A taste of Alternative English

Originally, this article was going to be mainly about the different sources of the vocabulary of English. However, I think it's time to give a sample of a text written in Alternative English.

If you've read my previous two articles, you'll know that I've come up with a hypothetical Alternative English, spoken in a parallel universe where the Viking invasions and Norman conquest had never happened.

Alternative English is a standardised variety of English that could have been spoken today, in the year 2014, if these important historical events had never taken place.

Below is a translation of the Tower of Babel passage in Genesis (quite fitting, I think!) from real English into Alternative English. All words that are not descended directly from Old English have been removed. I have replaced them either with an existing native English word, or with a word that has died out in real English.

Again, borrowed words in the real English version are colour coded as follows: Blue for French, red for Latin, and gold for Old Norse.

I have provided a glossary below the Alternative English 'translation,' which gives the meaning and etymology of the new words that I have coined. OE stands for Old English.

The Tower of Babel:

Real English

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. ² As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

³ They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. ⁴ Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

⁵ But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. ⁶ The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. ⁷ Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

⁸ So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. ⁹ That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Alternative English

Now the whole world had one thede and a samen speech. As folk shrithed eastward, hie found a field in Shinar and settled there.

Hie said to each other, "Come, let's make bakestones and bake hem thoroughly." Hie breek bakestone instead of stone, and tar for clome. Then hie said, "Come, let us build ourselves a borough, with a tower that reacheth to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be shattered over the onleat of the whole earth."

But the LORD came down to see the borough and the tower the folks were building. The LORD said, "If as one folk speaking the self thede hie have begun to do this, then nothing hie mint to do will be unmayly for hem. Come, let us go down and yondming her thede so hie will not understand each other."

So the LORD shattered hem from there over all the earth, and hie stopped building the borough. That is why it highted Babel - as there the LORD yondminged the thede of the whole world. From there the LORD shattered hem over the onleat of the whole earth.

Glossary

Thede = language (from OE þēod)

Samen = common (ME samen < OE samen 'together')

Shrithe = to move (OE scrīþan 'to move, glide, wander')

Hie = they (OE hī, hīe) 
[To be pronounced the same as 'high']

Hem = them (OE hem)

Brook = to use [past tense: breek; past participle: brocken] (OE brūcan) 
[We could also have note, which apparently means 'use' or 'employment' in some Northern English and Scottish dialects. It comes from Old English notu.]

Clome = mortar (OE clām)

Onleat = face (ME onlete < OE anwlite)

Mint = to plan (OE myntan)

Mayly = possible (may + -ly; modelled on German möglich and Dutch mogelijk) 
[Hence, unmayly means 'impossible']

Yondming = to confuse (OE geondmengan)

Her = their (OE hierra) 
[Yes, this creates some interesting ambiguity with the existing pronoun her!]

Hight = to be called (ME hight < OE hēht) 
[We could also have to be challed but I like the idea of hight surviving into Modern English]

Yesterday

Now let's compare the amount of loanwords in the Tower of Babel passage with the famous Beatles song, Yesterday.

This is a song with pretty straightforward lyrics, and it so happens that it is chiefly made up of native English words! I will post both the original lyrics and a translation into Alternative English, with a small glossary.

Real English

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday

Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be
There's a shadow hanging over me.
Oh, yesterday came suddenly

Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday

Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh, I believe in yesterday

Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday

Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh, I believe in yesterday

Alternative English

Yesterday, all my sorrows seemed so far away
Now it looketh lich hie sind will blive
Oh, I believe in yesterday

Suddenly, I'm not half the man I once had been
There's a shadow hanging over me.
Oh, yesterday came suddenly

Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say
I said some unright, now I long for yesterday

Yesterday, love was such an eath game to play
Now I need a stow to hide away
Oh, I believe in yesterday

Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say
I said some unright, now I long for yesterday

Yesterday, love was such an eath game to play
Now I need a stow to hide away
Oh, I believe in yesterday

[Unfortunately, I couldn't get the first pair of lines to rhyme, and the lines containing 'such an eath game to play' won't scan!]

Glossary

Blive (or belive) = to stay, remain [OE belīfan]

Eath = easy [ME ethe < OE ēaþe]

Stow = place [ME stowe < OE stōw]

Next up

I'm sicker [sure] you gode [want] to see more of this Other [Alternative] English, with most borrowed words nomen [taken] out.

What? You think. Even want and take are borrowed words? Yes, hie sind [they're] baith [both] Old Norse in orcoming [origin].

In my next limmel [article], I am going to focus* my heeding [attention] on the ways in which Old Norse has inflowed [influenced] English, baith [both] in wordlist [vocabulary] and grammatic.*

I'll also show how some samen [common] workwords [verbs] such as give, take, get and die would have turned out if hie [they] hadn't been undersoled [supplanted] or warped by her [their] lichworth [equivalent] words in Old Norse.

