Learning Anglo Saxon words

[Iuri]

I would also strongly encourage learning these sorts of words after you have been able to sort them according to frequency. If your goal is more or less just to "collect" English words of Anglo-Saxon origin, then you can learn anything from these lists arbitrarily.

Honestly, at first, my plan was really just to "collect em all", as I said, I already have all the English I need, so this project of mine is mostly just for fun, but after the comments of you guys I'm thinking that it wouldn't hurt to do some sort of sorting first.

About the usefulness thing, I wasn't really expecting all of the words to still be in use, but I was hoping that at least a good share of them would. My point here is really to improve my "germanic roots awareness" within the scope of the English language, also it won't hurt the fact that it will probably help me with older English literature, as it is within my plan to delve into that stuff later.

[Iuri]

Interesting fact for you re: Anglo-Saxon words in Modern English, from John McWhorter's The Power of Babel, p. 95:

Out of all the words in the Oxford English Dictionary...no less than 99% were taken from other languages. The relative few that trace back to Old English itself are...62% of the words most used [by English speakers]

A very interesting fact indeed, that gives some hope to us Anglo Saxon enthusiasts, at least, hey, in a way Modern English is still full of Old English.

[Whodathunkitz]

Hi! I'm currently trying to learn all of the English words of Anglo Saxon and Old Norse and Scandinavian origin, I already have all the English I need so I have no reason to do it other than my desire to do it and my love for Germanic languages in general. I'm following these wikipedia lists with the hope that they are comprehensive but I wonder, do they really have all of the Anglo Saxon/Old Norse words? How many words derived from Anglo Saxon are still there in the modern English language, does anybody know? I couldn't find any definite number on the web.

Of course that I don't expect anyone to count the lists, I only wanted some of your thoughts about this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_E ... xon_origin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_E ... rse_origin

One side effect that I am expecting if I master these words is to boost my English literacy, guessing words derived from French and Latin is kinda ok for me, being a native speaker of Portuguese, but guessing words of Germanic origin is hard, so I'm hoping these will help me boost my "germanic awareness" to a level close to that of a native speaker.
I'm doing this for my own pleasure however, so I have no hurry, I'm going to take this slowly and steadily, I'm even thinking of compiling and binding a dictionary for personal use from printing the pages of that big Oxford dictionary that I have access to at my library.

Google sheets, sort English words by frequency.

Add googletranslate formulas for West Frisian / dutch and a latin language Portuguese/Spanish/Italian?

Should indicate where each word came from to some degree.

Where I'm from in England (Suffolk) it's meant to be possible for a local 6 year old and a Frisian 6 year old to communicate. Could be rubbish, but who knows? A few miles from where I grew up I (and a friend) couldn't understand a local (ald bhoy) .... we were asking where the village hall were and we didn't understand anythin the ald bhoy a say. He were speakin funny, loike a ferigner.

I once found a book comparing Suffolk dialects to Scots (Lowland?) and pointing out that both had many Anglo-Saxon aspects remaining that had been lost in other dialects.

Norfolk is similar to Suffolk - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_dialect

Grammar and verb conjugation are different from English.

Arguably Norfolk is more remote, both heavily influenced by Danes (I'm guessing).

This isn't loading for me at present, but might be interesting.. (or it might be dodgy, do your own checking!) http://dilek.info/E/IL/THE_SUFFOLK_DIAL ... ENTURY.PDF

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_E ... xon_origin - they missed one ... BUTTER

[Iuri]

@Whodathunkitz; Very interesting account, I didn't know there was still such diversity of English dialects in England, I wonder if there is still any dialect with a case system remaining? Probably not.

I've found a few more interesting lists, this time on wiktionary, I think I'll treat these as the deffinitive lists for my study, I gave up on the idea of compiling a dictionary, too much work for little return, I'll just compile a list and do a cheap bind on them to use as a reference, then I'll study the list at the library. In the future I plan to afford my own copy of the OED, it's an expensive investment, but one that I think will be worth it, it's also one of those things that last for a lifetime and look great on the living room shelf.

The lists I found:
English terms derived from Proto-Germanic:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category ... o-Germanic
English terms derived from Old English:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category ... ld_English
English terms derived from Middle English:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category ... le_English
English terms derived from Old Norse:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category ... _Old_Norse

There are other lists there from other Germanic languages. but these should suffice for my objectives, however, these are lists of "terms" rather than of "words", are "terms" a broader term encompassing words among other things?

[Whodathunkitz]

@Whodathunkitz; Very interesting account, I didn't know there was still such diversity of English dialects in England, I wonder if there is still any dialect with a case system remaining?

Variety
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_tan_tethera

I once asked for a 'pint of milk' in a Geordie (Newcastle upon Tyne) shop and after some attempts at understanding each other got given a 'meat pie'.

Swaledale supposedly close to Norwegian.
Edited, wrong url https://archive.org/stream/glossaryofwo ... t_djvu.txt

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/455618.stm

Cases: probably, at a guess. Thee and thou pretty common.

[Iuri]

Very nice, it's nice to see that English still has such a wide variety of dialects, I'm even more amazed by the fact that it seems that England, having an area of land much smaller than the US, seems to have much more dialectal variance, at least when we consider the depth of the differences between the dialects and Standard English. In England it's almost like some of the dialects are another language altogether, whereas I don't think we see that kind of thing in the US?

[Whodathunkitz]

Very nice, it's nice to see that English still has such a wide variety of dialects, I'm even more amazed by the fact that it seems that England, having an area of land much smaller than the US, seems to have much more dialectal variance, at least when we consider the depth of the differences between the dialects and Standard English. In England it's almost like some of the dialects are another language altogether, whereas I don't think we see that kind of thing in the US?

Like genetics.

The oldest population has the most variety.

Romance languages, someone else can correct me, but I believe Italian dialects are VERY varied compared to Spanish. Again, oldest, most varied.

America is a country of immigrants joining in a literate age with an ethos and motivation (generally) to assimilate.

Even English speaking immigrants probably came from a variety of places, so dialects weren't maintained.

All guesswork of course!