> Now i wonder if something like this exists for germanic languages.
Dutch.
Only half joking. Dutch would at least make a great starting point in terms of written language.
As a native speaker with English as a second language and German as my third, I can read a whole lot of Dutch because it's closer in spelling to Scandinavian languages than German is, but has kept many words that are still used in German but archaic or different in Scandinavian languages.
It's not unusual for me to find it easier to read Dutch than to read the same text in German despite having actually had German at school but never having had any formal Dutch (and I have no hope of understanding spoken Dutch).
Consider a few examples: skip (Norwegian), skib (Danish), ship (English), schip (Dutch), Schiff (German). Or dag (Norwegian, Danish, Dutch), day (English), Tag (German). Dans (Norwegian, Danish, Dutch), dance (English), Tanz (German).
Where there's broad concordance between the Germanic languages, Dutch is usually close to the majority of the languages, but it often retains some spellings that are readily recognisable to the others when it's closer to German, and in the cases where it's closer to English those words are usually recognisable to other Germanic speakers anyway.
I would have said English, but you are probably right - as long as we are talking about written language. As a Scandinavian I understand the other Scandinavian languages as well as English, German, French and a few other languages. But Dutch is hard to understand due to a lot of guttural sounds.
In terms of shared second language English would probably just remove the need for trying to find a middle ground. But as a middle ground understandable without knowing a second language, it loses out because so much of its vocabulary comes from French. E.g. chair vs. stol, stoel, Shtul, a word that even has close cognates in Slavic languages (but the Germanic is hanging on in English in "stool"). An English with French influence replaced with pre-existing Germanic-sourced English words with Dutch as fallback might be a fun experiment.
Regarding spoken Dutch, I agree, it's painful to listen to. And I just got a horrible thought: A mix of Danish and Dutch pronunciation... I imagine it'd sound somewhat like death metal ;-)
Interesting, but really odd and seemingly with very different goals than what I had in mind.
As a native Norwegian speaker, on one hand there are lots of words used there which are easier for me to understand than they would be for a native English speaker, but at the same time many are unnecessary reversions towards Old English or pointless changes where modern Germanic languages are closer to modern English.
It seems like a reversion without any thought to how these terms have kept evolving in the rest of the Germanic sphere.
E.g. "riche" on one hand sounds closer to "rike" or "Reich", but "state" has close cognates in most Germanic languages (stat, staat etc.) and stat/staat and rike/Reich have different connotations - we'd tend to use rike/Reich in contexts relating to monarchy or evoking history or tradition. E.g. kongerike/Königreich for kingdom (but also kongedømme), but stat/staat when talking about a modern state.
And e.g. "Hof" as in "Speaker of the Hof", while it has close cognates, is an unnecessary leap given "house" has close cognates too (hus, Haus) which are used in the same context, and the "problem" there isn't the word "house" but the whole construction.
Translating United States to Oned Riches also takes it further away from modern Germanic languages rather than moving closer to them (e.g. Forenede Stater, Vereinigten Staaten).
Similarly, the month names in most Germanic languages are close to modern English. Meadowmonth for July is far harder for me to understand than July - in Norwegian it is juli.
And "lawmoot" for Congress is harder too. Compare kongress, Kongress... At least if they wanted to go that way, e.g. landthing would be far more understandable for speakers of other Germanic languages as a reference to a parliamentary house (moot works fine for meeting, compare e.g. møte, but feels no simpler to me than meeting)
Similarly "landtung" for "language" is weird. In e.g. Norwegian we have "tunge" for "tongue" and it can sort of be used that way, but "tale" is more understandable if you want to go that way, but "speak" as in "to speak" is a closer cognate to the words used for language in other Germanic languages (e.g. språk, Sprache) without sounding archaic.
And "narrowing" for "strait" while in e.g. Norwegian it is "stred", or "landstretch" for "landmass" vs. "landmasse" in Norwegian.
