Why do some here wish that English was linguistically pure?
<<Hence forms constructed from such words would be far more foreign to most English-speakers today than even the most foreign-seeming Romance, Latinate, or Greek constructions that one may see in more academic writing today. >>
I thought the goal was to construct words that were not self-explaining, similar to Greek and Latin words.
You make fun of "small-looker", and then withchoose (reject) adequate possible alternatives.
I think what we have here is not a failure to communicate, but a paradigm shift issue.
Had we brought in a new Greek-Latinate word based on unfamiliar or never-before-seen particles, you would have readily accepted them.
I suppose--as the LORD--I will have to wait another 40 years for a new mindset to arrive on the scene.
<<I suppose--as the LORD--I will have to wait another 40 years for a new mindset to arrive on the scene.>>
In this forum, maybe longer. It's a contentious group. People seem to argue for the sake or argument. About half of the posters post information about their regions,dialects, etc. while the other half seem to be trolls bent on picking a fight for the sake of argument, regardless of the information at hand. But it's worth sticking around for the sake of the good information that does come through. I am not part of the "pure English" crowd, but I do enjoy learning about pre-Chaucerian English.
<<even if modernized by using the forms that would be used today had they survived>>
But this is precisely what we would NOT want to do, right, if we're going for an apples to apples comparison with Graeco-Latin roots--they also are not modernized when brought into English. They are borrowed in the original form albeit pronounced the way would would pronounce them today. ('c' before a front vowel like an 's'; 'g' before front vowel like a 'j'; etc)
See, you have to make it an even playing field for the Old English roots, which up to now it has not been.
The aim, though, with such would not merely to supplant Romance and Greco-Latinate forms with equally foreign anachronous Germanic forms. Rather, the aim would be to effectively resurrect native vocabulary that has been lost, and, as if such words were still native, to use such vocabulary in new constructions including ones replacing Romance and Greco-Latinate forms. The matter, though, is that the phonology and sound profile of Old English and Middle English are significantly different from that of New English dialects, and hence if roots from such were simply taken wholesale into New English without modification they would clearly sound foreign (or be simply horribly mispronounced in a haphazard fashion). Hence to try to restore such roots to nativeness one would have to modify them such that they would be what they would be today had they never been lost in the first place. At least then they would not be phonologically foreign to English-speakers today even if they would be still very unfamiliar in nature to them.
ok, in any event, we can see that the possibilty for such *does exist*, and no, we would not pronounce them the way they probable were pronounced in OE, but as they would be today.
So, do we start replacing existing Graeco-Latin words with new created words based on Old English components?--My answer is No.
Do we start using OE components as an alternative method for creating new words for *new* concepts (things not yet defined or invented) going forward?--why not?
Let's use everything we have at our disposal eh?
...cont.
<we would not pronounce them the way they probable were pronounced in OE, but as they would be today. >
'probably
to clarify, OE "rice" pronounced like /r\ice/ but as /r\ais/
just like we do with Latinate words
<<Let's use everything we have at our disposal eh?>>
I second that motion. I think the more words you have to dsecribe things the richer your language will be. Remember in 1984 when protagonist worked at a government job where one of his duties was to remove superfluous words from the English language? "Bad" became "un-good", etc. The idea was to reduce the population's ability to articulate issues, questions etc.
>>to clarify, OE "rice" pronounced like /r\ice/ but as /r\ais/
just like we do with Latinate words<<
Actually, that is incorrect if one were to modify the Old English word "rice" in a diachronically accurate fashion; rather, OE "rice" would become /ˈraɪ̯tʃ/ or its analogue (here it would be /ˈrəe̯tʃ/ > [ˈʁə̆ĕ̯ʔtʃ], for instance). OE <c> in "rice" had undergone palatalization from Proto-Germanic /k/ as /tʃ/, even though this was not actually originally marked in OE orthography (even though it is often marked with an overdot in academic writing today).
<<Actually, that is incorrect if one were to modify the Old English word "rice" in a diachronically accurate fashion; rather, OE "rice" would become /ˈraɪ̯tʃ/ or its analogue (here it would be /ˈrəe̯tʃ/ > [ˈʁə̆ĕ̯ʔtʃ], for instance). OE <c> in "rice" had undergone palatalization from Proto-Germanic /k/ as /tʃ/, even though this was not actually originally marked in OE orthography (even though it is often marked with an overdot in academic writing today). >>
Yes and No.
