Post by Michael F. StemperPost by pyotr filipivichPost by Jack BohnPost by QuadiblocPost by pyotr filipivichMy wife the linguist wonders if anyone has compiled Anderson use of
"Anlgish" (what he wrote Uncleftish Beholding in) into one place.
And here I thought that Uncleftish Beholding _was_ that one place.
So he also used it on other occasions, in other works?
OK, I was confused for a while. "Anglic" is his term for the lingua franca used in -at least- the Van Rijn stories. It was fully translated to contemporary English for publication.
Okay.
What my wife has in mind is several other "constructed languages"
such as Hildigard of Bingen's "Lingua Ignota". She was wondering if
Anderson has had anyone collect the useages of his Anglic (my mistake
to have called it "Anglish") and published them.
Did he actually show any Anglic? I thought that it was all "translated"
to English, kind of like Shire-speech.
My understanding is that Anderson applied the rules of linguistic
change to Anglo-Saxon (aka Old English) and left out the influence of
Norman French. The result is a language with fewer words from
"Romance" (Latin based) languages and retaining the grammatical
inflections of Old English. Much like modern German, Dutch, usw which
has 'different' articles ('the', 'a') depending on Gender and Case.
(that whole Der, Die, Das, Ein, Eine, Ein thing. e.g.:
The fish. Der Fisch.
A fish Ein Fisch.
One fish, two fishes. Ein Fisch, zwei Fische.
Red fish, blue fish. Roter Fisch, blauer Fisch.
Red fishes, blue fishes. Rote Fische, blaue Fische.
My fish, your fish. Mein Fisch, dein Fisch.
The bowl of my fish. Die Schale mit meinem Fisch.
The cats ate the fish. Die Katzen haben die Fische gefressen.
A cat ate my fish Eine Katze hat meinen Fisch gefressen.
Your cats ate my fishes. Deine Katzen haben meine Fische gefressen.
etc. usw.)
So, without the influence of the Frenchified Norse from 1066
onwards, you could have an "Anglic" which _might_ have retained more
of the Saxon grammar, complete with grammatical inflections,
pre-fixes, suffixes, different articles, und so weiter.
I realize that in novels (or the Moving Pictures), it really
doesn't matter what language the characters are speaking, for the
reader / audience to understand the dialogue it must be 'translated'
into the contemporary target language, I.e., English. I started
working on a conlang where the "genders" are animal, plant, or stone.
Plus "infixes" - 'to (adverb) verb'. After I retire (aging) I shall
resume. Maybe. But any dialogue in a story will have to be
"translated" into English for my reader.
Meanwhile, The Wife wants to work out where English might go as it
transitions more to being an Isolating language, as well as a couple
variants for use by trolls, elves and a third group. Also "Someday".
--
pyotr filipivich
This Week's Panel: Us & Them - Eliminating Them.
Next Month's Panel: Having eliminated the old Them(tm)
Selecting who insufficiently Woke(tm) as to serve as the new Them(tm)