English language - no Norman conquest.

With regards poetry, it could be argued that the entire language has followed the lead of Shakespeare-era poets in dropping the pronunciation of the "e" in such words as "learned" and "loved", which would be done in poetry and verse-plays to make a line fit the metrical scheme.

Not to mention the huge number of words and phrases that Shakespeare just invented.
 
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Without Norman-French influence, modern English would have a much shorter vocabulary, lacking all those multi-syllabic words of Latin origin.

"Throw me in as one more sayer of Normanless Anglish as Eylander Freesh and Freesh as Mainlander Normanless Anglish!"

That's still very like my first string of words, with just some small word changes and a few spelling changes for a lack of French encroachment on spelling and how to say words (mostly 'English/Anglish', 'Islander/Eylander' and 'Friese/Freesh').

Very much stays the same and the meaning is still very clear.

All these words are Normanless, too. :D
 
1) good butter and good cheese/is good English and good Fries

2) track down a copy of Poul Anderson 's "Uncleftish Beholding". A short essay on Atomic Theory written in a possible Anglish.
 
2) track down a copy of Poul Anderson 's "Uncleftish Beholding". A short essay on Atomic Theory written in a possible Anglish.

That is kind of extreme, since "atomic theory" is Greek, and no Greek ever conquered England AFAIK, so that's more of a linguistic purism experiment than no-Norman one. OTL Germanic people generally have no problems with scientific vocabularies in Latin or Greek, and I don't see this ATL Anglish going the Icelandic route.
 
That is kind of extreme, since "atomic theory" is Greek, and no Greek ever conquered England AFAIK, so that's more of a linguistic purism experiment than no-Norman one. OTL Germanic people generally have no problems with scientific vocabularies in Latin or Greek, and I don't see this ATL Anglish going the Icelandic route.

Indeed there was plenty of Latin loans in Old English anyway due to the Church. I see no reason that would change unless there's a later HyperProtestant movement that deliberately removes it all.
 
That is kind of extreme, since "atomic theory" is Greek, and no Greek ever conquered England AFAIK, so that's more of a linguistic purism experiment than no-Norman one. OTL Germanic people generally have no problems with scientific vocabularies in Latin or Greek, and I don't see this ATL Anglish going the Icelandic route.

http://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.language.artificial/ZL4e3fD7eW0/_7p8bKwLJWkJ well there is Uncleftish Beholdings that did it.
 

It says "400 bad request" for me.

But if you linked to the original "Uncleftish Beholding" paper, then perhaps you misunderstood my post. I said that it's rather a linguistic purism "Anglish" than a no-Norman "Anglish", since it's perfectly normal to have Greco-Roman vocabularies seep into Anglo-Saxon even without Normans. It wouldn't be as extensive in everyday vocabulary but quite possible to have a lot of them in science. So probably "hueship" instead of "family" but still "Atomic Theory" for "Atomic Theory"
 
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Well if we want a good example of how ut would sound, take a look at Scots, a language/dialect of English in Scotland that kept the gh sound (x), trilled r (r), the German ch sound from "Ich" and "Reich" (ç) and tons of archaic Old English words.
 
Well if we want a good example of how ut would sound, take a look at Scots, a language/dialect of English in Scotland that kept the gh sound (x), trilled r (r), the German ch sound from "Ich" and "Reich" (ç) and tons of archaic Old English words.

That's a good example of a retained consonant inventory along with those of OTL (the "th" sounds, labialized "w", etc.), as is Northern/"Northumbrian" English in general (and Scouse in particular, which traditionally has had those sounds you bring up as well). Depending on where the "prestige" register comes from, the vowel sounds could resemble East Midlands, Northumbrian/Scottish or West Saxon/West Country in all likelihood, given those areas' demographic and administrative importance at different times.
 
I'm glad that people have already pointed out what I was going to- exercises like Uncleftish Beholding are ones in linguistic purism, are often a counterreaction to the older notion that latinate or hellenic root words are more prestigious, and are based on the equally silly notion that English would be far better off removing everything but Germanic-derived words from it.

As people have very sensibly pointed out, Old English already had quite a number of Latin loan words, many deriving from a Christian context but not all of them by any means. Whilst obviously the corpus of Old English has limitations, people do still generally feel able to date the presence of a particular Latin loan's appearance in Old English, and the collated data on that indicates that the number of loans over time gradually increased and accelerated. It seems to me ludicrous to imagine that an Old English without Norman would at best stop taking in Latin or Greek loanwords, and most preposterously purge itself of all of the pre-existing ones.

