Sunday 2 December 2012

The Classical flying Spaghetti monster

So, how what do you call someone scared of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

The Greek wikipedia gives the flying spaghetti monster as Ιπτάμενο Μακαρονοτέρας (iptamevo makaroteras). By the process of elimination, the first word is flying*. The second word is rather interesting: makaro sounds like maccaroni, while the second part is τέρας, τέρεος (Ionic)/τέρατος (Koine), monster like in teratoma (a really weird ovarian cancer with many different tissue types, including hair and bone). So in Greek the Spaghetti monster is actually a macaroni monster.
So the fear of the Spaghetti Monster is macaroteratophobia.

Spaghetti-monstrous sounds nice, but what could the Greek adjective be?
Interestingly, τέρας has two meanings one means a marvel, the other a monster —which makes sense as everyone marvels at a monster, albeit in horror and not in awe. So in Greek, the spaghetti monster is also a marvel!
Searching τέρας on the OED gives many medical terms such as hemitery, terata, teratology and teratogenesis, which have to do with misshapen organisms. It also contains the adjective teretical (adj, Relating to marvels or prodigies) and the noun teratism (n. love of the marvellous or prodigious, or monstrosity). Amusingly, the word teretical sounds like the word heretical, which is unrelated, which make sense as all religions other than pastafarianism are heretical and not the other way round —in light of the above, another way of saying pastafarianism could be macaroteratism.
I think macaroteretical sounds rather nice, even though Spaghetti-monstrous is more intuitive.

Another amusing thing is that macaronic means jumbled, mingled and macaronic Latin is a the jumbled Latin (Monty Python's "Romanes eunt domus" scene). It is an odd coincidence, though, given that the flying spaghetting monster is not made up at all…




_____________________
*) Google confirms. It is one of those words that differs in modern Greek from classical Greek. Attic masculine present participles end in -ων, but modern Greek has different endings, so that makes sense. ίπταμαι turns out to be a "late" spelling of πέτομαι via ἵπταμαι (Perseus) —I think late here means Koine, so not late at all.

Thursday 8 November 2012

millionennium and the ennium suffix

Yahoo Answers is probably the only think Yahoo! has going for itself, yet the system is far from perfect. Many answers are wrong or retarded, but once the time has finished the Q/A are fixed and no new answers can be added. I stumbled across one that was wrong and here is the correct answer.

I was curious to see if a word for a set number of years beyond millennium existed, but it doesn't.
However, it does not mean new words cannot be made: the Latin word for year, annus, possess a suffix form -ennium for exactly this purpose. Actually, in Italian -enne is a commonly used as a suffix (on Italian numbers) to say "years old", eg. an undicenne is a 11-yo.
  • Year
  • biennium
  • triennium
  • quadriennium
  • lustrum
  • decade
  • century
  • millenium
  • "decamillennium"
  • "centimillennium"
  • "millionennium"
  • "billionennium"
  • etc.
The catch is that all the -illion numbers do not exist in Latin and that their usage only was standardised recently whereas before there were two conflicting systems, called the long and short scale. We now solely use the latter, whereas remnants of the former are still present in some languages, in Italian, for example, billion is called miliardo (trillion is trilione). The word million is actually of Late Latin/early Italian origin and is the word thousand (mille) with the augmentative suffix -one (in Anglish they came up with the cool sounding "micklered", instead of calquing and getting "overthousand"), whereas the Romans and other folk simply would say a thousand thousand. It is rather weird to think that people used get along just fine without having the need to deal with large numbers... or possibly their denial of such need is the reason why the Roman empire's economy was a disaster.

