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Purification of the English language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 9 of 27 13 July 2006 at 8:39am | IP Logged | ||
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linguianima, you're about a 1000 years too late. :-P
It would be an interesting academic exercise to try to make English more "Germanic", but all of the modern Germanic languages have changed a lot since the Dark Ages. It's just too costly to implement this kind of change now. But I hear that Icelandic is as close as you can get to a "pure" Germanic language. Give that a try. ;-) Edited by Chung on 13 July 2006 at 8:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 10 of 27 13 July 2006 at 10:33am | IP Logged | ||
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The very thing you're talking about has a name: the inkhorn controversy. It
came up in the 17th century and split English intellectuals into two groups: one that thought Saxon words should be used for new terms, and one that liked making up new terms using Latin or Greek. The Latinists won out, but not all their inventions survived in the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| RogueRook Diglot Senior Member Germany N/A Joined 6832 days ago 174 posts - 177 votes 6 sounds Speaks: German*, English Studies: Hungarian, Turkish | Message 11 of 27 13 July 2006 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | ||
Not trying to mock your Germanic romanticism, but you would ruin the language. It would become less straightforward, less transparent if you were to take all latinisms and greek roots away from it. Look at Icelandic: beautiful, but obscure. It is not going to happen anyway. People won't start learning Old English. Maybe you find comfort in the fact that you can have simple discussions using only Germanic and no "foreign" words but not vice versa. So after all the English languages basement, to put it that way, is still Germanic. The 100 story skyscraper on top of it is Greco-Franco-Roman and what not. Why not embrace this diversity? Edited by RogueRook on 13 July 2006 at 12:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Saint Diglot Newbie South Africa Joined 6751 days ago 29 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English*, Afrikaans Studies: Norwegian | Message 12 of 27 13 July 2006 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hehe, I think the basement being Germanic and the 100 story skyscraper being the rest is a little bit excessive. A large amount of the language is still Germanic. Let's say the first 35 stories are Germanic.
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 27 13 July 2006 at 4:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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OK, it worked with Icelandic (less speakers to convince!) but for English I suppose that it would take quite some time so get people used to the pure* words. If it ever would happen at all.
* Pure is of course of Latin origin. :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Saint Diglot Newbie South Africa Joined 6751 days ago 29 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English*, Afrikaans Studies: Norwegian | Message 14 of 27 13 July 2006 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's interesting but almost utterly impossible to achieve.
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| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6857 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 15 of 27 14 July 2006 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm not a linguist so I can't really debate this with you; however, I was in an English linguistics class last fall, and our professor (Ph.D.) told us that 70% of English vocabulary comes from French. I believe the grammatical structure of the language is more Germanic, but much of the vocabulary comes from French (Latin). He explained that this is one reason why English has developed its global dominance. He said it's a growing tapestry of a language, with influences spanning the world. Take for example the word "Robot" (Russian, Czech). We even have words that come from Basque. I just can't think of what they are right now. He also noted that there is no English academy to decide which words should be permitted or not, unlike French or Spanish, for example. This keeps the language flexible and open to change. I certainly find your original thought interesting, though. What would English be like without these outside influences? It wouldn't be so popular on a global scale. I wonder what we would speak, then? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Alfonso Octoglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 6861 days ago 511 posts - 536 votes Speaks: Biblical Hebrew, Spanish*, French, English, Tzotzil, Italian, Portuguese, Ancient Greek Studies: Nahuatl, Tzeltal, German | Message 16 of 27 14 July 2006 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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After all, according to what linguists say, there is no such a thing like "pure languages". All languages influence each other though time. Germanic languages come from an older Indo-European language. It's also the same for Latin and Greek. So who can say which is the purest state of a language?
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