
Uncleftish Beholding: An Uploosening of English Cleanness (2018) - samclemens
https://words.usask.ca/helus/2018/03/27/uncleftish-beholding/
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qubex
> _These scientific words, like hydrogen, oxygen, and many others, are very
> important since they filled lexical gaps that English had. English is known
> for its robbery from the lexicons of other languages, but this is not a bad
> thing. Loanwords improve the precision of speech by providing more options
> to say one thing by filling lexical gaps._

This gives me the feeling of getting things “standardly backwards”, just like
semiconductors described in terms of negatively charged, positive-mass
electrons moving in one direction rather than positive-charge negative-mass
‘holes’ moving in the opposite direction. It’s not that English lacked words
for these concepts and that it imported them integrally meanings _et al_.

That isn’t what’s happening at all. New concepts are arising as our scientific
understanding expands. As a consequence, a vacancy in the lexicon is needed to
succinctly and unambiguously address these new concepts. Loan words are a very
convenient manner of getting these new ‘labels’ we need: they’re not already
present in our language so they do not risk causing ambiguity, and by the same
token probably have less ancillary baggage and implications involved. Foreign
words are thus phonetically stolen wholesale but conceptually are probably
quite warped, or at least made far more precise and specific than they are for
speakers of the language from which the word was ‘borrowed’ (just as in
English itself, vague terms such as ‘mass’, ‘work’, and ‘force’ were given
very precise technical meanings to enable succinct but accurate conversation).

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lordnacho
This is actually not so weird if you speak a Germanic language (which you do,
but I mean the ones on the other side of the sea). Of course Latin has long
crept into German and Scandi languages, but there's significant pieces left.
Things like sourstuff and "choking-stuff" (nitrogen) are still there in
chemistry textbooks.

Likewise with other technical jargon like average (cut: schnitt, snit, etc)
and density (mass-fill). In the end though it's much easier to switch to
English, because everyone speaks it nowadays.

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MandieD
The first thing I tell any new doctor I go to here in Germany is that she
ought to use the “technical” (Latin/Greek-derived) terms for organs, diseases
and procedures when speaking with me, because I’m more likely to know those
than the “simple” (common language) equivalents.

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1-more
What's an example of those in German? In English I find it kind of unnecessary
that we use a Latin word for adjectives when we have a Germanic noun already;
wolf, dog, neck, liver, and kidney but lupine, canine, cervical (already
ambiguous depending on if we're talking about cancer or vertebrae), hepatic,
and renal. Anyone learning English will effectively have to learn a whole
other set of words for the "concerning" adjectives because some fancy lad
writing his treatise in like 1600 was too cool to say "kidneyish failure." Or
how we don't say "life science" for biology, but if I were learning Chinese
once I had those two words I could guess the term for "biology" just fine

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MandieD
As an expectant mother, I've memorized Mutterkuchen (“Mothercake”) for
placenta, Gebärmutter (“Gebären” - birth) for uterus, Gebärmutterhals
(“Wombneck”) for cervix, because while my doctor uses the Latin-derivates with
me (as I requested her to), the Hebammen (midwives) who teach prenatal classes
and make home visits to you and your baby the first few weeks out of the
hospital really don’t, and I strongly suspect hospital personnel will avoid
the “advanced” vocabulary upon hearing me sound like a Texan attempting to
speak German.

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1-more
TY!! Very interesting and good point I hadn't thought of: internationally
agreed upon synthetic words actually can give second language speakers a leg
up when their native language has the same words. Kind of an inversion of the
original purpose of the specialized language, which is cool. Many happy
returns for your little one!

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Taikonerd
There's an Anglish community on Reddit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/anglish/](https://www.reddit.com/r/anglish/)

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gowld
Someone has written software to help Anglishizing words and text, yes? If not,
someone will, right? This is a great thesis project for a student of computer
science and linguistics.

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082349872349872
I doubt it's been software (I suspect wetware), but Anglishisation during my
lifetime has included:

    
    
       soldier => warfighter
       legislator => lawmaker.
    

(the prof who made the game of Life would now and then play a game where one
must say what one would like to in just words that have no more than one
"sound" to them.)

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philwelch
“Warfighter” is one of the more recent of a series of invented terms for
members of the American military. “Soldier” strictly implies a member of the
Army, and since we have four going on five branches of the military now,
simply listing them all (soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and...spacemen?)
is awkward. The previous catch-all term of “servicemen” is considered sexist,
on top of not sounding nearly as macho for whatever that’s worth.

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mc32
Servicemen or servicewomen does make me think of a service station more than
martial forces.

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alangibson
I the phrase 'Uncleftish Beholding' gave me brain damage. Now my inner
monologue sounds like it was written by George R.R. Martin.

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hprotagonist
Closer to Tolkien—who was, after all, a professor of anglo saxon.

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enriquto
I like to use "uncleftish beholding" as a sort of test for possible future
hires. If someone has the will and the patience to decode at least a bit of
it, then we are into something.

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pjc50
Genuinely unsure if this is a parody of interview techniques or not.

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BitwiseFool
I shuffle each pile of resumes and throw half in the trash. I don't want to
hire unlucky employees.