Saturday 27 October 2012

Meline TB

The badger cut has been called off, which I am glad of as the science is dodgy and badgers look cute.
The article I was reading had a lexical knot, which amused me. The adjective bovine was used more often than cow or cattle, whereas when it came to the badgers there "of badgers" or badgers used as adjectival noun. A cool side-effect of the mixture in English is that some nouns are Old English-derived but their adjectives are Latin-derived, (eg. eye and ocular, window and fenestral, mail and postal, technically "collateral adjectives"). The animals ones are quite cool as they mostly end in -ine.
Whereas lupine, asinine, equine, murine, ovine and bovine are commonly known, the rest are stuff for a Wikipedia lists (List of animal names is pretty terrible and littered with errors).
The adjective for badger is meline (I looked it up), so the article could have talked about meline TB.
Googling meline TB gives only a article obviously in The guardian.

What if we were not obsessed with the -ine adjectives?
We would still be stock actually. Badger is probably from badge + ard, so came about solely after 1500 and the only adjective is badgerly and badgerlike, which both mean behaving like a badger (and I assume smelling like one too).
The OE-derived word for badger is brock (from broc) and the adjective brockish means meline, badgerly or beastly. The meaning of brockish is as guessable as meline, so that is of little help.
An amusing twist is that broc is actually of Celtic origin (brocc in Old Irish). Whereas the germanic version is dasse (last used in ME; cognate with German Dachs; plural is dassen).

So meline is the only choice. In addition to the impenetrability of some of the Latin derived adjectives, there is also the problem of animals unknown to the romans or that they could not be bothered to tell apart.
In the endless lists of name of animal adjectives, what seems to happen is the genus name is converted. It works for certain animals, such as walruses, which are odobenine, but it gets into a muddle when the pus/pedis comes in. Are kangaroos and wallabies macropine or macropodine? Are octopuses octopine or octopodine?
The last one actually is case where the Romans could not be bothered telling animals apart. The Romans called both octopuses and polyps polypus, so when Linnaeus came along he made called the form octo- and left the other poly-, which makes sense. In Old English, they did not care either and they simply used the word cuttlefish to refer to all cephalopods (squid appeared from nowhere after the 1600s). Another case is rat. The Romans called mures both rats and mice, whereas the Germanic barbarians did and gave the mediaeval Latin rattus. As a consequence rattine is not commonly used, being a back formation. Rattish should be, but it is not scientific. Which is actually the reason in the first place why they are used…

Friday 26 October 2012

The correct octopus plural

The whole octopuses/octopi/octopoda/octopodes issue is hilariously tragic.
There is no black and white solution as three languages are involved.

Octopus is from the taxonomic Neolatin word octopūs and zoologically all -pūs words are 3rd declension Latin and generally masculine (genitive -podis and  plural nominative -podes), because they decided so. The Romans called octopuses polypus, a masculine second declension word (plural polypi), where the pus root is the same. In other words, English pedants would have told the Romans off for not getting their Greek right —ironic given that they are fluent at it as opposed to knowing less than a smattering of rules and words.


So if problem does not lies with the Romans, does it lie with the Greeks?
Maybe… Greek was continually changing and has different periods, the Greek in Greece now speak modern Greek, whereas under the Roman empire it was Koine Greek, before that a mix of dialects which waxing and waining prestige.
An archaic dialect was Doric were the word for foot was πός (pous, genitive που, pou, plural nominative ποί, poi), a second declension, whereas in others such Ionic, the early classic one of Homer, or Attic, the classic one from Athens, it was πούς (pous, genitive ποδος, podos, and plural nominative ποδες, podes). The Romans borrowed polypus from the Doric speakers, so their plural was polypi. A similar muddle happened with the Latin letters and transliterations from Greek.

So to recap in order of decreasing idiocy:
  • Octopoda.
    • Pro: Yes, octopus may be a masculine not neuter, but the order is called octopoda and Stephen Fry said so on QI.
    • Contra: Octopoda is for consistency and Saint Stephen does make mistakes (he got his Greek wrong on The liar by writing patrochles)
  • Octopi.
    • Pro: Octopus was based on polypus and that zoologists have no right to decide and ruin the purity of Latin historical continuity.
    • Contra: The word was coined by zoologists, the Roman's borrowed polypi right before they went out of style, anyway, and there is no such thing as continuity with Neolatin, just anachronism.
  • Octopodes.
    • Pro: The correct Neolatin plural.
    • Contra: Rather hard to pronounce.
  • Octopuses.
    • Pro: it is not the end of the world.
    • Contra. But it is fun.
It is curious how the word pedantry has the Latin pedes as a root…

Monday 22 October 2012

Fossilised participles

What do nature and furniture have to do with the future?

