More on the Same

Perhaps one example wouldn’t show that the whole Anglish project is inconsistent but just that some patch work may result. The use of Norse-derived third person pronouns (they, them) would not stop a user of Anglish committed to a broader Germanic wordstock (ON as well as OE). The ‘abbey’ example would just show the need to use strict OE sources for those who want a ‘pure’ tung. These potential counter moves just show that ‘weak’ Anglish, where just the majority of word usage would be Germanic but also include Late Latin words before the 12^th century, is potentially inconsistent.

Esperanto could not be charged with this same inconsistency because of its nature to embrace different sources for its vocabulary. Also one could speak about Esperanto grammar, while Anglish just follows English usage. So a finished product used in the language marketplace cannot compare with one still being worked out. Also Esperanto can stand apart from the languages from where it got its vocabulary but Anglish would just be consisted a dialect of English much like Scots. So even if both are constructed languages, they have differences that put them in different categories.

Anglish and Esperanto, Esperanto and Anglish

One strong point that Anglish, which Esperanto lacks, has is a larger cultural background from which to draw on. Esperanto just came from the egg in comparison to the language history that Anglish has drawn from.  Beowulf, centuries of Anglo-Saxon settlement of England, and actual historical sources from which to draw material from are better than one century of mixed results. I will not introduce here examinations of these examples, but just to show what is the scope of each respective language.

There are some inconsistencies of the premises of Anglish. Take the word ‘abbot’ which comes from an old English word but the word ‘abbey’ comes from the old French and is thus off limits. They both drive from the same Latin source, but since one form of the word is from OE and the other from OFr, the first is acceptable but the other is not. So the etymological sense cannot preserve different forms of the same word. This division shows etymology as a guide for language construction can be inconsistent.

By removing the suffixes, we see that the root word is that same. Also it has not been determined which words should be used for the same term. This problem and other considers make Anglish like the Ecclesiastical text project in that both can point to a source from which to draw their material, but all their ducks have not been placed in a row. The raw material is there but decisions have not been made yet that are accepted so that we can talk about use. Those projects are in the in progress phase.

So perhaps it is not fair to compare Anglish with Esperanto. Anglish is a subset of English, while Esperanto is its own language. Going back to the ‘abbey’ example, Esperanto would not suffer from this problem because of its resource to take word roots and add affixes to make new words. Anglish is cumbersome because correct usage depends on etymology, which has shown to not give a consistent result. For this reason, Anglish cannot function on a level as Esperanto as a working language. Perhaps more could be said about this latter. 

The State of Affairs Here

The last thing posted was about promising a future post about a review. Perhaps, I will review my own intentions and plans for things here now. I did not think that the stuff on Anglish fit the mood here on Privy, so it was taken down. It was too a specific project to be put here. Other possible subjects would be considered but that language project is too far from the course here. In addition to that was the personal nature of some of the posts many months ago (over a year?). That will stop.  I will leave whatever else is here untouched but for the future I would like things to remain nonpersonal.   

Perhaps personal is not the right word. But I mean things like being aware of one’s work here and perhaps other information about me as the contributor here. I have an awareness of the development here on the blog but I do not want to wish to write about that. This is a certain aesthetic appeal for me to restrain myself from writing about that. So even if this post is like that, it does not come close as to what it could be or was. This does not make for vague writing but constrained writing that has some borders that won’t be crossed. So I won’t specifically cite what was written but only stop now.

So this is not to conclude anything but just to make reference as to what was started last year and spread to the discussion of Anglish. Perhaps, as a counterpoint I will focus now on Esperanto. First, there is a difference between how to acquire a knowledge of the language and what are its uses on the other hand. I focused on both aspects when discussing Anglish and don’t wish to resurrect that because I think it did its work and there are other places that discuss that. I could speak about some of the aspects of Esperanto and its culture but I feel that has been covered by others already.

So I won’t focus about language and its use but rather about the contrast between Anglish and Esperanto which seems novel. Anglish is not a settled language whereas Esperanto is. Anglish has nationalistic tendencies whereas Esperanto is international. Esperanto is mostly Latinate whereas Anglish is Germanic. More contrasts can be tallied but I will also point to one similarity: both are constructed languages. More can be drawn from any of these points. So I will have more thoughts latter about something on this topic or subject.