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Day: August 15, 2016

Is it possible to write English in Greek script? Would it look better?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-15 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Modern Greek, Writing Systems

This could go one of two ways, neither pretty. You could phonetically transcribe English into Greek, Ancient or Modern, using the phonetics of the Greek alphabet unchanged. As Konstantinos Konstantinides says, that would sound horrible, because it really would be English with Greek vowels and consonants. In fact, when Greeklish ( Greek in ASCII) was […]

Has there ever been an attempt to “purify” English by removing Latin/French words and reintroucing the old Germanic words (like many languages did)?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-15 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

Thanks to Loren Peter Lugosch for posting the Wikipedia link. The most serious recent attempt to purify English was William Barnes. He called for the purification of English by removal of Greek, Latin and foreign influences so that it might be better understood by those without a classical education. For example, the word “photograph” (from […]