Participles are adjectives formed from a verb, in English there are two flavours, the active present participle (in -ing) and the passive past participle (in -ed).
In English, there are a great deal of fossilised Latin participles, which are hiding…
In Latin there were four, the active present participle in -ans or -ens (-ant or -ent in English), the passive participle in -atus or -itus (-ate or -ite in English), the active future participle in -aturus or -iturus (-ature or -iture in English) and the passive future participle (actually called a gerundive) -andus or -endus.

It is rather cool thing to know as they are easy to spot.

For example,

Expectant means expecting, dependant means depending on, constant means standing with.
Separate means sperated, ingrate means that has not been graced, passionate means that has been given passion.
Agenda means that will be done, graduand means that will be graduated, memorandum means that will be remembered.
And finally, nature means that will beget (nascent is the present participle equivalent), furniture means that will furnish and future means that will be.

What the logic was for nature and furniture to be future participles is a different matter entirely…

Saturday 15 September 2012

What is the name for fans of Game of Thrones?

Fans of certain cult series have dedicated names: potter-heads love Harry Potter, trekkies or trekkers love Star Trek , twihards love Twilight (or are twice hardened). Game of Thrones is too new to have a name, which is rather curious as several forums seem to discuss it and many possible candidates have been put forth.
What will be the final name?
Will it have been proposed on a forum by some long-haired guy who lives in his parents' basement and accepted by his peers?
Will it have been picked haphazardly by a journalist for some important paper from a cursorily scribbled list?
Call me cynical, but I think the latter is what will happen.
If I were to make one up, I'd propose throne-thralls as it alliterates. Thrall is not a common word and many foreigners struggle with the th group, so it is a stupid suggestion, but I like it.
Uhm… I might troll forums and suggest it… who knows: I might be wrong!

Edit: All sites require one to register and my wish to propose a name is not that strong…

Wednesday 22 August 2012

Gaelic denonyms

Dunedin is Anglicised Gaelic word for Edinburgh (dùn Edeann, where dun = burgh), so it is more Gaelic than the original, yet folk from Dunedin are called Dunedinites. The Gaelic suffix for a demonym (the name of a person from a place) is -ach, where the ch group represents /x/, a voiceless velar fricative like in loch. This sound is present in German, but in English it was lost in Middle English. I think it is a shame as it is a fun sound nearly as much as the Xhosa/Zulu click or the Cymraeg (Welsh) double-el (voiceless lateral fricative). So someone from Dunedin could be a Dunedinnach!
This is not the only one that could be made to sound… well… awesome.
Whereas Albania comes from the Latin alba, meaning white or dawn, Albany comes from the Albion, the Latinised Gaelic word Alba, meaning Scotland. The demonym of Albany, NY, is Albanian —Albany, NZ, has none, unless you count mall-rat as a possible one. Albanian for Albany clashes with Albania's Albanians, so a cool solution could be the Gealic word for Scottish Albannach. However, given that most folk in Albany, NZ, are not Scottish, I am not sure it would work…

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Viking Manbags

It is amazing where spirals of procrastination lead to. Reading something blatantly non-work-related I came across the word "douchebaggery", which made me amused and bemused. To me the word sounds awkward, but I do see the need for an abstract noun for this fun American common noun which differs slightly from the British "wanker" and "wankiness". Having thought that something a bit smoother than "douchebaggery" must be possible, I checked the expanding universe of cyberspace, but found nothing.

