Pure english

Guest   Sun Apr 27, 2008 3:45 am GMT
Excerpt from Poul Anderson's 'Uncleftish Beholding': Atomic science without latinate words.


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For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.

The underlying kinds of stuff are the firststuffs, which link together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest. Formerly we knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from waterstuff, the lightest and barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest. Now we have made more, such as aegirstuff and helstuff.

The firststuffs have their being as motes called unclefts. These are mighty small: one seedweight of waterstuff holds a tale of them like unto two followed by twenty-two naughts. Most unclefts link together to make what are called bulkbits. Thus, the waterstuff bulkbit bestands of two waterstuff unclefts, the sourstuff bulkbit of two sourstuff unclefts, and so on. (Some kinds, such as sunstuff, keep alone; others, such as iron, cling together in chills when in the fast standing; and there are yet more yokeways.) When unlike unclefts link in a bulkbit, they make bindings. Thus, water is a binding of two waterstuff unclefts with one sourstuff uncleft, while a bulkbit of one of the forestuffs making up flesh may have a thousand or more unclefts of these two firststuffs together with coalstuff and chokestuff.

At first it was thought that the uncleft was a hard thing that could be split no further; hence the name. Now we know it is made up of lesser motes. There is a heavy kernel with a forward bernstonish lading, and around it one or more light motes with backward ladings. The least uncleft is that of everyday waterstuff. Its kernel is a lone forwardladen mote called a firstbit. Outside it is a backwardladen mote called a bernstonebit. The firstbit has a heaviness about 1840-fold that of the bernstonebit. Early worldken folk thought bernstonebits swing around the kernel like the Earth around the Sun, but now we understand they are more like waves or clouds.

Some of the higher samesteads are splitly. That is, when a neitherbit strikes the kernel of one—as, for a showdeal, ymirstuff-235—it bursts it into lesser kernels and free neitherbits; the latter can then split more ymirstuff-235. When this happens, weight shifts into work. It is not much of the whole, but nevertheless it is awesome.

With enought strength, lightweight unclefts can be made to togethermelt. In the Sun, through a row of strikings and lightrottings, four unclefts of waterstuff in this wise become one of sunstuff. Again, some weight is lost as work, and again this is greatly big when set beside the work gotten from a minglingish doing such as fire.

Today we wield both kinds of uncleftish doings in weapons, and kernelish splitting gives us heat and bernstoneness. We hope to do likewise with togethermelting, which would yield an unhemmed wellspring of work for mankindish goodgain. Soothly we live in mighty years.

For although light oftenest behaves as a wave, it can be looked on as a mote—the lightbit. We have already said by the way that a mote of stuff can behave not only as a chunk, but also as a wave. Down among the unclefts, things do not happen in steady flowings, but in leaps over midway bestandings that are forbidden. The knowledge-hunt of this is called lump beholding.

Nor are stuff and work unakin. Rather, they are groundwise the same, and one can be shifted into the other. The kinship between them is that work is like unto weight manifolded by the fourside of the haste of light.

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Guest   Sun Apr 27, 2008 3:51 am GMT
Um? That's pretty stupid. Like, suggesting that latinate words are not 'pure English'.
Colette   Sun Apr 27, 2008 4:03 am GMT
Thank you for sharing that, Guest #1. It is really interesting to see -- it sounds medieval almost, doesn't it? It seems more poetic, too.

Do you know of any other examples like this?
Guest   Sun Apr 27, 2008 4:18 am GMT
<<'suggesting that latinate words are not 'pure English'.>>

They aren't.

The above was difficult to read, but I like the authors intuition. Efforts need to be made to rid our vocabulary of much of the language that was imposed on us by the vulgar latin hordes. We as anglophone people, speak entirely too much french; so much so that we share more lexical similarity with the romance family, then with our own - it should not be this way.

I envy languages like Icelandic that have maintained their linguistic integrity throughout the ages, staying true to our collective roots.
Colette   Sun Apr 27, 2008 4:28 am GMT
>>They aren't.

The above was difficult to read, but I like the authors intuition. Efforts need to be made to rid our vocabulary of much of the language that was imposed on us by the vulgar latin hordes. We as anglophone people, speak entirely too much french; so much so that we share more lexical similarity with the romance family, then with our own - it should not be this way.

I envy languages like Icelandic that have maintained their linguistic integrity throughout the ages, staying true to our collective roots.>>

Even though I love the way French sounds, I agree with this statement for the most part. I would rather feel as if French were a completely foreign language than the way it is now. So much of it is so familiar given the way things are between English and French. I also wish that English had retained its Germanic roots and I do envy languages such as Icelandic as well. It is on my list of languages to study. Having English as a native language makes both French and German easier to study, but I also miss the "linguistic integrity" you mention.
Colette   Sun Apr 27, 2008 4:49 am GMT
I had never heard of this before (as something with a name, anyway), but it is fascinating:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglish
Guest   Sun Apr 27, 2008 4:56 am GMT
Robert Bridges, and the "Society for Pure English" set out to do something like this in the early 1900's

Old New York Times article on the subject:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E02E1DF1F3BE633A25754C0A9649D946296D6CF
Girl Mary   Sun Apr 27, 2008 5:03 am GMT
"I wish to see the English a purer, and more self-enriched tongue, instead of being a jargon made up of four or five others."
-William Barnes
Guest   Sun Apr 27, 2008 6:27 am GMT
Ha ha have fun in dream land Mr. Barnes!
greg   Sun Apr 27, 2008 9:55 am GMT
Hors sujet. La section monolingue est dans l'autre sous-forum.
Guest   Sun Apr 27, 2008 10:08 am GMT
Latinate words are English! They CAME from Latin but they ARE ENGLISH NOW. If you claim that they are not English then you must also claim Latinate words are not Latinate, but are Indo-European, which are not Indo-European, but are Homo Erectus words, which are not homo erectus words, because they are homo ergaster words, which are not homo ergaster words, because they are homo habilis words, because that's where they come from. God, some people.
Guest   Sun Apr 27, 2008 10:14 am GMT
Colette:
"
Even though I love the way French sounds, I agree with this statement for the most part. I would rather feel as if French were a completely foreign language than the way it is now. So much of it is so familiar given the way things are between English and French. I also wish that English had retained its Germanic roots and I do envy languages such as Icelandic as well. It is on my list of languages to study. Having English as a native language makes both French and German easier to study, but I also miss the "linguistic integrity" you mention.
"

Very true! English should return to its roots, that would make it much more poetic and authentic.
Guest   Sun Apr 27, 2008 11:36 am GMT
Latin does not deserve that an ugly and barbaric language like English uses its words, so I am basically agree with that proposal, make English so pure that nobody will learn it.
Guest   Sun Apr 27, 2008 12:19 pm GMT
Latinate words ARE english IDIOTS!!!
Guest   Sun Apr 27, 2008 12:22 pm GMT
Collect-ing forg has declared she is pro-French, WHAT A NEWS!!!!
Repeat it other 378000 times: we have not enough nausea to see it