As an "alternate history English" it kinda works. As a "modern Germanic English" it's tiresome to try to read...
> pointless changes where modern Germanic languages are closer to modern English.
I agree that there's a lot of these, but arguably English still seems to have way more Latinate/Romance borrowings than your average Germanic language. So the direction they're going for seems correct, they're just overdoing it (which after all is the whole point of that project!) and, more worryingly, sometimes missing the most appropriate Germanic word for their desired concept, like "Thing" for a democratic assembly.
"State", "July", "congress", "strait" are disqualified because they come from Latin, "mass" comes from Greek. Do you accept Anglish's design goal to only include words derived (through various mechanisms) from Germanic languages?
I agree that "tung" could as well be a modernised form of Old English "sprǣc". I have no explanation for "Hof". I am not qualified to objectively discern whether "thing" is a better conceptual fit than "moot".
Anyone can contribute to Anglish and improve on its imperfections.
> Do you accept Anglish's design goal to only include words derived (through various mechanisms) from Germanic languages?
No, I don't. That is exactly my point. Or rather, I don't agree with what they're actually doing, which is to only include words derived from old Germanic languages. E.g. modern Germanic languages have had words like Congress/kongress/Kongress for centuries. I'd be happy with a language trying to stick to words closer to the consensus of modern Germanic languages.
If you want a mid-point between modern Germanic languages, stripping the language of imports does not work, as then you're creating friction for speakers of other Germanic languages which have also imported those words, not reducing it. I don't see any value in that.
It's fine that this is not Anglish' goal - they can do what they want -, but it makes it unsuitable as an attempt at a shared Germanic language. Their translation of names in particular is outright obnoxious and goes in the opposite direction of a trend to reduce the use of translated names in a lot of languages and reduces understanding rather than increasing it. That's their choice, but it's a very different one.
If I were to try to create a mid-point out of English, I'd narrow the focus massively to deprecate words that have decent Germanic replacements in common use in the other languages, and aim to shift meanings to accommodate it, such as e.g. giving "stool" the same broad meaning as a replacement for "chair" as its cognates have in other Germanic languages. And I'd leave words that have close cognates in other Germanic languages entirely alone, irrespective of the source, such as congress, because they're more likely to be understood by other Germanic speakers than many of the Anglish replacements.
A Germanicized English would probably work well enough given that English has such a pidgin-like grammar anyway. You wouldn't have to deal with the whole part of simplifying the language, there's already a widely used standard for that.
iirc, Dutch got rid of the case system in the 40s, thus making it easier than German. You're right about Scandinavian langauges. I took a few Duolingo courses in Swedish and Norwegian and my several months of Dutch helped me.
This actually makes sense. One of the sales agents in the company i work for is Dutch. He can speak German, but he mixes several words in that sound kinda English or are maybe Dutch. I'm still able to understand him good enough, so i can usually help him (i'm in IT). Maybe i'll look into it some day. Would make a fun exercise.
Dutch.
Only half joking. Dutch would at least make a great starting point in terms of written language.
As a native speaker with English as a second language and German as my third, I can read a whole lot of Dutch because it's closer in spelling to Scandinavian languages than German is, but has kept many words that are still used in German but archaic or different in Scandinavian languages.
It's not unusual for me to find it easier to read Dutch than to read the same text in German despite having actually had German at school but never having had any formal Dutch (and I have no hope of understanding spoken Dutch).
Consider a few examples: skip (Norwegian), skib (Danish), ship (English), schip (Dutch), Schiff (German). Or dag (Norwegian, Danish, Dutch), day (English), Tag (German). Dans (Norwegian, Danish, Dutch), dance (English), Tanz (German).
Where there's broad concordance between the Germanic languages, Dutch is usually close to the majority of the languages, but it often retains some spellings that are readily recognisable to the others when it's closer to German, and in the cases where it's closer to English those words are usually recognisable to other Germanic speakers anyway.