called
The Great Knit Off.
I think that there are only one or two episodes with English subtitles (possibly episode 9 but don’t quote me on that).
Anyway, you really just need to see the format.
It’s Bake Off, but with knitting.
The staging and judging format is totally Bake Off.
it’s hilarious ❤
and fascinating.
Even the B roll shots are drone footage of the “location”
Budget Bake Off, but for knitting.😂
A similar phenomenon (albeit on a much larger scale) happened in Greece where the Greek equivalent of Anglish (Katharevousa) became the official form of the language
That's interesting. What was the other language for Greek? Latin, I imagine
@@feynstein1004 The one that influenced Greek? Turkish, to a large extent, due to the Turkish rule over the centuries. But they also didn't like the fact that the grammar and words had changed since antiquity and so Katharevousa was an attempt at brining back the way the ancient people spoke. It's just one of the many absolutely bonkers things the state comes up with
@@FarfettilLejl Oh right. I completely forgot about Turkey 😅Damn, I need to stop focusing only on ancient history
@@feynstein1004 Latin and Italian have had quite a lot of influence on Greek too, so you weren’t wrong :)
As a Spanish speaker, if I'd had to learn Anglish instead of English, it would've been much harder to learn. However, once you learn Anglish, other Germanic languages become way easier to learn and understand. I'm currently learning Dutch after only learning other romance languages and English. Exactly Germanic words are my struggle because they're not so easy to remember for me at the beginning. I've learned some besides those similar to English.
Hoe gaat her met jou?
cognates between english and spanish are interesting. you, as a spanish speaker, generally know the roots of each word we use from french and could understand the word without a second thought. id say most english speakers using french words generally only know about 1/3 of the roots, maybe even less. on the other hand, an english speaker could quite easily use KNOWN anglic roots in english and people would have no problem understanding the word even if they had never heard it before; the problem is when you use roots they havent heard. so basically, english speakers memorize the meaning of french words contextually without knowing what a majority of the roots, especially the rarer or more complex roots, mean. for instance, english speakers probably know the root words of "contextual" - that being con (with), text (written word), and -ual (suffix denoting an adjective derived from a noun). these are common roots, which are known to english speakers. words like these are quite uncommon, though. for instance, the word "independence". they might know that "in-" means "not", and that "-ence", means "a noun formed by an adjective", but they wouldnt know what the "pend" part of "depend" would mean. there are many roots like "pend" and very few identifiable roots. so for me i think thats why anglish just makes more sense to use.
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.
Grüße zurück!
the way i got so giddy when you showed the bayeux tapestry bc i study medieval art and it’s one of my favorite pieces!
As a Romanian, I find Anglish quite easy even though I don't speak German or Dutch. I think that's because of the fact that English is a Germanic language and the core words are mostly Germanic, even if Latin jargon words which are used in most European languages make it a bit easier.
I would like to see Romanian with 100% Romance words (currently 60-70% of the Romanian words and 80% of the core Romanian words are Romance) and with 100% Slavic words (currently 20-30% of the Romanian words are Slavic).
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.
but how do you say first, second, third.. etc. ?@@eliashornwall8546
What if there are more than two Elizabeths? Do you say "Elizabeth the Other Other"?
@@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..
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.
Decimated is of Latin origin.
@@tonycrayford3893 Yes, I know. That's the point of my comment.
I am Italian and I act in the opposite mode. When I speak english I use, mostly, latin derived words. That is the reason why I can understand easily academic volumes written in english, but it's difficoult to me to understand tabloid journals or english speaking politicians.
Maybe I do not speak English (nor Anglish!), but lingua Anglica.
I guess today the whole world speaks lingua anglica and don't known or don't wanna admits, which it's a superb from theses souls.
Back in school, they taught us that a new wave of French loan words followed US Soldiers home from France after WWI. "Souvenir" replacing "Keepsake" is the example I remember. We need language police like the French!
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)
@@DogeMcShiba Correct, "den andra", "de andra", same for plural.
I tried to learn Swedish from a certain chef popular on UA-cam. All I learned from him is how useful a "bloonderboos" in the kitchen.
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.
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.
I think it had more to do with economic and political conditions following the Second World War.
@@bigscarysteve I would date it to before WW2.
Good think-thing, Rob.
