A language of beautiful impurity

'English is both a Germanic and a Latin language' - and that's its strength

The Gouth of Hastings was fought at Sandlake Hill in mid-October, 1066. There, the English, under King Harold, won a breme and athel seyer over the Normans, led by Earl William ‘the Unrightluster’, a man who was willing to spill a swith great muchness of blood to fulfil his yearning for the English highsettle, wealth and his own wulder.

So the author David Cowley imagined an alternative history in How We'd Talk if the English had Won in 1066, a short primer on what the language would look like if Harold II had not died at the famous (breme) battle (gouth) of Hastings - and English had not undergone Frenchification following the Norman Conquest.

In this world, lamentation is sorrowword, unanimous becomes sameheart and acceptable is replaced with thankworthy. The US Declaration of Independence would be the ‘Forthspell of Selfdom’ while Alcoholics Anonymous renamed as The Unnamed Overdrinkers.

Even spellings would be markedly different; there is no gh combination in this version of English so we have noiht and soiht. The letter C would never be pronounced as an S, and there is no ‘Q’, so the king is married to the cween.

Cowley suggested mislikeness for different, bethought for planned, inherd for family and werekin for human race. Fertility would be replaced by bearingness, while community is meanship. A moderate improvement becomes a metefast bettering, frivolity becomes lightmoodness, while modesty is shamefastness.

Parliament would be the Witanmoot, while the king sits on the highsettler rather than the throne, and the Ministry of Defence becomes the Shieldness Thaneship, and the Prime Minister is now the First Thane. Since medical terms in English are hugely influenced by Latin, in this alternative lexicon a seizure is a gripiness and an amputation a snithing.

The English linguistic purism movement dates back to the 16th century, and concerned the use of ‘inkhorn terms’, foreign loanwords that repeat existing usage. One of the earliest proponents was Thomas Wilson, who criticised those who ‘seeke so far for outlandish English, that they forget altogether their mothers language’.

One of the most notable campaigners was Victorian poet William Barnes, who wished to replace foreign loan words with Germanic Anglo-Saxon terms he’d made up: genealogy becomes kin-lore, grammar speech-craft and, perhaps less attractive, forceps become nipperlings. He also suggested wortlore for botany, welkinfire for meteor, and sunprint for photograph.

What made Barnes interesting was that he was a noted scholar of foreign languages. Paul Kingsnorth, who takes a keen interest in Old English, described him as ‘a rural boy from Dorset who became a literary figure befriended by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Thomas Hardy. He was a polymath, speaking seven languages and teaching himself mathematics, music and wood engraving. All of this was done from the Dorset village he lived in; his walks in to Dorchester to set his watch by the town clock were the closest he came to metropolitan life.’

Barnes’s poem, ‘The Fall’, is typical of this Saxon style of verse.

The length o' days ageän do shrink
   An' flowers be thin in meäd, among
   The eegrass a-sheenèn bright, along
Brook upon brook, an' brink by brink.

   Noo starlèns do rise in vlock on wing—
   Noo goocoo in nest-green leaves do sound—
   Noo swallows be now a-wheelèn round—
Dip after dip, an' swing by swing.

The linguistic purism movement peaked in the age of industrialisation, in a country losing its local traditions, songs and dialects, some of which still carried traces of the Anglo-Saxon past. As anyone forced to read Thomas Hardy at school will know, the Wessex dialect of south-west England still retained some of these characteritics well into the modern age, with I be, thee bis, he be obviously closer to Ich bin, du bis, er ist than to the standard ‘I am, you are, he is’.

Anglo-Saxon terms often lasted longer in Scotland and England’s north-east, where the influence of a French overclass was weakest, but older words could hang on in more remote parts. A versions of ‘outlander’, cognate with German ausländer and Dutch buitenlander, was noted by an anthropologist in the Appalachians in 1910; people still used the word ‘foreigner’ to describe people from beyond the region, distinguishing them from non-English speakers, who were ‘outlandish’.

The Anglo-Saxon language movement didn’t really take off, perhaps because pan-Germanism was tainted, but most of all because linguistic purity campaigns are always hopeless battles against globalisation, choice and fashion (consider France’s doomed fight against Franglais).

Yet there is still great interest in the language that might have been. Kingsnorth's highly-acclaimed novel The Wake is written in a hybrid of Old and modern English. There is also an online newsletter called The Anglish Times, which has an enjoyable Twitter feed offering alternative terms. A primer on Anglish for the Anglish Times declares:.

‘One way Anglish is beneficial over Modern English is in giving people an easier and more visceral understanding of academic or otherwise abstract concepts. For example the academic study of birds is called ornithology. Unless you already knew the Greek words Ornis, meaning bird and Logia, meaning to speak about, then you would likely have no idea what this word means upon first encountering it. Whereas if you said Birdlore, native English speakers will already know the component words making up the compound, and can guess pretty easily what it means.’

