Discussion in Chinese on Anglish

Saturday, April 26, 2014

I noticed a bit of traffic coming from here last week, a discussion in Chinese of all languages about Anglish, including my proposal that textbooks for Germanic languages be written in Anglish, not English. The suggestion is a bit unrealistic, but to attempt to keep as many Germanic cognates as possible, and even using a few archaic terms, is not. When I did a translation of Aus Martins Tagebuch a month or so ago, for example, the word ereyesterday not only fit vorgestern much better than the day before yesterday, it also fit very nicely underneath.

Though the post is from five years ago I remember the reasons for writing it very cleary: seeing one too many times a textbook for German or Norwegian or something using Romance-derived terminology to explain a word when a Germanic one would have explained it better, and made it easier to remember. For snikskytter in Norwegian for example it's fine to show that the English equivalent is sniper, but if it doesn't mention that it's literally a sneakshooter, it is doing the student a disservice.

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