English Language Questions.

[Umbric Man]

I've been looking through the 'Anglish Moot' wiki that espouses Anglo-Saxon linguistic purism, or however the term is on Wikipedia. It brought up some questions in my mind.

This is a broad area to ponder on, but if the Norman Invasion of 1066 never happened or English at least resisted the (admittedly massive) Norman French influence on the language....

1) Would English-speakers still have a hard-on for introducing French terminology into our language? England is still right next to France, and France and French has historically been a prestigious area/language of Europe.

2) Would Anglos still have the great inkhorn debate with introducing hundreds of Latin and Greek terms into the language? Would we even have one in the first place?

3) How similar would English be to Dutch, German, and the Scandinavian languages?

4) Would there be any immediate spelling or grammar changes without the above influences?

 

[The Professor]

I was about to create a similar thread...

Anywho, considering the importance of the Church within pre Conquest England and that Latin words were adopted for administrative terms we'd likely still see some Latin import into English as it develops.

French words are less likely to be adopted prior to 1400s (assuming France gets just as big ATL) but we could see some adoption on line with that from Low German and Old Dutch.

A lot of the changes to Old English were already beginning Pre Conquest likely due to the previous Danish Conquest so in the absence of Norman and French influence I can see the changes being slower wrt OTL but we'd still see a simplification of case endings and grammar.
Plus I see a Great Vowel Shift as nearly unavoidable if lesser as the continental West German dialects/languages also underwent to varying degrees.

Overall something like a Scots/Northern-English mix is a possible result.

Spellingwise is where we could see a lot of differences v OTL since much of our regular spelling comes from Anglo-French scribes.

In my view we'd see continuation of Edh and Thorn but regularised to Ð đ and Ŧ ŧ.
Yogh will split into J j and G g.
Instead of Gh replacing Yogh and H before consonants we'd see the continuation of H replacing Yogh.
F will parallel S being unvoiced medially but V and Z will likely still be adopted (less wrt OTL).
I can still see Y being adopted for long I especially with more instances of confusing IJ with it.
Æ is likely to disappear as OTL due to vowel changes but may be readopted later depending on cultural influences - otherwise it could be Ä.
How palatal SC C(e) and CG will be transcribed is difficult to predict but I suspect that initially C/CE will be used to indicate it (with K adopted to show hard C) later evolving into a diacritic similar to the hacek so: Š š Č č Ğ ğ

 

[The Professor]

Any other comments?