The word sounds etymologically slightly weird, so I checked where "bag" came from. I assumed it would be French as the word baggage sounds it and as it is easy to picture the French inventing something so frivolous like a bag. But I was wrong and identity of the first bag-bearers blew my mind: the Vikings. Yes, bag comes from Old Norse, meaning it was not poncey Frenchmen that invaded England armed with handbags, but the fearsome Vikings did. Just to blow all stereotypes, the Vikings even gave the French the word baggage.
A manbag, therefore,being a gift from the manly Vikings, is the most manly accessory one could sport apart from a horned helmet, a claymore or double-axe.


Damn, that means that being a "douchebag" is a bit manly after all.
It means that if one wanted to go for etymological faux-authenticity "douchebaggery" would be out of the question. The two suffices of Norse origin that make adjectives, verbs or common nouns into abstract nouns are -lock (wedlock) and -red (kindred), but they both sound terrible with douchebag ("douchebaglock" and "douchebagred").
So the best bet is to go with good old Old English ones. Bagginess is a real word, but it is a bit too removed semantically from bag to make "douchebagginess" not awkward sounding. In a similar vein, "douchebagging" is also awkward as "to bag" means to gain possession and who would want to gain possession of a douche? 
The established suffix is ery, which is -er + y, and generally represents a place or an office (bakery), which when used on douchebag makes it sound the official role of a douchebag, so "douchebagship""douchebaghood" and "douchebagdom" could be alternatives. On second thought, I think I quite like the word "douchebaggery" after all...

Monday 11 June 2012

Would a Runx by any other name would drive as averagely?


Quo usque tandem abutere, Mitsubishisan, patientia nostra?
When the traffic is standing fast, while one's over-caffeinated mind is running fast, one may be unfortunate enough to get an instant revelation, while involuntarily reading the brand and model of the preceding car: most car names make no sense at all.
The problem is the more one notices it and asks why (the bastardised Shakespeare quote, say), the more one gets annoyed at the probably over-paid consultant that thought that Pajero would be a good car name (hence the bastardised Cicero quote).
This is in fact what happened to me.
To my despair nobody I know has noticed or cared, but to my delight many Internet-wrights (or whatever the term is) have compiled pages upon pages of worst named cars --- the aforementioned "Pajero", means wanker in Spanish, hence it is sold as a "shogun" in Europe. 
I greatly recommend wasting some time reading such sites: did you know that there is a car called a Capuccino?
My pet peeve is the pig Latin used for many car names. I can safely assume a direct Latin-Japanese dictionary must not exist. Toyota, in particular loves Lapanese (Japanese Latin). Caelica means heavenly, so the Celica is an “a” away from being heavenly? Latin and current romance languages have genders and cars are strictly feminine, for a reason unbeknown to me. In Italian the giant panda is masculine, while the fiat Panda is feminine, a full stop (punto) is masculine while a fiat punto is feminine. So dear Toyotasan, it is not a Camry sportivo, but a Camry sportiva. Ten points for the Celica not being a Celicus or Celicum; but minus ten for the prius (neuter, prior is what they were looking for) and minus twenty for declaring that the plural in English of prius is prii, instead of priora or priuses, as it is a loanword after all.
Bad grammar for one-word names apart, the meaning of the words make little sense. Supposedly, the manufactures explain by post-rationalising their choice. Why is a fiat punto is a full stop? Why is a Daihatsu Sirion a burner? Why is a Hyundai i3987654321 a boring series of numbers with a preceding “i”? What the hell is a runx?
I drive a Nissan Pulsar SRV and I can safely say it does not drive like a dead star.
I must admit that giving a name to an average car must be a nightmare, but is it really that hard??

