Strategy
Basic Goals of the Inglish project
Restoring a more pronounced Anglo-Saxon/North-Sea Germanic character
The primary objective of Inglish is to offer a form of English that is truer to its Old-English roots, and more broadly its genetic affiliation to other Germanic languages. Inglish emphasises lexicon-building as the primary task in this endeavour. This consists mostly of compounding Old English-derived words that have survived in NE to form new words. In NE Latin and Greek borrowings are used to express more complex concepts, and to discuss things of a technical or scientific nature, while the essential vocabulary used to discuss household items and activities, food and drink, handwork and farm-life, the natural world, body parts, emotions etc. are overwhelmingly of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse origin. Inglish, unlike NE continues to create new vocabulary from old Germanic stems as its sister-tongues did, and here Inglish looks to their example for word-formation.
In the task of word-formation it is fitting to look to the closest relatives of English for guidance, namely Scots (if considered a language of its own), Frisian, Low-German, Dutch, the Scandinavian North Germanic languages, High German, and the insular North Germanic languages; in roughly that order. Too often an Anglish-enthusiast will focus too heavily (and going about it wrongly) on either High German or Old English. Although High German seems to be the language most often used as a guide (presumably because it is what people think of when they hear 'Germanic', and is the Gmc. language English speakers have the most exposure to), it is in a number of ways the least appropriate. First of all, even though English and NHG are both West Germanic languages, English is rather at the opposite end of the spectrum of West Germanic languages from High German, genetically and and phonologically. These two languages have been out of direct contact even longer than have English and the North Germanic languages. On the other hand the opposite, and equally ill-advised strategy for word-formation is to uncritically resurrect Old English words simply because they are English. The temptation is understandable but one must understand several things:
1. Much of the vocabulary provided in Old English dictionaries, especially online, is poetic language, and as such was rarely used in everyday speech or even in prose for that matter. E.G.
2. simply 'modernising' Old English vocabulary by thrusting it down an assembly line of automatic vowel and consonant shifts creates fairly ridiculous results, e.g. 'knerdledge' (< OE cneordlǽcan; be diligent, study). Here 'learn (earnestly)' would do just fine. The more such words are stuck together to form a new compound, the more laughable the word becomes. In contrast, examples of perfectly sound compound words using Old English roots are 'wordbuilding' (word-formation, derivation; cf. Sw. Ordbildning, NHG Wortbildung), and 'toothleech' (dentist; cf. Dan. tandlæge, Icel tannlæknir). Both of these coinages are built from roots that not only existed in Old English, but have survived into New English, and can be loan-translated with perfectly cognate English words to boot.
3.
- Restore a more pronounced Anglo-Saxon/ North-Sea Germanic character to the language
- Establish a structure for the consistent development of a lexicon and guidelines for consistent word-formation
- Make the language as mutually intelligible (or at least lexically similar in order to ease acquisition for speakers of sister-languages and vice versa) with its closest relatives as is practically feasible
- Establish an orthography which is both more phonetic than Modern English whilst acknowledging etymological origins and relationship to cognates.
Restoring a more pronounced Anglo-Saxon/North-Sea Germanic character
The primary objective of Inglish is to offer a form of English that is truer to its Old-English roots, and more broadly its genetic affiliation to other Germanic languages. Inglish emphasises lexicon-building as the primary task in this endeavour. This consists mostly of compounding Old English-derived words that have survived in NE to form new words. In NE Latin and Greek borrowings are used to express more complex concepts, and to discuss things of a technical or scientific nature, while the essential vocabulary used to discuss household items and activities, food and drink, handwork and farm-life, the natural world, body parts, emotions etc. are overwhelmingly of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse origin. Inglish, unlike NE continues to create new vocabulary from old Germanic stems as its sister-tongues did, and here Inglish looks to their example for word-formation.
In the task of word-formation it is fitting to look to the closest relatives of English for guidance, namely Scots (if considered a language of its own), Frisian, Low-German, Dutch, the Scandinavian North Germanic languages, High German, and the insular North Germanic languages; in roughly that order. Too often an Anglish-enthusiast will focus too heavily (and going about it wrongly) on either High German or Old English. Although High German seems to be the language most often used as a guide (presumably because it is what people think of when they hear 'Germanic', and is the Gmc. language English speakers have the most exposure to), it is in a number of ways the least appropriate. First of all, even though English and NHG are both West Germanic languages, English is rather at the opposite end of the spectrum of West Germanic languages from High German, genetically and and phonologically. These two languages have been out of direct contact even longer than have English and the North Germanic languages. On the other hand the opposite, and equally ill-advised strategy for word-formation is to uncritically resurrect Old English words simply because they are English. The temptation is understandable but one must understand several things:
1. Much of the vocabulary provided in Old English dictionaries, especially online, is poetic language, and as such was rarely used in everyday speech or even in prose for that matter. E.G.
2. simply 'modernising' Old English vocabulary by thrusting it down an assembly line of automatic vowel and consonant shifts creates fairly ridiculous results, e.g. 'knerdledge' (< OE cneordlǽcan; be diligent, study). Here 'learn (earnestly)' would do just fine. The more such words are stuck together to form a new compound, the more laughable the word becomes. In contrast, examples of perfectly sound compound words using Old English roots are 'wordbuilding' (word-formation, derivation; cf. Sw. Ordbildning, NHG Wortbildung), and 'toothleech' (dentist; cf. Dan. tandlæge, Icel tannlæknir). Both of these coinages are built from roots that not only existed in Old English, but have survived into New English, and can be loan-translated with perfectly cognate English words to boot.
3.