Anglish

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GamerGeek
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Anglish

Post by GamerGeek »

:gbr: :con: Anglish: English without the norse
Modern English: a creole of Norse, with vocabulary inherited from French-speaking Norse. What if we fixed that?
Here I will talk about 5 languages
OA (Old Anglish)
MA (Middle Anglish)
ME (Middle English)
NA (New Anglish)
NE (New English)
MA and NA are meant to be as similar to ME and NE as possible.
More coming soon...
Last edited by GamerGeek on 22 May 2017 17:14, edited 3 times in total.
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LinguistCat
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Re: Anglish

Post by LinguistCat »

I mean, there's already an Anglish that is pretty famous (comparatively). But we might as well see how you plan to go about it.
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Re: Anglish

Post by Lambuzhao »

So the Danelaw & Co. are getting the big red shiny unavoidable candy-like History Erase Button,

and what we're going for is a leveled-up Saxo-Frisian Ingvaeonic Wave-Motion dialect with an armada, eh?

Let slip the Stabyhouns and Wetterhouns of War, says I

& May the Norse NOT Be With You
[;)]
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Re: Anglish

Post by spanick »

By 'Norse' are you referring to Norman French?
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Re: Anglish

Post by Salmoneus »

English is not a "creole", and certainly not of Norse. Latin, French and Old English are more important sources than Norse - and I wouldn't be surprised if Dutch was too.
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Re: Anglish

Post by Sumelic »

spanick wrote:By 'Norse' are you referring to Norman French?
That seems very unlikely. I assume GamerGeek is using "Norse" to refer to Scandinavian languages collectively.
Salmoneus wrote:English is not a "creole", and certainly not of Norse. Latin, French and Old English are more important sources than Norse - and I wouldn't be surprised if Dutch was too.
In terms of volume of vocabulary, French and Latin are definitely the winners, but most of that volume is learned terms. Neither of them provided a personal pronoun the way Scandinavian gave us "they". (Of course, French is the source of some pretty grammaticalized words, like "because" and "around", but it's more or less possible to do without them and say "since" and "about" instead.) Scandinavian also seems to be behind the use of /g/ rather than /j/ in the very common verbs "give" and "get". It definitely seems harder to me to write in modern English without Scandinavian words than to write without French and Latin words.
Last edited by Sumelic on 22 May 2017 19:00, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Anglish

Post by GamerGeek »

spanick wrote:By 'Norse' are you referring to Norman French?
Old Norse.
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Re: Anglish

Post by GamerGeek »

Salmoneus wrote:English is not a "creole", and certainly not of Norse. Latin, French and Old English are more important sources than Norse - and I wouldn't be surprised if Dutch was too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_En ... hypothesis
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Anglish (Phono-Orthographical Evolution)

Post by GamerGeek »

MA only has a few differences from ME: It still used yogh, and the GVS still starts in the late MA.
The voiceless sonorants hl and hr are retained in words like ỻaȝ [ɬaf] and rhing [r̥iŋg]; the NE words llah [ɬax] and rhing [ʀ̥iŋ]. In early NE, <wh> was pronounced [ɸ], and is pronounced [f] in NE. Note that [n̥] was not retained.
In MA, the palatal sounds [tʃ] and [ʃ] were written <cȝ> and <sȝ> respectively. <ȝ> also stood for [x] and [j]. By Late MA, all instances of <ȝ> were replaced with <j> (in the case of palatals) or <h> (in the case of velars), and all cases of <þ> were also replaced with <th>.
After the GVS, long u was pronounced [aw], and was spelt <au>, <aw>, <ou>, or <ow>. It remained personal preferance and tradition, until a spelling reform that made it <au> in all cases.
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Re: Anglish

Post by qwed117 »