Footnotes

*Focus is a Latin word, of course, but it's been borrowed into most other Germanic languages, so I'm going to allow it.

Grammatic is how the word 'grammar' would have been borrowed, if it had been borrowed straight from Medieval Latin rather than via French. As a learned Greek word, grammatic (or grammatik, or something similar) has been borrowed into most Germanic languages.

Alternative English - how different would it look without borrowings?

Thank you for reading the second instalment in my 'Alternative English' series of articles. If you haven't read my introductory article, I'd strongly recommend you do so before reading this entry.

Why are there so many strange colours in the text, you might ask. What's wrong with me? Well, I've colour coded each word and affix in the opening three paragraphs of this article to show where each word and affix (i.e., a prefix or suffix) comes from.

Words and affixes in blue¹ have their origin in French, those in red are borrowed from Latin (either medieval or classical, often via French), those in green are from Greek, those in gold are taken from Old Norse, and the remaining words in black are of native Old English origin.

Borrowed words in English

You may know that the English language has borrowed (or stolen, if you prefer) many, many words from other languages throughout much of its recorded history.

As I mentioned in my introductory article, the invasion of England by Norse tribes from 800-1000 AD resulted in a large wave of borrowed words from Old Norse, even in the basic layer of vocabulary.

Then came the Norman invasion in 1066, which triggered a massive influx of French loanwords into English over a period of centuries. And since the Renaissance, English has borrowed numerous words and affixes from Latin and Greek.

Now, I asked you to imagine that the Viking invasions and the Norman Conquest had never happened. This is all purely hypothetical - and somebody who has a much greater historical knowledge than I do might argue that these invasions were inevitable - but suppose English had never borrowed a massive influx of words from Old Norse and French as a result of these conquests.

How different would English be?

Well, it would certainly bear many more similarities to its closest Germanic relatives than real life English does. There would be far more cognates (related words which come from the same ancestral language) between English and its close relatives Dutch and German if much of the native word stock had not been replaced or reinforced with Norse, French and Latin equivalents.

It's estimated that only 26% of all English words are of Germanic origin (and that includes borrowed words from Old Norse). 29% are from French, 29% are from Latin, 6% are from Greek, 4% derive from proper nouns, and the remaining 6% are from other miscellaneous languages or have an unknown or obscure origin.

It's not unusual for a language to borrow such a high proportion of words from other languages - Japanese and Korean have borrowed wholesale from Chinese in the past - but it's obviously true that the vocabulary of Modern English would be vastly different if the majority of words and affixes were descended directly from Old English.

No doubt, we would make far more use of native prefixes and suffixes such as for-, gain-, out-, through- and -ing, whereas Latin, French and Greek affixes such as pro-, pre-, co(n)-, super-, -ous, -ance, -ation, -al would be considerably rarer if English hadn't borrowed so extensively from these languages.

Creating new words instead of borrowing

Taking things one step further, imagine if this hypothetical English language was resistant to borrowing words from other languages in general. All other Germanic languages have borrowed some words from French, Latin and Greek, but none of them have done so to the same extent as English. 

Certainly none of the other Germanic languages have had their native words for take, give, get, egg and they/them/their replaced by equivalent words from another Germanic language!

Some Germanic languages, mainly German and Icelandic, prefer to create new words using roots that already exist in the language, rather than simply borrowing a word from another language.

For instance, the Icelandic word for 'computer' is tölva, a portmanteau word created from native roots which literally mean 'number prophetess.' One of the German words for 'computer' is Rechner, which means, and is cognate to, 'reckoner.' However, Computer (an English borrowing) is also found in German.

I'm just staring at my laptop number prophetess, dear.

Perhaps if English had developed in relative isolation, without any great influence from another language, then we too would have relied on our own word stock to create new words instead of borrowing wholesale from other tongues. 

Maybe in this hypothetical English, the word for computer (a word with Latin roots) would have turned out as reckoner or rimer².

My aims

What I will attempt to do in the next few articles is to construct an alternative English language which is free of Norse loanwords, and has only a modest number of borrowings from French and Latin. I will replace most borrowed words with native words, using only the attested word stock found in Old English manuscripts. 

It will be possible to work out, through regular sound changes, how these Old English words would have turned out if they had survived into Modern English. To give you one example, ugly comes from Old Norse uggligr, meaning 'fearsome, horrible in appearance.' 

A good native replacement would be forlainly, which derives from the Old English word forlegenlic.

To give another example, language is a borrowing from the Old French word language, which itself has its roots in the Latin word for tongue, lingua. So what word might English have had if it hadn't borrowed language? 