According to Wittgenstein, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."
The limits of the language I use limit my world. Means: Limits my emotional, rational, and reflective ability to see the world.
Great idea to limit one own thinking voluntarily.
Bro, he wasn't advocating a change to Anglish. He was merely introducing his audience to the concept as a means of educating them about the development of English as a language.
You are able to quote Wittgenstein, but utterly fail to see the big picture here.
Even if William the Conqueror had lost and thus the french influence hadn't been added, I think the latin and greek would still be a part of english from the time the british isles were Britannia, part of the Roman Empire
Your conclusion is right, though your reasoning is not. The Anglish movement (most people in it, anyway) doesn't actually aim to undo Latin's influence on English before the 1066 War, so that influence is still maintained. It's just that that influence would be very, very little that would still carry into today. What would really be the reason for Latin and Greek's presence today would be that they were the languages used extensively/exclusively during the Enlightenment Period.
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.
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.
@@ragnkja exactly
@@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
Currently relearning French and learning Dutch. I see some similar words in the languages. And I have noticed more the words in English as well, helps to learn both languages.
Harold wasn't killed by an arrow to the eye, he was lanced and then hacked apart
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!
Kind of thought the same thing.
For me it is the same in German.
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.
the title without foreign bits: anglish: without the outlandish bits
Dude.. This just smashed together so much understanding of words I know in German, English, Spanish, French, and Latin. Ahhh... Wow.
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.)
Funny thing is French also had some German influence the reason french is a little bit different from other latin language.
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.
I think of it like this:
english is a germanic language with romance clothing
french is a romance language with germanic clothing
@@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.
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!
Bill Bryson is funny, but he's not much of a linguist.
@@bigscarysteve He does tootle with vigour, though. ;-)
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.
Another enjoyable book about the evolution of the English language is Robert Claiborne's OUR MARVELOUS NATIVE TONGUE.
Many Swiss people (including me) agree that the dialect of Basel is the worst Swiss dialect.
Great video! Anglish makes a lot of sense to me, being from the Netherlands. Easy to follow!
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.
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”.
Yes, it’s scary how powerful it can be. Long live English in all its colourful, welcoming and non-snobbish glory.
As a Dutchman I've been fascinated by Anglish for some time now, as Anglish brings English much closer to Dutch than it is now.
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.
While not the closest language to English, that would be Scots or Frisian, it's the closest major language in vocabulary and grammar.
"Wield the might" made me realize that "Might' is cognate to 'Macht'! in German, that is exactly what is said, the Forced is referred to as 'Macht'
English will always be the black sheep of the Germanic languages due to show much it deviated, but it makes it even more fun when you compare it to its sibling languages and see how much of it still is Germanic
Excellent video. As a lad, my brothers and I challenged each other by conversing without the letter B. This video reminded me of that. It was gud. Also, in early English writing, spelling was not enforced. The same word would be spelled differently by the same author on the same page. Peepol should know about that too.
B is a piece of cake. Try doing it with E.
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 UA-cam 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 UA-cam to relive graduate seminars.
So is Academese a romance language? or does it still have too much Germanic qualities.
One of my favorite essays is "Uncleftish Beholding", written by SF author Poul Anderson in a variety of Anglish that he called "Ander-Saxon". The title means "Atomic Theory", which is what the essay is about. As an example, instead of saying that particles can have positive or negative electric charges, he says that "bits" may have "forward or backward bernstonish ladings". And he came up with new names for most of the elements: hydrogen = "waterstuff", helium = "sunstuff", etc.
Just from that comment, it sounds interesting! "Beholding" sounds very different from "theory", "bernstonish ladings" sounds different from "electric charges", and the elements sound very interesting! Thanks for introducing it to me!
For more information, for those who are curious: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding
That's an interesting comment about hydrogen = "waterstuff" because the German word for hydrogen is "Wasserstoff", which literally means waterstuff.
@@massmanute and dont forget Sauerstoff and Kohlenstoff!!
Anglish is basically the literal translation of German words into English.
So you get oxygen = "sourstuff", nitrogen = "quenchstuff", carbon = "coalstuff"
Assuming bernstonish is from bernston = amber?
UK: Guys, you know we could use words of English origin...
USA: E pLuRiBuS UnUm.