Uncleftish Beholding: English minus the non-Germanic words (1998)
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That's why, even today, a police officer might say in court, "I observed the individual in the vicinity of the canine" whereas among family the officer might be much more likely to say, "I saw the man near the dog."
The first sentence is full of French. The second, Anglo-Saxon.
It's the same reason we eat beef and pork, but raise cows and pigs. The people eating the meat were upper class and thus used the French-derived words; the people taking care of the animals used Anglo-Saxon.
Norman French speaking people. Normandy had been heavily colonised by the Norse, just as Anglo-Saxon England had, and left it quite different to French. Harold had as many connections to Scandanavian royalty as William.
Attempts to Latinise Englist are still going strong; any time you hear some folk grammaticist inveigh against split infinitives as "bad English", you're hearing someone who is continuing the 19th Century efforts to Latinise the languae.
But it's also present in German- stoff means something like "material". Amusingly, there's a wikipedia article titled "List of stoffs". The elements have names like Wasserstoff = water stuff = hydrogen. In the attached essay (which claims to be written without German derivatives), it seems strange to prefer "waterstuff" to the very Greek "hydrogen"... ?
"Quine" seems to be based on "quean" but "loon" seems a mystery!
NB Referring to someone as a "loonie" is not derogatory - but just means they are a young boy :-)
edit: I recognise your name from another post and remember that you're from Scotland so you probaby know this already :)
Kluge says that it came from Middle Dutch "stoffe", which got it from Old French "estoffe", which had a sense of 'cloth, mesh, fabric (especially of silk)'. He says the word's "economic background" is the importation of silkworms and silk weaving from Byzantium ("where Justinian had brought them in 552 from the Orient") via Sicily and North Italy to France and Flanders, and that the "assumed" etymology of the word in Greek στυφειν can thus be "supported on grounds of cultural history".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_silk#Spread_of_prod...
But other etymological dictionaries say that the origin of the Old French term is uncertain and may not come from Greek.
You can observe the same difference between "vulgar" and "formal" modes in French, Italian, Spanish and probably most other continental languages as well. 'Vulgar' would evolve quickly and absorb influences from all over (invading armies, temporary rulers, fads etc), but formal language would stick to Latin words or their closest local equivalent. This was absolutely necessary at a time when national identities and linguistic cores had not been firmly established and two neighbouring towns might be talking completely different languages for various reasons (even just out of spite for each other).
The police officer would prefer the first sentence because it has more syllables, not because it has many words derived from French. He would likely say that he "utilized" his training, instead of "used", even though "use" and "utilize" both derive from French.
Of course, removing all non-French words would be worse since English pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions are mostly German derived. According to Wikipedia, 97% of the top 100 words in English are German derived. The loss of German would leave little to "glue" a sentence together.
For info, if you hadn't heard yet, Tolkien's Beowulf translation is due out on the 22nd of May. Scholars say it is likely to just be his working translation and teaching notes, unlikely to rival Heaney's efforts. I think everyone interested will want to see it though. Myself included. [1]
[0] http://lukespear.co.uk/2013/09/old-english-vs-modern-swedish...
Wouldn't that be Icelandic, or Faroese?
There's a brief comparison of Old Norse and Old English in the blog post mentioned, if interested. They were very similar, almost mutually intelligible, and so only major outside influences would have caused their divergence (as has happened). Without those influences, though, who knows, maybe Icelanders and the Germanic-British could still converse in their own tongues.
The experience was eye opening in how languages evolved. Though the two started from a common ancestor language, Russian had become extremely "polluted" (using the term loosely) with foreign words for the most basic things. For example the word for Army is now derived from Army, whereas Serbian is using the word "wojsko" (not sure of actual spelling, transliterating), which is very close to what I would consider old Russian or proto-Slavic.
English is the prime example of the effects of this, with it's French/Germanic split (French from the Norman aristocracy).
In french there is a common pattern where words lost an "s" while a vowel gained a circumflex. i.e. hospital -> hôpital, forest -> forêt, etc. I'm guessing hostel -> hôtel is another example of that pattern.
Of course that also to a large extent spread via the upper classes first and foremost..
There's a saying I first heard about Danish - a bastardisation of a quote often misattributed to Charles V - about how aristocrats would read Latin in books or use it at court, speak French to the ladies, German to his dog, and would only speak Danish to servants.
The exact set of languages (and animals...) differ in different versions of the saying, but generally it puts Spanish, Italian or Latin at the "top", then French, German and sometimes finally a local language.