GamerGeek wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:English is not a "creole", and certainly not of Norse. Latin, French and Old English are more important sources than Norse - and I wouldn't be surprised if Dutch was too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_En ... hypothesis
I dunno if I'd call a change from fusional morphology to analytical morphology creolization. Seems like a bit of a stretch, given that Norse vocabulary has largely been pushed out by French and Greco-Latin vocabulary. Virtually every Romance language did the same; I haven't heard anyone calling Spanish a Arabic-Roman creole, or Italian a creole (what would it even creolize with?).
GamerGeek wrote:MA only has a few differences from ME: It still used yogh, and the GVS still starts in the late MA.
The voiceless sonorants hl and hr are retained in words like ỻaȝ [ɬaf] and rhing [r̥iŋg]; the NE words llah [ɬax] and rhing [ʀ̥iŋ]. In early NE, <wh> was pronounced [ɸ], and is pronounced [f] in NE. Note that [n̥] was not retained.
In MA, the palatal sounds [tʃ] and [ʃ] were written <cȝ> and <sȝ> respectively. <ȝ> also stood for [x] and [j]. By Late MA, all instances of <ȝ> were replaced with <j> (in the case of palatals) or <h> (in the case of velars), and all cases of <þ> were also replaced with <th>.
After the GVS, long u was pronounced [aw], and was spelt <au>, <aw>, <ou>, or <ow>. It remained personal preferance and tradition, until a spelling reform that made it <au> in all cases.
I dunno if you'd want to delete the irregularities of the GVS. They're what make English fun. I'd also say that the yogh would die in the middle ages due to its similarities to z and due to the Norman invasion of England. I want to see where this goes, but I hope that you don't become too conservative.
Spoiler:
My minicity is [http://zyphrazia.myminicity.com/xml]Zyphrazia and [http://novland.myminicity.com/xml]Novland.

Minicity has fallen :(
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Re: Anglish

Post by Sumelic »

GamerGeek wrote:MA The voiceless sonorants hl and hr are retained in words like ỻaȝ [ɬaf] and rhing [r̥iŋg]; the NE words llah [ɬax] and rhing [ʀ̥iŋ]. In early NE, <wh> was pronounced [ɸ], and is pronounced [f] in NE. Note that [n̥] was not retained.
I think you've accidentally used "NE" here; my understanding is that you meant to use "NE" to refer to real-word present day English and "NA" to refer to your Anglish conlang. It seems a bit odd to me that "laugh" goes from having /f/ in MA to /x/ in NA(?); the opposite of the real-world development.
GamerGeek wrote: In MA, the palatal sounds [tʃ] and [ʃ] were written <cȝ> and <sȝ> respectively. <ȝ> also stood for [x] and [j]. By Late MA, all instances of <ȝ> were replaced with <j> (in the case of palatals) or <h> (in the case of velars), and all cases of <þ> were also replaced with <th>.
What are the ultimate reflexes of coda /x/ in this scenario? In our timeline, coda /x/ had both velar and palatal allophones, based on the frontness of the preceding vowel, and it also caused the development of an offglide in Middle English (hence the "u" in the spelling of words like "taught" and "sought", and the "i" in the spelling of words like "eight").
GamerGeek wrote: After the GVS, long u was pronounced [aw], and was spelt <au>, <aw>, <ou>, or <ow>. It remained personal preferance and tradition, until a spelling reform that made it <au> in all cases.
Did this have the same exception as in our timeline for long u before labials? (as in room, vs. German Raum)
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Re: Anglish

Post by GamerGeek »

...And this is why you make things like this an open project.
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Re: Anglish

Post by GamerGeek »

qwed117 wrote:I dunno if you'd want to delete the irregularities of the GVS. They're what make English fun.
Again, this isn't very professional, and I shouldn't be working on this alone
qwed117 wrote:I'd also say that the yogh would die in the middle ages due to its similarities to z
I considered that, and it will probably be a feature.
Sumelic wrote: think you've accidentally used "NE" here; my understanding is that you meant to use "NE" to refer to real-word present day English and "NA" to refer to your Anglish conlang. It seems a bit odd to me that "laugh" goes from having /f/ in MA to /x/ in NA(?); the opposite of the real-world development.
Those were both mistakes (as you may have guessed)
Sumelic wrote:What are the ultimate reflexes of coda /x/ in this scenario? In our timeline, coda /x/ had both velar and palatal allophones, based on the frontness of the preceding vowel, and it also caused the development of an offglide in Middle English (hence the "u" in the spelling of words like "taught" and "sought", and the "i" in the spelling of words like "eight").
I don't really know...
Sumelic wrote:Did this have the same exception as in our timeline for long u before labials? (as in room, vs. German Raum)
This desolvation would make sence, even in this alternate timeline. Perhaps an ūB-āB merger?
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