Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "ANGLISH: English without the 'foreign' bits" video.

  1. For all that a decent amount of French entered English with the Norman invasion, the vast bulk of it (and of the Latin you'll find there also, that part that hadn't already entered long since via the church, or Roman influence on the Germanic peoples) showed up in later centuries when French was the language of the nobility from one end of Europe to the other, and thus a 'prestige' language that people used to show off how fancy they were (as well as being quite useful if one was traveling). Likewise much of the Latin comes from scientific endevours, where a combination of the prominence of religious institutions in early scientific advancement and the need for a common language (and it's nature as a mostly 'dead' language offering quite a lot of advantages in this role) saw it become another prestige language, showing off one's education and (pretense to) intellect. I can't help but imagine that the result would be less the loss of long, complicated words that are clearly thought of as French or Latin in origin today, and more the loss of the simple, basic ones people don't think about much, such as 'beef' and the like.
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  2.  @samuelthecamel  Interestingly enough, for much of its history, most of those imigrants were from various German speaking countries. Though it did absorb very large French and Spanish speaking populations by way of various wars and purchases leading to control of the land they'd settled on in the Americas (they weren't really immigrants, at that point). And, of course, in more recent times the immigrants have been form other places (mostly Asia (including the Middle East) and Mexico, to my understanding).
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  3. I must unfortunately point out that the only reason they defy translation is because there is so little call for English speakers to actually use them on anything approaching a regular basis. If there were, both spelling and pronunciation would have long since changed as the word itself was aborbed into English proper (and shortly there-after you would start seeing English apply its various processes to them, verbing it, splitting it into several not-entirely-connected meanings, merging some of those with other words to cover different gramatical slots, etc.)
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  4. Forget modern day German and Dutch, Latin had already influenced the Germanic tongues (of which English is one) before English was even a thing. And most of the borrowings are a lot more recent than the Norman invasion, and are due to French diplomatic dominance, and Latin being adopted as the common langauge of Science (largely Because it was a mostly dead language, but also because for a long time religious institutions were the only ones really engaging in scientific persuits in anything approaching an organised fashion in most of Europe), both centuries later.
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  5. I mostly agree. Though I think we could do with readopting a few of the more useful/practical anglo-saxon terms here and there.
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  6. it is termmed 'borrowed' largely because the original language hasn't exactly been deprived of them by the acquisition. And yes, there are other words that fit, but I"m sure you'll quickly find there are reasons why those weren't chosen, given that we're talking about a technical term rather than common speech.
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  7. Might want to talk to certain portions of the more radical leftists in your society. Though it might perhaps be more accurate to call them a language mafia. And then they manage to Export their nonsense. Not to say the Right doesn't have its own share of Incredibly Stupid ideas when it comes to language, just that they're much less successful at codifying and exporting them. (This is mostly a lack of skill in marketing, mind you.) And its not like other countries (my own included) don't have their own elements that pull the same nonsense, because they Absolutely Do. They're just prone to importing America's as well. And almost with out fail, imported or home grown, it's ideological propaganda the whole way down (regardless of which ideology) that doesn't make a single scrap of sense if you actually Know Anything about English, Linguistics, or History. But, given that the sorts of people who get up to such nonsense are targeting primarily the ignorant, and generally don't actually care about any aspect of the thing other than that it advances the ideology they perport to represent in ways that advance their own power and influence, well, to expect otherwise may well be expecting too much.
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  8. we could do with having some of those back, really. Others never left and are just considered 'archaic' showing up mostly in quotes and poetry these days.
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  9. On the other hand, for the loan words that settled in quite nicely, replacing them with anglish sounds alien, awkward, and in places even incomprehensible and/or hostile. As for insincerity, that probably comes more from how English uses the borrowings: They're often a lot more specific and defined, with the older, simpler, germanic words being used when that precision is unnessicary. Consequently, the loanwords show up more in contract law... and when used by weasels looking to pretend that what they did was actually something else (but also by perfectly honest folk when what they did or said actually Was something else and they're dealing with unplesant individuals who are pretending otherwise.) Well, that explains the insincerity. 'Mushiness' is something English just does to itself, or perhaps more accurately that its speakers do to it. Bland is, if anything, rather confusing, as generally speaking the term indicates a Lack of variety, while English gets most of its variety from precisely such borrowings (and an awful lot of English's borrowed words form further afield come by way of Spanish or Portugese).
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