Thread by @colingorrie

Fully 75% of English words come from other languages.

English has taken most of its vocabulary from French, Latin and elsewhere — but what if it hadn’t?

What would a “pure” English look like?

No need to guess — it exists and it's called “Anglish.”

Here’s how it works…🧵

To speak Anglish, replace every foreign word with a native one.

For some words, it’s easy:

“inexpensive” is French — say “cheap”

For other words, get creative:

“dictionary” is Latin — say “wordbook”
“meteorology” is Greek — say “weatherlore”

And this is only the beginning...

You can even talk about atomic theory in Anglish.

The writer Poul Anderson called it “uncleftish beholding.”

“atomic” → “uncleftish” — “atom” means “not divisible” in Greek

“theory” → “beholding” — “theory” means “looking at” in Greek

How to know which words to replace?

To write in Anglish, you have to understand the history of foreign words in English.

They go back to the very earliest days of English.

The first borrowed words came from Latin:

“pound” from “pondo” (by weight)
“kettle” from “catillus” (a small bowl)

More would follow...

More words came in during the Anglo-Saxon era.

These were often words for Christian concepts:

“devil” ← Greek “diabolos”
“church” ← Greek “kyriakon” — the lord’s (house)
“minster,” e.g. Westminster ← Latin monasterium — a monastery

But this was still a small % of English...

When William the Conqueror took the English throne in 1066, French became the language of power.

And French words filtered into the English language — “age,” “chance,” “city,” “reason,” “war” all date from this era.

By the time English came back in style, it had changed...

English gradually regained status in the 14th–15th centuries.

By this time it was full of French and Latin — but it wasn't finished yet.

More words were needed for new ideas — “science,” “idea,” and “philosophy” are all from this era.

But not everyone was happy about this…

Starting in the 1500s, some writers began to push back.

They mocked the borrowings, calling them “inkhorn terms.”

An inkhorn was used for holding writing ink — it was a symbol of the out-of-touch scholar.

“Inkhorn terms” = “words for nerds.”

Here are some words they hated…

The critics of inkhorn terms argued that they were out of place in English.

Here are a few they detested:

- celebrate
- clemency
- contemplate
- frivolous

As you can see, they failed utterly in getting people not to use these words.

But other inkhorn terms never caught on…

Not all inkhorn terms found success — here are a few that didn't:

- “accersited” (summoned)
- “collaud” (praise highly)
- “condisciple” (fellow student)
- “revolute” (revolve)

By 1700, the inkhorn debate was over — the scholars (mostly) won.

English was now full of Latin too…

And in the 18–19th centuries, English became full of other languages too.

Words came from German (“poltergeist”), Spanish (“canyon”), Sanskrit (“mantra”), and others.

And the movement to keep English “pure” stopped being a serious proposal — it became an artistic technique…

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins thought “no beauty in a language can make up for want of purity.”

He put this idea into practice in his poetry, where he built up new words from Anglo-Saxon roots — like "rockfire" or "wind-walks".

It’s the same principle that Anglish works on…

But as you can see, it’s no small task to remove all foreign influence from English.

You can turn “television” into “far-seer” and “computer” into “reckoner.”

But what about basic words? — Even “wall” is from Latin “vallum.”

This is what makes Anglish such a challenge...

Anglish is hard due to the overwhelming number of English words it bans.

You need to ignore 75% of English words — many of which have been in English for 1000+ years.

But the beauty comes from the 25% that you rediscover.

And Anglish teaches us something about English…

Anglish sheds light on what English is truly like — by showing us what might have been.

You can write English with only one fourth of the words — but it makes us see how much we miss all the other ones.

And that is a blessing.

[by the way, this tweet is written in Anglish]

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