User:Hurlebatte

= Kinds of Anglish =

Whenever we've tried to classify the different kinds of Anglish our classifications would kind of break down because we would try to come up with narrow boxes which few people neatly fit into. I think I've come up with something better. I think there are three main approaches to Anglish which everyone pretty neatly fits into, and which explains their preferences.

The Modern Purism Approach

This is the earliest approach, as seen in works like Uncleftish Beholding. With this approach you take Modern English, cut out non-Germanic loanwords, then work with what's left.

The Historical Purism Approach

This approach developed next. I didn't witness this myself, but I think what happened is after the Anglish Moot was founded and people began trying to use Anglish for more than writing a couple articles, they noticed how limited Anglish is because of its small vocabulary. Since a dead inborn word is still an inborn word, the Anglish Moot began looking to historical forms of English to strengthen Anglish's vocabulary.

The Healing Approach

This is the latest approach. I've seen a shift in this direction on the Anglish Moot (they don't use made-up country names as much as they used to), but the strongest form exists on Reddit and Discord. The goal of this approach is to restore English's inborn vocabulary, but not to reject loanwords like monkey, tiramisu, and Indonesia which don't threaten inborn words.

= Naming Countries =

Settling on Anglish names for countries is hard, but here are guidelines I've come up with for myself:

1) If Old English had a name for a country, then we can use that.

2) Old English would borrow country names with -ia, so we can too. However, we should only do this if the natives call their country a name ending in -ia. We shouldn't take it upon ourselves to apply New Latin names to places. So let's keep Indonesia (since the locals call it that), but replace Abkhazia with Abkhazland.

3) If a name is widely calqued by the other languages of the world, or even just Germanic languages, we can calque it too. So in the same way German has "Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika", Anglish can have "Oned Riches of America".

4) The native English way of distinguishing lands from each other when they share the same name was to incorporate directional terms, so let's continue this practice. For example, the two Congos can be West Congo and East Congo.

5) If Middle English has an older form of a name than the one Modern English has, we can use that. So Surry instead of Syria. Surry is the result of the word being borrowed early and being nativised. Syria is the result of the word being reborrowed.