In Anglish, theology would be godlore. rhetoric is speechcraft. doctors would be healers, journalists newsmen, and status-signalling would be rankmarking. A rodent is a gnawdeer while a comedian is a laughtersmith.

It would sound to us like a very different language, and many of these Anglish terms would make English far more like German, with ingoing for entrance similar to eingang.

Among the other possible Anglish words are afterwardness for posterity, applewine for cider, belaugh instead of deride, birther for foetus, bookhouse for library and breastwhelm for grief. Your grandparents would be your eldfather and eldmother, while enoughsome would replace sufficient. A giant is an ettin, while malevolent is replaced by evilwilled.

A prudent person is forethoughtful, while a mountain is a highberg. In medicine, sciatica would be hipboneache while starvation is hungerbitten. Perjury, one of many legal terms borrowed from the French, becomes oathbreach; a lunatic is moonsick. An official becomes a reeve (the original term survives in sheriff), suicide is selfmurder, rational becomes shadewise and divorce is wedbreach. A debate is a wordwrestle while public disgrace is worldshame.

Some of these are charming, like wordhoard for vocabulary, although some of it sounds rather simple: trueless for false and twowordy for ambiguous, or upgoing for ascent, seenly for visible and farness for distance.

Because of the higher class association of French, Anglo-Saxon speech will always appear more earthy, less pompous than Latinate terms. French words are usually more formal or aristocratic sounding: ascend, rather than rise, status rather than standing, mansion rather than house, cordial rather than hearty. J.R.R. Tolkien, an Anglo-Saxon scholar who lamented the loss of 1066, even had Denethor using more French-derived terms after he went mad.

Most people with an interest in the subject will also know of Orwell’s famous advice that: ‘Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, sub-aqueous and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers.’

Anglo-Saxon language can also have more emotional, atavistic appeal. When in 1940 Britain faced an invasion even more devastating than that of 1066, Winston Churchill made a speech that notably used ancient vocabulary: ‘We shall fight on the beaches; we shall fight on the landing grounds; we shall fight in the fields and the streets; we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.’ All but the final word are of Old English origin, and perhaps this was deliberate.

Yet as much as I would have been on Team Harold in 1066, and fun as this all is, I’m grateful for the variety which French has given us. It enriches our language that the Old English see, ask, come, let, eat and break can be doubled by perceive, inquire, arrive, permit, ingest and damage. It is good and beneficial that we have house and residence, kin and relative, talk and conversation, high and elevated, fair and equitable, good and favourable.

Such is the richness of the language that often English nouns retained the native terms while the adjective became French, so that we have water/aquatic, mouth/oral, son/filial and sun/solar. As David Crystal wrote in The Stories of English, another curious result of this bilingualism is that legal English possesses various lexicon doublets, made up of an English and French word, such as breaking and entering, fit and proper, wrack and ruin, acknowledge and confess, give and grant, lands and tenements, new and novel, pardon and forgive.

As Crystal also noted, some words have come across the Channel twice, both through Norman and Parisian French, giving us almost-twin doublets such as convey and convoy, gaol and jail, warden and guardian, warrant and guarantee, wile and guile.

Many hybrid terms mix the Anglo-Saxon suffix ful and French adjectives, like beautiful, graceful, merciful and faithful. Alternatively, French able is added to Anglo-Saxon roots to make knowable or doable.

Thanks to the Normans we have two words for many conditions, such as friendship and amity, brotherhood and fraternity, motherhood and maternity, cheer and cherish, cave and cavern, stand and stay, thoughtful and pensive, smell and odour, help and aid, weep and cry, weird and strange, harbour and port, worthy and valuable, and knowledge and science. As charming as the Anglish ‘sealy’ is, I think maritime is an improvement.

As the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges explained, on why he preferred this language more than any other: ‘English is both a Germanic and a Latin language. Those two registers — for any idea you take, you have two words. Those words will not mean exactly the same. For example if I say “regal” that is not exactly the same thing as saying “kingly.” Or if I say “fraternal” that is not the same as saying “brotherly.” Or “dark” and “obscure.” Those words are different. It would make all the difference—speaking for example—the Holy Spirit, it would make all the difference in the world in a poem if I wrote about the Holy Spirit or I wrote the Holy Ghost, since “ghost” is a fine, dark Saxon word, but “spirit” is a light Latin word.’

He was correct, and without this French and Latin influence our language would be far poorer. For that we should be thankful, grateful and appreciative.

The UK edition of 1066 is now available to buy