Saturday 5 May 2012

The -meal suffix

An Old English suffix that has been unjustly forgotten is the -meal suffix.
If something is done gradually the phrase that is normally used is x by x, in archaic English -meal suffix can do the same thing, similarly to the Latin -atim. It is not constructive anymore, but several examples are present in the OED:

  • piecemeal: piece by piece —only one not obsolete
  • stickmeal (styccemǣlum): bit by bit
  • yearmeal (gēarmǣlum): year after year
  • sheafmeal (scēafmǣlum): sheaf by sheaf, although the later pagemeal works better
  • stemmeal (stemmǣlum): turn by turn, alternately
  • stepmeal (stæpmǣlum): step by step, gradually
  • namemeal (nammǣlum): name by name
  • dropmeal: drop by drop
  • flockmeal: group by group
  • footmeal: foot by foot
  • heapmeal: heap by heap
  • limbmeal: limb by limb
  • stoundmeal: hour by hour
  • cupmeal: cup by cup
  • gobbetmeal: fragment by fragment
  • littlemeal: little by little
  • parcelmeal: parcel by parcel
  • pennymeal: penny by penny
  • piecemeal: piece by piece
  • poundmeal: pound by pound
  • ravishmeal: rapidly (a Latinisms  by Wyclif from raptim)
  • tablemeal: iPad tablet by iPad tablet (from tabulatim)
  • fitmeal: jitter by jitter
  • inchmeal: inch by inch
  • jointmeal: joint by joint
  • lumpmeal: lump by lumb
  • pagemeal: page by page
Unfortunately, converting the imperial units to metric, sounds terrible, eg. millimetremeal, so they'll have to stay imperial.
Verbatim et letteratim is an expression that means word by word and letter by letter, in other words, with insane thoroughness. It is a rather cool, so with the above it would be wordmeal and lettermeal.
The only problem is that, even knowing the meaning, the words wholemeal, wheatmeal and oatmeal spring to mind…

Tuesday 24 April 2012

Gender-less pronouns

Most folk agree that writing he/she is a pain, however, nobody agrees on what is the best substitute.
Singular they is the most commonly used and it appears in the king James's bible, so when Jehovah speaks English he/she uses singular they (ref). That last sentence shows that it has a glaring problem: singular they is used as a plural and the closeted prescriptivistic pedant (†)  in all of us screams out upon hearing a grammatical number mismatch (e.g. "Someone has made a mess again, I wish they'd tidy up once in a while"). "They is" is too revolutionary to be anything but jarringly awkward sounding.
Impersonal one (from the French homme curiously) is used differently, so is not a gender-less pronoun.


Wikipedia has a hodgepodge collection of attempted pronouns (link), some of them badly put together.
I thought I'd make up my own.


What did the vikings ever do for us? They gave us useful words!
They in English is not of Old English origin, but of Norse.
The third person personal pronouns in Old English are: (in the order subject, possessive, direct and indirect object)
M: he, his, hine (=him), him
F: heo or hie (=she. eo is read ee), hire (=her), heo or hie (=her), hire (=her)
N: hit (=it), his (=its), hit (=it), him (=it)
Pl: hie (=they), hira (=their), hie  (=them), him or heom (=them)


As you can see, not only some forms are repeated within a gender as in in English (her can be possessive or object), but also between (him can mean to it or to him). Therefore the Norse they makes life so much less confusing. 
Humorously, hie could be they or she, which would make gender-neutral pronoun advocates happy.


Search the Old English 3rd prs. plural pronouns gives me:
hie became hi or hy, which was last used in 1400.
hera gave us her.
heom became hem and then 'em.

So one version of a gender-neutral pronoun could be:
hy, her or heer (modernised hiera), hem or heem (modernised  heom).
Hy sounds a lot like I, though.

Alternatively, Old Norse could be the source of the sought pronouns.
The thon pronoun set which someone proposed is not based on the singular form in Norse as only the neuter begins with þ (thorn, th-group) and it is the same as the demonstrative pronoun that.
The feminine set is: hon, hennar, hana, henni
They have no derivatives in the OED, so hon, hennar and henne could be another set, but they do not sound English.
Those Old Norse pronouns became hon, hennes and henne in Swedish, which has a made up gender-neutral pronoun, hen, which would not work in English for obvious reasons.


Taking a step back, I think I'll adopt hon, heer and heem.
Example: Someone e-mail: hon said to call heem or heer secretary.
Maybe I'll stick with he/she.