You missed what I was saying--my fault.
Correct, if we were to revive OE 'rice'--a word that survives in "rich", but for purposes here, let's pretend it was lost--to a word in Modern English, following analogy with other forms, it would be /ˈraɪ̯tʃ/ or /ˈrəe̯tʃ/ like "ditch". However, we don't do that for Graeco-Latinate words. Otherwise, "dynamite" would be pronounced like 'dünameete' and "reduce" would be 'reduche'/'reduke'--you get the point.
So, if we *don't* pronounce latinate words they way the *should* be pronounced, then we would follow suit for the revived OE words-- OE "rice" would be pronounced like 'rice' (the grain we eat)
>>to clarify, OE "rice" pronounced like /r\ice/ but as /r\ais/ <<
This should have read:
to clarify, OE "rice" pronounced like /r\ice/ would not be pronounced as such, but rather as /r\ais/
I sent the post before realizing I had left that completely out
>>Correct, if we were to revive OE 'rice'--a word that survives in "rich", but for purposes here, let's pretend it was lost--to a word in Modern English, following analogy with other forms, it would be /ˈraɪ̯tʃ/ or /ˈrəe̯tʃ/ like "ditch". However, we don't do that for Graeco-Latinate words. Otherwise, "dynamite" would be pronounced like 'dünameete' and "reduce" would be 'reduche'/'reduke'--you get the point.<<
I actually forgot that it survives as "rich" myself; the vowel shortening, though, is relatively irregular, and thus would not be reflected by an artificial diachronic modernization as in my example.
>>So, if we *don't* pronounce latinate words they way the *should* be pronounced, then we would follow suit for the revived OE words-- OE "rice" would be pronounced like 'rice' (the grain we eat)<<
That is true, but the matter is that if we were to try to revive Old English and Middle English words in the first place it would be quite un-useful, and likely even counterproductive, to try to treat them like Latinate and Greek words are treated in English, which is what i was saying in my second-to-last post.
<<I actually forgot that it survives as "rich" myself; the vowel shortening, though, is relatively irregular, and thus would not be reflected by an artificial diachronic modernization as in my example. >>
The vowel shortening /i/ > /I/ resulted from the long consonant produced by the palatization of /k/ to /c/ (i.e. riiki > riitje > ritje)
<<That is true, but the matter is that if we were to try to revive Old English and Middle English words in the first place it would be quite un-useful, and likely even counterproductive, to try to treat them like Latinate and Greek words are treated in English, which is what i was saying in my second-to-last post. >>
This leads us into the second aspect of reintroduction: some words will undergo the analogous modification as if they had never been lost: fraign ("question") < fraegn; roan ("pure") < raan
but others used for higher register and for particles will not, mimmicking the French:Latin tier we see and enjoy today
roan = "pure"; forrane = "purify"
genius no?
<<but others used for higher register and for particles will not>>
to not do so will cheapen the quality and take us back to square 1, with words sounding like "frappenhouser"; "togetherstelling", etc. Why not just speak German?
no one can take that seriously
not even I can
>>The vowel shortening /i/ > /I/ resulted from the long consonant produced by the palatization of /k/ to /c/ (i.e. riiki > riitje > ritje)<<
Thanks - this sound shift was missed in the history of English sound change that I have been using, which is at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_the_English_language
The main matter, though, is that there is a lot of vowel shortening that went on during the Middle English and Early New English periods that, even if originally regular, in the end turned out to be quite irregular, so I have come to not expect much regularity in any sort of vowel shortening during that period.
>><<but others used for higher register and for particles will not>>
to not do so will cheapen the quality and take us back to square 1, with words sounding like "frappenhouser"; "togetherstelling", etc. Why not just speak German?
no one can take that seriously
not even I can<<
I would have to agree; were we to do all of this, a main goal would be to eliminate much of the literary vocabulary as a "special class" of words set visibly aside from the rest of the vocabulary, and rather use forms replacing such which would not be explicitly literary in nature. In doing so, we would want the replacements for such to be treated like any other resurrected vocabulary, and thus subject to the same phonological modernization as them.