---There's no animosity towards anyone---
Well, I meant it sincerely. If you hate the French, it makes sense to get rid of the borrowings-- perhaps some people still have a grudge about the outcome of that war/invasion 1000 years later. Obviously, rid the language of the evil words! And for that matter, let's eat
Freedom Fries. You see, people actually do that.
If you don't have some external problem with the fact that French influenced English, then why eliminate the words? Seriously, I don't get it. Is this about "purity"? In which case it would be perhaps even more silly because languages always change and Old English was just as changed (from Proto-Germanic or Proto-Indo-European or whatever else) as Modern English is today. Nothing is "original". The only serious application can be preserving information about earlier stages of English, which is great, but there's no room for fiction or new coinings in that-- those belong in fictional writing, which is fine in itself, as I said. It's even interesting.
Where is the need to ignore the fact that by simplifying word particles, we simply arrive to a better interpretational understanding of the word meaning:
foretell >> fore/tell - predict ??
book/ly - literary
ever/lasting - infinite (among hundreds of other examples)
That's not an argument. That's an option.
That is useful from a learning perspective. But it's also somewhat boring. A lot of people like the different nuances associated with words in English. "bookly" just doesn't give the sense that "literary" does, especially when "book" and "literature" are NOT the same meaning. You'll always be losing something when you do that.
Secondly, please consider that we memorize most frequent forms anyway, so "literary" or "bookly", whichever, we'll memorize it after we use it a few times. So it won't matter if it's guessable or not.
- it is also a way to discover old terms that have regretfully fallen out of use or have failed to evolve into their modern English form (in the case of obsolete Old English words) and to examine to what extent the amount of inkwell terms have been replaced by inkhorn counterparts
Is it regrettable that the Greek empire fell (or that the Norman French invaded England)? That's old history. Why are lost words regrettable?
Why is having more words considered a good thing? When words aren't used any more it's because they're not needed. We wouldn't one day just stop saying "hand" because it was "regrettably lost"-- we'll keep saying it, unless it becomes obsolete (=effectively useless), perhaps by having a direct competitor (a loan?) or because people no longer have hands in several million years. Either way, it's not regrettable.
Change happens (or more cleverly "shift happens", pun intended).
and to plan on bringing back and to reintroduce many of these words in different contexts*
Again, why? There are probably some garments worn centuries ago that aren't worn any more. And likewise certain ship designs (like big ones with sails) that aren't used any more. Should these be brought back? Language really is part of culture and a kind of technology-- words change over time.
* without denying the fact that many greco-latinisms tend to provide a certain flexibility and malleability rendering them more suitable to technical, scientific contexts etc. than their loan free English counterparts
Exactly. Having borrowed words isn't bad! It's just different.
One could also plan on writing the same book for any other language, even-though English given its sizable amount of loan terms is a specifically interesting case-study.
I certainly agree with you that English is the obvious choice because of the broad effect. There are some other languages in somewhat similar situations such as Swahili with Arabic loans, although I don't know of any case anywhere with more than 50% of the words borrowed. The only obvious cases would be creoles but that's a special case.
So along with freknu and Cory, believe me that I don't mean anything negative against you. I just don't get it. Why this rather than infinitely many other things? For example, I don't understand why it wouldn't be equally interesting to consider the all-borrowings version of English I mentioned above. If it's "why not?", then indeed, why not?