†) Prescriptivism may suffocate the natural evolution of a language and has the sole purpose of linguistic snootiness, Descriptivism is a tad hypocritical to say the least. Descriptivistic snootiness at prescriptivistic snootiness at grammatic butchery...

Thursday 15 March 2012

Time traveler's grammar


Douglas Adams wrote in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that the biggest problem with time travel was the grammar. He was right.

However, the solution presented in that superb book is obviously a joke as it takes the matter to its utmost complication. In reality, more straightforward —or, more correctly, loopforward— less awkward and grammatically sensible solutions exist, albeit not as funny and a bit too academically dry…

So. There are two grammatically paradoxical scenarios:

  • The traveller will do an action in the past.
  • The traveller has done an action in the future.

These two sentence show that the whole time travel grammar business is not really that much of a problem. After all, when letters are written the tenses used refer to those of the writer and not of the future reader, e.g. "by the time you will read this, I will have fled to Antarctica to join a nunnery" and not "as you read this now, I have already fled to Antarctica". Grumble grumble.

In essence, adding in the past or in the future, which act as temporal delimitators actually make the sentence sound. Curiously, the words past, present and future are actually fossils of Latin participles, namely past is from passatus, the past participle of passare (to pass), present is from præsens, the present participle of præesse (to preside), while future is from futurus, the future participle of esse (to be). This means that the two time-travel examples do have a slight (hidden) verbal muddle —and verbal muddle is what I want.
But can the muddledom be increased without breaking regular grammatical structure?
Germanic languages ‚a family which includes English, have no dedicated future tense. To wit, a word ending to make the tense (cf. "I will receive" with "je recevrai"). This gives us "the traveller will did/had done an action" or simply "the traveller will done an action", which possess the time travelling awkwardness I am after all.
Although it is a bit of silly as the construct formed by a modal verb plus past participle, simple past or past perfect is wrong. This is unavoidable as will plus present perfect is a future perfect ("the traveller will have done an action").
A further loophole is with would. Will is a modal verb that has a present indicative form (will) and a præterite (=past) subjunctive (would) and in Old English willan was a bog-standard verb (meaning to will/intend). Therefore, "the traveller would/willed do an action" should fit the bill of an action to be done in the past, but it just sounds like a conditional clause.
An alternative would be to introduce a present perfect of will: "the travelled has would/willed do/done/doing an action", which is relatively nicer.
After all that work, there is the problem that the two forms could work either way round.
  • the traveller will had done an action
  • the travelled has would do an action

Okay, the will verb was a good jail-breaker, what happens if it was not used and the time travelling grammar was to be tried on a Romance language?
In that case participles might do the trick, albeit badly. There are three issues, though, that make it a mess.
Firstly, the present participle (e.g. "the eating dog") is active and progressive while the past (e.g. "the eaten dog") is passive and perfect, but the inverse constructs could be made ("the has-eaten dog" and "the being eaten dog"). Parenthetically, Greek grammar has a much better fix, but Greek grammar has little to do with English, so it will have to do.
Secondly, Latin (and Greek) had a future participle but French and English do not, so it needs to be introduced. The Latin (first conjugation) suffix for the future participle is -aturus, which could be anglicised to -ature (/-eɪtʃər/ like nature) —okay, the -at- part is the same as -ed, but that is hair-splitting. So "the dog that will have eaten" could be "eatature (or eatenure) dog".
Lastly, decoupling tense of the participle from the verb and coupling the verb-y bit with the time-frame of the traveller and the participle with the time-frame of the action would allow:
  • The traveller will (had) done an anction (action done in the past that the traveller will do).
  • The traveller had doature an action (action doature that has not yet occurred that the traveller has done)

The latter is hideously horrible and doature sounds like douche. Which I think means that time travelling is for douchebags as is writing drivel about its grammar. I am a double douchebag and will stop here.

Thursday 1 March 2012

My experience with Anglish


English is an unusual language due its hybrid nature, but what would it be if it were not?