Well, there's always tongue as in 'mother tongue,' but Old English also had two words þēod and þēodisc, both meaning 'language.' Had these words survived into Modern English, they would have become thede and thedish (to rhyme with Swede and Swedish, respectively.) The study of Linguistics could have been called Thedelore.

I hope this has whet your eatlust (appetite.)

My beliefs

I must stress that there is no underlying ideology associated with this project. I do not believe that the English language would be any better or richer if it was free of Norse or Romance loanwords, nor do I subscribe to the idea that borrowing between languages is an inherently bad thing. 

In fact, mutual influence between different languages is commonplace, and I think that English almost certainly would have borrowed many words from French and Latin, even if the Norman Conquest hadn't happened. Instead, I'm simply interested to see how English could have turned out if certain historical events had not taken place.

It turns out I am not the first person to attempt a project like this. There is, in fact, a website devoted to reconstructing and promoting a new version of English with most of its loanwords replaced by Old English-derived equivalents. The project is called 'Anglish,' and you can find the website here. 

It makes for an interesting read, but the ideology behind Anglish seems to be a type of linguistic purism. That is, the proponents of Anglish argue that English would be better off if as many loanwords as possible were replaced with native Old English-derived words. Longer words would be easier to understand, because they would be built up from English rather than French, Latin or Greek roots. Replacing consanguinity (a Latin word) with samebloodedness would be a good idea, according to the Anglish project.

Anglish does allow Old Norse loanwords to stay because, presumably, they are closer to English than French and Latin borrowings are. Although I think their viewpoint is flawed, some of the words that have been proposed are very interesting, and their methodology is pretty sound.

Next up

In my next article, I will go into much greater detail concerning the vocabulary of English, and where most of the non-native words come from. I will give some more examples of words and even sentences where most or all borrowed words have been replaced with words derived from native Old English roots.

Footnotes

1 - Blue is a borderline case. It comes partly from Old English blǣw, and partly from Anglo-Norman blew / blef, which itself was borrowed from a Germanic source.

2 - Or rhymer. Despite its Greek-looking appearance, rhyme is actually a native English word. The verb rhyme derives from Old English rīman, meaning 'to count, reckon, tally up.' Its spelling was altered from rime to rhyme on the incorrect assumption that it was connected to the word rhythm, which really is Greek.

An alternative history of English

Hello, and thanks for reading my language blog!

You'll be pleased to know I'm back on the Blogosphere after another extended break. I'm still very much alive and able to type, and I definitely have not abandoned my blog for good.

Now, please put your imagination caps on for a while, as this will help you understand where I'm going with my next series of articles:

This is an imagination cap.

Suppose, for a moment, that the Norman invasion of England in 1066 had never happened. Things would probably have turned out a bit differently. You could also try to suspend disbelief and imagine that the Viking invasions and immigration had never happened.

Of course, both of these events have changed history. Whole dynasties of English monarchs since 1066, most notably the Normans and the Plantagenets, were of French origin. William the Conqueror confiscated lands from the Anglo-Saxon nobles and gave the land to his French followers. The Normans built hundreds of castles to consolidate their new territory, many of which still stand today.

For centuries after the Norman conquest, the court, government and nobility of England were primarily made up of people of French origin. Of course, Norman French was introduced as the language of the elite.

The linguistic impact of the Norman conquest on English was huge. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of words were borrowed from Norman French in the years following the conquest. Since then, there has been a steady stream of French words entering the English language. First, these loanwords were borrowed from Norman French, but in later centuries, Parisian (or Standard) French became the main source.

I'm going to show you what the English language could have looked like if the Norman conquest had never happened. I do think we would have borrowed some words from French, because most European languages have done so, but there's no way that the vocabulary of English would have been influenced by French to the extent that it has.

Let's not forget the influence of Old Norse on English, either. The Norse-speaking Vikings began their raids on England in 790 AD and these continued until the Norman Conquest. That it is not to say that the Vikings were all bloodthirsty berserkers who were only interested in looting and pillaging. After all, many Vikings settled in Britain, and frequently intermingled with the existing Anglo-Saxon population.

Although Old Norse has not contributed as many borrowed words in English as French has, many of the words that have been taken from Old Norse belong to the very basic layer of vocabulary. Did you know that such everyday words as both, take, egg, ill, flat, happy, loose, low, they, until and want are of Old Norse origin? Most placenames ending in -by, -thorpe and -thwaite have an Old Norse etymology.

The influence of Old Norse on English ran deep indeed, and it's certainly true that the English language would be quite different without the words that it has borrowed from its Germanic cousin.

What I plan to do in my next few articles is remove most (but not all) Norse and French loanwords from English, and replace them with words of native Old English (Anglo-Saxon) origin. I will also look at the ways in which Old Norse and French might have influenced the grammar of English.

The end result could give you some idea of what the English language may have looked like if the Viking invasions and the Norman conquest had never happened.