You would have thought that Old or Middle French loanwords would still, to some degree, have made their way into this theoretical *English, or at the very least some dialects. Likewise, unless we're butterflying away a perceived Renaissance, be that the 12th century variety or the one which often gets the definite article, the prominence of Latin and Greek is certainly going to intellectually increase in *English speaking societies in Britain. You may still very well end up with *English having specific loans coming from Classical philology, the equivalents of the real examples like 'medize/medise', 'cornucopia', 'cohort', 'aboriginal', 'metropolis' etc.

I've actually got a partially worked-out example of a non-Norman *English, but I, errr, call it Manglo-Saxon in a kind of self deprecatory instinct... It's also not got the most fidelity to what such a thing would really look like, because I have occasionally kowtowed to the simplicity of having some things coincidentally seem more like modern English. Having said that, do bear in mind that the pattern for most languages over time has generally been simplification, and the gradual loss of at least some final sounds regardless of the continued use of older orthography. Any attempt at *English should recognise that at least some form of simplification is likely, and that not all of the changes from Old to Middle English result from the influence of Anglo-Norman.
 
I'm glad that people have already pointed out what I was going to- exercises like Uncleftish Beholding are ones in linguistic purism, are often a counterreaction to the older notion that latinate or hellenic root words are more prestigious, and are based on the equally silly notion that English would be far better off removing everything but Germanic-derived words from it.

As people have very sensibly pointed out, Old English already had quite a number of Latin loan words, many deriving from a Christian context but not all of them by any means. Whilst obviously the corpus of Old English has limitations, people do still generally feel able to date the presence of a particular Latin loan's appearance in Old English, and the collated data on that indicates that the number of loans over time gradually increased and accelerated. It seems to me ludicrous to imagine that an Old English without Norman would at best stop taking in Latin or Greek loanwords, and most preposterously purge itself of all of the pre-existing ones.

You would have thought that Old or Middle French loanwords would still, to some degree, have made their way into this theoretical *English, or at the very least some dialects. Likewise, unless we're butterflying away a perceived Renaissance, be that the 12th century variety or the one which often gets the definite article, the prominence of Latin and Greek is certainly going to intellectually increase in *English speaking societies in Britain. You may still very well end up with *English having specific loans coming from Classical philology, the equivalents of the real examples like 'medize/medise', 'cornucopia', 'cohort', 'aboriginal', 'metropolis' etc.

I've actually got a partially worked-out example of a non-Norman *English, but I, errr, call it Manglo-Saxon in a kind of self deprecatory instinct... It's also not got the most fidelity to what such a thing would really look like, because I have occasionally kowtowed to the simplicity of having some things coincidentally seem more like modern English. Having said that, do bear in mind that the pattern for most languages over time has generally been simplification, and the gradual loss of at least some final sounds regardless of the continued use of older orthography. Any attempt at *English should recognise that at least some form of simplification is likely, and that not all of the changes from Old to Middle English result from the influence of Anglo-Norman.

Indeed it's generally accepted now that most of the case and declension reduction happened as a result of the Danelaw since they began in Northumbrian and spread southward
 
Indeed there was plenty of Latin loans in Old English anyway due to the Church. I see no reason that would change unless there's a later HyperProtestant movement that deliberately removes it all.
Latin words penetrated all European languages to some extent, and no church movement would remove them. Notice how the Latin "exit" jumps from Latin to English but does not show up in French or Dutch.
 
I'm glad that people have already pointed out...
I've actually got a partially worked-out example of a non-Norman *English, but I, errr, call it Manglo-Saxon in a kind of self deprecatory instinct... It's also not got the most fidelity to what such a thing would really look like, because I have occasionally kowtowed to the simplicity of having some things coincidentally seem more like modern English. Having said that, do bear in mind that the pattern for most languages over time has generally been simplification, and the gradual loss of at least some final sounds regardless of the continued use of older orthography. Any attempt at *English should recognise that at least some form of simplification is likely, and that not all of the changes from Old to Middle English result from the influence of Anglo-Norman.

For the record, I do think that total linguistic purism is a bit of nonsense in any language, but I utterly detest the degree to which it's happened in OTL English vice their sister tongues. That being said, I'd be very interested in what your so-called "Manglo-Saxon" would look like, possibly as a legitimate alt-English version. I'm of the opinion that, even without the Normans, alt-English wouldn't be utterly incomprehensible by OTL standards as of the modern day period if an alt-Hastings POD is used, as grammar and phonology (and even some vocabulary) were in flux before 1066, with many changes pre-dating the Normans (the case simplification dumbing-down comes to mind).

Latin words penetrated all European languages to some extent, and no church movement would remove them. Notice how the Latin "exit" jumps from Latin to English but does not show up in French or Dutch.

You're not wrong on the first part, although I should point out that "exit" didn't get adopted by English until the 1690s in OTL as an extension of the stage direction in plays, and probably wouldn't arise thus even with an ATL that has a Middle English point of departure (let alone an Old English one).
 
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