What English might look like with all the non-Germanic vocabulary removed (pt. 2): When will casters chide Obama?

A while back I wrote up a quick sample of what English might look like with all the non-Germanic words removed (that is, words from Latin, Greek, French etc.) by taking a newspaper article and slowly and painstakingly changing the words to Germanic roots, and creating new words when no appropriate word existed. A few non-Germanic words managed to slip through however, and I've created one more, but this time had Olivier Simon (the creator of Sambahsa) look over the draft before I wrote it up here. The text I've selected is this recent post from fivethirtyeight.com on what Nate Silver expects Barack Obama's approval ratings to be like over the next year and a half or so. If you're up for a challenge, try reading this text first before looking at fivethirtyeight.com to see what it's really about.

This task would be impossible without etymonline.com, a site that is composed of pure awesome. Definitely visit there and see what else you can find out about the history of words you'd like to know.

Here it is:

When Will Casters Chide Obama?


Buried in the latest NBC/WSJ overlook (.pdf) is an asking for casters on who they chide for the land's hushandling worrying. Now, 8 of hundred casters say that Obama's holdings are "mostly answerworthy" for the bad hushandling and another 6 of hundred chide him some share. But the longer the unstillness lasts, the less untiring casters will be:

1. Standing Handed to Obama -- 84

• Chideworthy in less than six months -- 2
• Chideworthy in six months to one year -- 13
• Chideworthy in one to two years -- 25
• Chideworthy in two to three years -- 18
• Chideworthy in more than three years -- 23
• Unset on when chideworthy -- 3

1. Standing Obama's Holdings Mostly Chideworthy For

• Some of both -- 6
• Not set -- 2

We can shift these answerings into a drawing -- doing our best to shift the overlook's somewhat roaming wording into forecut lottings --and samebear them to a kinlike asking about when casters foresee the backdrawing coming to an end.

Obama overtakes the 50 of hundred threshold at almost forecutly 18 months from now, which would mean Harvestmonth 2010. At that timeprick, a greater lot of casters say they will hold Obama chideworthy for the hushandling's working.

Mayhaps not randomly, 18 months is also about the timeprick at which a greater lot of casters foresee the drawback to have ended. Samebearingly, of the tens of hushandlers asked in the Wall Street Journal's monthly foreseeing overlooking, 65 of hundred foresee the backdrawing to have ended by the third fourth of 2009, and 100 of hundred foresee its ending by the end of 2010. (As a warning, the Journal's foreseers are overall a bullish cluster).


So this seems like pretty good tidings for Obama. The folk have greatly low foreseeings for the land's hushandling -- your midroad caster is more downbeat about the land's hushandling than all but the most downbeat hushandlers. And it will be much time yet before the folk pins most of the chiding for the hushandling on Obama.

Cutting against this somewhat are two other doers. Firstly, it is overall believed -- and I'll find a link for you on this if I can -- that casters answer back slowly to shifts in husholding well-being. That is, if the husholding leavetakes the drawback in Meadmonth 2010, it might take a few months for the casters to ken, and this might or might not be soon enough for the Folklings to ward off chiding at the midroad choosings. Otherly, the worklosshood reckoning -- mayhaps the hushandling showing that midroad casters worry about -- has been among the last things to heal in the so-called jobless backearnings following latter drawbacks. It's trueseeming that ALB growth will dip back into upper land in the third fourth of 2009, for showing, but that we won't see a material leapback in the workhood lottings until months later.

On the whole, the folk seems ready to be pretty pox-upon untiring with Obama. The asking is whether the folk will truly be as soundseeing as it foresees itself to be after some more months of ill-boding hushandling headwritings. On that looking, I'm a bit hard of believing, and I foresee Obama's goodtelling reckoning to lose a couple of lotpricks each month until the drawback ends. This is why it makes a lot of sense for Obama to be following a much rungeistly timeboard right now. If the husholding heals within the next year or so -- beating casters' foreseeings -- then Obama's goodtelling reckonings will likely wind up being most high. But until that healing happens, Obama's goodtelling reckonings are likely to get worse before they get better.

Notes on vocabulary:

(note especially why I chose to stick with the words material and sense)

• ALB - made this up quickly for GDP (gross domestic product), perhaps Alllandsbringing.
• asking - geáscung (asking, inquiry)
• caster - a person that casts a vote. 'Lot' would probably be a good word for vote, so caster might be short for something like lotcaster.
• doer - factor (Latin factor, lit. doer or maker)
• Folklings - Democrats. I imagine the focus on demos (people) would give rise to such a nickname. Republicans might be Landlings.
• forecut - precise. Precise comes from prae (in front) and caedere (tocut), referring to something cut off or shortened.
• holding - policy, or tenet. Tenet comes from Latin tenet (he/she/it holds) and English also uses the verb hold to refer to beliefs or ideas.
• hushandling - means economy, a calque from the original Greek meaning the handling or management of a house. Like the word husband, the prefix hus- was affixed to the compound before it turned into the modern day house.
• ken - same root as the word can, and used today in Scotland to mean "make known, declare, acknowledge".
• lotprick - like the word timeprick below, I made this to signify acertain point, this one being a number.
• lotting - number. Similar to allotment, but the a- and -ment in allotment is non-Germanic and had to be changed.
  
• material - this word apparently comes from Latin...but! It might also have come from dmateria (PIE), cognate with the English timber, so I don't have to change it.
• midroad - average. Middle of the road.
• overlook - survey (French sur+voir, lit. over+look)
• pox-upon - darn. From "a pox upon it!"
• randomly - this word comes from Old French randon, but that word itself came from Frankish rant, which itself came from Proto-Germanic randa, so it's originally Germanic, and related to the Old English word rinnan, to run.
• rungeistly - ambitious. The word ambitious comes from Latin ambitionem "a going around (to solicit votes)" but is rarely used in that way, and in German ambitious is ehrgeizig; this is cognate with English geist/ghost (spirit), and so I coined the word rungeistly to mean "with a running spirit".
• samebear - compare. Compare comes from com- (together) and ferre (bear, same PIE root).
• sense - this one is technically from Latin sensus, but it also has cognates in German Sinn, Old English sið (way, journey) and a fewothers, so I could see it obtaining a final form at least similar to this one even without the influence of Latin.
• showing (for showing) - for example. I went with this just because I like it.
• soundseeing - judicious, which literally means "having sound judgment".
• tens of - originally dozen, but there's no particular reason to think that a language would naturally adopt a special word for the number 12, so I changed it to tens.
• tidings - the original word was news and the word new is Germanic, butthe usage is modelled after French and I thought the word tidings would seem more appropriate.
• timeboard - agenda. Timetable minus the Latin-derived table, thus timeboard.
• timeprick - made this one myself to signify a point in time, not just any point.
• unstillness - inspired (but not modelled upon) by Norwegian nødstilfelle, crisis
• worklosshood - if you know any German you'll probably recognize this as being influenced by Arbeitslösigkeit (unemployment).

And of course note that proper names like Wall Street Journal need not be changed.

Note that this is not an attempt to extrapolate on what English might look like without the Norman invasion, because that resulted in a complete change to the structure of the language as well; it's merely to show just how many words in English come from non-Germanic sources, and how some other words might have been constructed if the influence from those languages wasn't quite so strong.

One other last thing to mention: it's interesting how when translating a blog post (much less formal than a newspaper article) you have a higher chance of finding whole sentences without a single non-Germanic word in them. Something like "and I'll find a link for you on this if I can" is all Germanic. With the first article I don't think I was able to go through a single sentence without changing at least a few words.