Computer jargon is always interesting to observe, too. "Computer" is simply transliterated "компютър" - because изчислителна машина (calculating machine) is just so unwieldy, while keyboard and mouse are translated to клавиатура and мишка. E-mail seems to have lost its e- prefix and these days is either "мейл" (transliterated) or "поща" (translated) and I don't notice a specific trend one way or the other. Upload and download tend to be translated - качвам (put up, make higher) and свалям (put down, make lower), rather than transliterated - ъплоуд and даунлоуд. I think part of the reason is that words starting with ъ tend to sound ugly, plus the оу combination isn't something usual. Internet is just интернет or less usually мрежата (the net).
* graves added to show pronunciation, we don't write where the stress falls in a word
Russian works exactly the same as you described regarding to computer jargon. компьютер, клавиатура, мышка, мейл/почта, загрузить-скачать. Сеть.
Every learned man
Only latin wrote
To the ladies French, German to his dog
and Danish to his servant he spoke.
Nor for that mater are 1st century invaders (Romans)
Indeed, if Normans are considered an intrusion into a formerly pure Britain, one would think that the Doomsday book would be the considered the beginning of illegitimacy rather than the other way around.
There definitely is a sense in which French and Latinate words are considered more upper-class, clever, fancy or polite - my favourite example is how referring to someone as 'fat' is considered rude whereas 'obese' is not, with the only difference being that one word is Germanic and the other Latinate.
"obese" doesn't sound less rude per-se because it's latinate, but because, being latinate, it became a technical term and thus can be used to describe something with more distance, and apparent objectivity.
There was an interesting DNA study that I read on the BBC website some time ago about the Welsh (Celts of Breten) being 'true Britons' [1]
The Celts of Breten are the usually named as the true 'indigenous' Britons [2], but you wouldn't be able to find a 'pure' one if you tried. But the origins of the Celts are also suspected to be of mainland European descent as well. [3][4][5]
The real true Britons, who more than likely crossed the land bridge during the last ice age left no trace of themselves [6].
After the Celts the Saxons, Jutes, Angles, Danes, Romans and Normans were all additions to the melting pot. More recently, immigration after the WWII of workers from ex-Empire countries (now nearly all Commonwealth) have added to that vibrant mix.
1000 years later and our DNA is a good healthy mix. I think that was nature's design in the first place right?
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/wales/2076470.stm
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Griffin#Policies_and_views
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britons_(Celtic_people)
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts#Origins
[5] http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/iron...
[6] http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/peop...
When the subject of repatriation came up (for people not familiar with British politics, the BNP wants to repatriate anyone that's not of white-British descent), my ex immediately asked "so you will go back to Germany and give England back to the Welsh?" (aiming to make a point rather than accuracy)
But somehow, of course, they wanted to draw the timeline on how long your family needed to have been in Britain just far enough back to ensure there'd be no brown-skinned people.
(My impression is that they're not really all that racist when actually pressed for details; they've just been talked into believing in some mysterious group of "others" that steal their jobs and take their women, but somehow whoever they get to know cease to be part of this "others", regardless of race - they actually have quite a few friends that are both immigrants and black, asian etc.)
I think you are spot on here. There is this notion that "other" people are causing Britain's problems (this applies in any other country). It gives them someone to blame.
In fact politicians are happy to seed these kinds of blame shifting, because more than often the country is screwed because of their policies. Furthermore, the country is screwed because as a collective, we've let our country and the system fester and rot.
Hence, we blame others rather than looking inwardly. On a more micro level we can see this kind of blame culture in our development teams, or even with ourselves when we suffer poor health.
We need to care for our system together. One of the reasons I dislike politics is that it is divisive and blame focused.
The best sentences he ever came out with when we were discussing his racism were these two gems: he hated darkies because they took all the jobs, and he hated darkies because they didn't work and claimed the dole (welfare). When we pointed out this paradox he was at a loss for words.
There is no real logic behind racism, just a need for blame outside of yourself.
In my experience that's not true at all. Both are rude but obese is much worse than fat.
That's why Robin Hood, with its tales of darstardly French and stalwart Anglo-Saxon Englishmen has survived hundreds of years. Because no-one in England thinks about racial or ethnic purity.
It's more along the lines of sporting team rivalry.
[I love mentioning the Y Gododdin as I can see Edinburgh Castle out the window as I write this].
The Normans didn't really bring anything that improved the way England was being managed. In many ways, they pushed the country back by removing the native administration and pushing a different model.
The Romans got up and left the Britons to it after Rome started to fail. Neither really did more than influence the direction of the country.
The Germanic people overtook and obliterated the native culture in an almost genocidal way. They did re-base everything.