Before 1066, the Angles and the Saxons spoke Old English, a Germanic language like German and Swedish.
Old English contained only a handful of words that where of Latin origin, mainly church-related. In the north of England, specifically in Danelaw, the viking occupied land, several Old Norse words (the language that evolved into Swedish) were seeping into the vocabulary. However, when the Normans conquered England in 1066 (by cheating in true french style) Old French was the official language and a multitude of words entered the vocabulary to the point that 1/3 of English words nowadays are of Old French origin. But this was not the only hybridization event: several centuries later, the usage of Latin and Greek words was seen as sophisticated resulting in another inflow of words that did not descend from Old English. Today, Greek and Latin words are seen as poncy, so the inflow has changed to a more cosmopolitan medley of sources.

This raises the question of what would English sound like if it lacked this hybrid nature and this is were the Anglish Moot comes in. The Anglish Moot is an online community that experiments with this concept by writing in "Anglish". It is a curious language that sounds like Shakespearian English (early modern English), namely it is clearly English, but with some benighted (obscure) bits. I found it so enthralling I was quickly sucked it.

However, it became slowly shire (clear) that the goalwork (project) is a banefall (disaster). Even the grounder (founder) forlore (abandoned) it years ago having become unbewitched (disenchanted) with it. I lost westumscat (interest, from wæstmsceatt: literally fruit treasure) in it for three frumes (reasons).

Firstly, all the adighters (editors) did their own thing, sometimes pulling in gainstanding (opposing) wardings (directions), without betwixtdoing (interacting) with each other, therefore edframing (reinventing) words or not telling each other of their findings. This offled (resulted) in an utter lack of suchness hold (quality control) and of an bestriding (overarching) underwrap (theme), a flutter (mess) in other words.

Twithly (Secondly), it did not have any rootfast (fixed) standards (okay, I give up) or guidelines: some editors wanted to replace words that entered after 1066, others all non-germanic words regardless of date of entry, while others replaced words with little rational justification. How replacement words were found changed from editor to editor, when a fully equivalent synonym of Old English origin was absent, some editors simply used less specific similar words, others would look for an obsolete synonym and if none existed would revive an Old English words by modernising the spelling and ending, while others would combine two words regardlessly. This last approach is the only way for modern concepts, but different methods were employed even for this, some looked at German or Icelandish equivalents, while others translated the Graeco-latinate word bit by bit.

The main criticism on the internet is that Anglish is a kind of etymological xenophobia. This is actually a misunderstanding as the drive is not to forspill (eradicate) outlandish (foreign) words but to ross (explore) the "what if" frayn (question) of a more Germanic English language. However, after a while all words not of Old English origin started to seem tainted to me, so etymological xenophobia is a side-effect, which is probably worse.

I must, however, say I learnt a lot of interesting things and words, such as elfsheen (ethereally beautiful) and hagship (hag-like ugliness). Unfortunately, I have not yet had the chance to use these words, but I am hopeful...

Wednesday 25 January 2012

New-Zealandish

In English one can use nouns as adjectives in a role called adjectival nouns, which is great when there are no adjectives to use. However, it does stop adjectives from appearing. Even awesome ones.
New Zealand is a country (proper noun) without a real adjective (apart from the slag kiwi) making the noun the only option (New Zealand lamb), which does cause any ambiguity given the fact that nobody really knows the location of the original Zealand, so no numskull is going to think that new Zealand lamb is a new lamb from Zealand.
However, it should have one. It has one in Italian (neozelandese), where they also convert the new (nuova) bit into a fancy schmancy neo- prefix and they did not even colonise the place.
Okay, I'll have to ignore the horrific Greek/Latin suffix in Icelandic which is a counter-argument for having an adjective for NZ. But I want one and outlandish as it first sounds, the adjective should be New-Zealandish as land is of Old English origin, like the suffix -ish (and landish was actually an adjective meaning native).
Furthermore there is nothing new in new-zealandish as the adjective exists in German (Neuseeländisch), so there is no reason not to use new-zealandish apart from the fact, I suppose, the incredulous stares one would receive would be really bad...