I glaver it, in its wholeness.

[the_benj]

Okay, this is awesome. William Barnes wrote a book in 1878 called An Outline of English Speech-Craft, in which he advocated excising the foreign influences from English, removing the French, German, Latin, etc, leaving the mighty Anglo-Saxon tongue.

He suggested new versions of words, to fill the gaps this would produce.
For instance, "indicative" would be replaced with "the surehood mood";
"Machine" with "jinny";
"Posterity" with "afterkin";
"Depilatory" with "hairbane".

So, onquicken! Escape my unbreathpenned (inarticulate) ramblings, to the amberish forstonenings (electric fossils) of the branglings (altercations) 'tween the noble tongue of the isles and the outside wordhoards (vocabularies)!

Comments

Pedantry ahoy!

[nitedula.livejournal.com]

escape: from Old North French escaper, from Vulgar Latin excappare (to get out of one's cloak (cappa));
noble: from Latin nobilis (well-known, well-born);
isle: from Latin insula (island).

Also mood (the grammatical meaning): from Latin modus (manner).

Ahahahaha!!!!! You cannot escape the Latin!

I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I actually know you, but I saw this entry on boojumlol's friends page and I can't resist this sort of thing.

[sirtwist.livejournal.com]

I love it! Though it would be hard to separate a lot of the German influence from the Anglo-Saxon.

Re: Pedantry ahoy!

[thebenj.livejournal.com]

I know! This is what makes it so hilarious, I feel.
Yes, I did specifically pick these words as Latin-rooted, to show my point, you caught me.

I don't know if I know you, but *has a look* I suspect I do.

Are you teaching at Allo's now? If so, I know who you are.

Re: Pedantry ahoy!

[nitedula.livejournal.com]

Yes, I am at Alo's; who are you? You seem to know a lot of people I know, but I'm terrible at working out who people are, and I forget names depressingly fast (not a good attribute in a teacher).

Re: Pedantry ahoy!

[thebenj.livejournal.com]

I'm, uh, Benj.
I think I met you at Mattley's (spidercat) Birthday a while ago. Of course, I could be thinking of some other person with very long, blonde hair.

[berym.livejournal.com]

Dear Gods, above and below.

I'm not even going to touch this, the Slanging Match was bad enough >_>

[thebenj.livejournal.com]

Slanging Match?

Oh, right, that.

I hadn't thought of it as a match, sorry.

[thebenj.livejournal.com]

By which I mean that I just thought of it as friendly banter, not that I consider you a poor "opponent".
Just to be clear.

Re: Pedantry ahoy!

[nitedula.livejournal.com]

I've never been to one of his birthday parties, so you must be thinking of someone else. I'm Lisa, and my hair is long, but sort of medium brown, and I teach Latin, and I sing alto in SUMS. A rather crap photo of me can be found here (http://www.breesestreet.org/gallery/AEF-2005/Adelaide_Easterfest_099) (I'm the one lying on everybody's lap).