LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.11.11 (04) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 11 November 2009- Volume 04
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.11.11 (02) [EN]

> From: Hellinckx Luc <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
 > Subject: LL-L "History"
>
> un-health-spelling, threatening
> fore-elder, stem-father (ok, the last one is sexist)
> next-comer, off-stem-ling
> fore-elder-ly
>
> Aren't they somewhat transparent?

We already have saxonate terms for these things in English, Luc, some as
single words and some as phrases:

ominous: foreboding;
fore-elder: forefather (which could be de-gendered, I suppose, but
that's a separate issue);
descendant: children's children

It's when we get to something like "ancestral" we begin to see the
difficulty. "Forefatherly" isn't the same thing, because the -ly ending
has come to mean something different from the "-al" ending:

forefatherly: in the manner of, or like, a forefather
ancestral: having to do with forefathers

For example, an "ancestral home" isn't a "forefatherly home".

There's always this dual problem with people like Barnes and Molee
believing that their suggested saxonisations are somehow equivalent to
the latinisms they want to replace, and also making up strange saxonisms
as if there isn't enough "saxon" already in place in English.

Modern English isn't as strongly agglutenising as the non-insular
Germanic languages, and to re-saxonise everything we'd have to change
the rules of grammar even more (over and above altering the semantics of
prefixes and suffixes (such as "-ly"). It's not just a question of
making up words.

> David suggested to use Stephen Fry for promotion. Great...but...what
> about the Queen? I don't know if she addresses the nation each year
> with a New Year's speech (our King does), but it would be a tremendous
> way to introduce a newly "revamped" and saxonised (sanitised *s*...or
> satanised?) language. Or would the Queen's language no longer trigger
> any effect in the UK? Surely, a couple of words would be enough
> (homeopathic effect)...there's no need for purification or
> witch-hunting. Challenge: Saxonise her New Year's speech in such a way
> that it actually becomes a lot shorter, but with the same information.
> I think this will add weight to her words.

This is one of the misconceptions involved in the saxonisation of
English: that saxonised English will naturally be shorter or can be made
to mean the same thing as natural modern English. Neither is true.

> From: DAVID COWLEY <DavidCowley at anglesey.gov.uk>
 > Subject: LL-L "History" 2009.11.09 (03) [EN]
>
> (Sorry if the following looks like a plug, but I just wanted to help
> clarify my position:)
> The book (How We'd Talk if the English had Won in 1066) avoids  such
> 'made up' words altogether, and is about updates of recorded, known
> words from Old English. The words in the first Steps are the ones
> which would be most likely to make sense in modern use as updated
> forms (like: fordo, onbeload, unbefought, overmuchness, suchness), and
> were carefully screened to avoid 'funnies' such as 'deer' to mean
> 'animal' and so forth. The later steps list words that really do sound
> much more different and odd in updated form, such as 'arveth' for
> 'trouble', 'ambighter' for 'officer', 'thedely' and 'thanings' for
> 'social' and 'services'. One of the key aims is a fairly light-hearted
> look at what English could have been - fun! But I also suggest that
> some of those easier words could find their way back into English.
> Personally, I'd be well pleased if even a handful of these were to get
> into mainstream use. I know its easy to think its a non-starter, but
> its a fact that new words can and do catch on all the time. It would
> probably only take someone like Steven Fry to say 'I'm onbeloaded with
> an overmuchness of woes' a few times for these words to get used and a
> bit later turn up in new dictionaries. As I say in the book 'its up to
> you, speakers of English ...'

fordo, onbeload, unbefought: I have no idea what these might be intended
to mean.

Overmuchness: "overmuch" isn't an unusual word in English,
"overmuchness" would be a fairly normal way to use such an adverb as a
noun. So it's not exactly a neologism (or "oldologism" :)

Certainly putting a mode of speech into the mouths of Stephen Fry or the
Queen would be a way of making me avoid such words!

Of course the whole idea of "How we'd talk if..." is a fantasy isn't it?
We've no idea what _else_ would have happened if the Norman invasion
hadn't.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

•

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