A very similar situation can be observed in Turkish: Turks went to Europe and Middle East in 4th century, the ones that went to Europe eventually died, and the ones that went to Middle East and formed empires, including the rather long lived and glorious Ottoman Empire. While they were busy becoming more Muslim and more Arabic, learning fancy Arabic and Persian words, borrowing their alphabet and elevating this new Ottoman language to be the language of the palace, and the language of art, whereas the public spoke their own languages (lots of ethnicities were within the umbrella of Ottomans); Renaissance and The French Revolution happened, which eventually got Ottomans to love and behold Europe, mainly France, and borrow their words and lifestyle. In 19th century, Ottoman language was such a travesty, the first lessons of an under-graduate History course in Turkey now teaches the language, albeit Turkey directly descended from Ottomans not even a century ago. Together with the Kemalist revolution did start a movement of linguistic purism, along which the Turkish language was greatly stripped from what made it Ottoman, and the result was an easy-to-learn, simple and consistent language.
Still, though, it'd bear the same effect with “Uncleftish Beholding” to the average Turkishman, a text where only Turkic-rooted words were used, as still there are lots of words in the language that come from Arabic, French, English and Latin. Also, it'd be a bother for the average Turkishman to communicate with a Middle-Asian Turk of modern times, language of whom is closer to pre-Islam Turkic languages.
It is fun to play games with language, watch it grow and find out about how it came to be the language it is today.
"to give rise to the rest": "rest" is latin
"ordinary waterstuff": "ordinary" is latin too.
ordinär, from french and latin: http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/ordinaer
Rest, as in reminder, from german, italian, latin: http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Rest
Rast, as in break, from german: http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Rast
A good example of it related to OP is http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/Roomlore
Speeches Two of his speeches in English are considered to be historic and notable because they contained mainly terms of Greek origin. Here are the texts:
1957 I always wished to address this Assembly in Greek, but realized that it would have been indeed "Greek" to all present in this room. I found out, however, that I could make my address in Greek which would still be English to everybody. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, l shall do it now, using with the exception of articles and prepositions, only Greek words.
Kyrie, I eulogize the archons of the Panethnic Numismatic Thesaurus and the Ecumenical Trapeza for the orthodoxy of their axioms, methods and policies, although there is an episode of cacophony of the Trapeza with Hellas. With enthusiasm we dialogue and synagonize at the synods of our didymous organizations in which polymorphous economic ideas and dogmas are analyzed and synthesized. Our critical problems such as the numismatic plethora generate some agony and melancholy. This phenomenon is characteristic of our epoch. But, to my thesis, we have the dynamism to program therapeutic practices as a prophylaxis from chaos and catastrophe. In parallel, a Panethnic unhypocritical economic synergy and harmonization in a democratic climate is basic. I apologize for my eccentric monologue. I emphasize my euharistia to you, Kyrie to the eugenic and generous American Ethnos and to the organizers and protagonists of his Amphictyony and the gastronomic symposia.
1959[edit] Kyrie, it is Zeus' anathema on our epoch for the dynamism of our economies and the heresy of our economic methods and policies that we should agonize the Scylla of numismatic plethora and the Charybdis of economic anaemia. It is not my idiosyncrasy to be ironic or sarcastic, but my diagnosis would be that politicians are rather cryptoplethorists. Although they emphatically stigmatize numismatic plethora, they energize it through their tactics and practices. Our policies have to be based more on economic and less on political criteria. Our gnomon has to be a metron between political, strategic and philanthropic scopes. Political magic has always been anti-economic. In an epoch characterized by monopolies, oligopolies, monopsonies, monopolistic antagonism and polymorphous inelasticities, our policies have to be more orthological. But this should not be metamorphosed into plethorophobia, which is endemic among academic economists. Numismatic symmetry should not hyper-antagonize economic acme. A greater harmonization between the practices of the economic and numismatic archons is basic. Parallel to this, we have to synchronize and harmonize more and more our economic and numismatic policies panethnically. These scopes are more practicable now, when the prognostics of the political and economic barometer are halcyonic. The history of our didymus organizations in this sphere has been didactic and their gnostic practices will always be a tonic to the polyonymous and idiomorphous ethnical economies. The genesis of the programmed organization will dynamize these policies. Therefore, I sympathize, although not without criticism on one or two themes, with the apostles and the hierarchy of our organs in their zeal to program orthodox economic and numismatic policies, although I have some logomachy with them. I apologize for having tyrannized you with my Hellenic phraseology. In my epilogue, I emphasize my eulogy to the philoxenous autochthons of this cosmopolitan metropolis and my encomium to you, Kyrie, and the stenographers.