On the Fromth of the Lifekin

Taking up the work started in earnest by literary figure William Barnes, the great proponent of Anglo-Saxon English, and hearkening unto the nostalgic longings of so many great English writers— Tolkien, Gerard Manly Hopkins and Seanus Heaney— for a fore-1066 English, this translation of Darwin’s groundbreaking work On the Origin of Species is written in what is known today as Anglish— a type of English that uses more fully words of Anglo-Saxon and Germanic roots, resurrects old, forgotten words of Anglo-Saxon, and coins new words from English’s Germanic roots to replace English words of Latin and Greek outspring. This lessens the coldness, and detached intellectualness, and sheer foreignness of English in its Latin and Greek vocabulary, and makes our tongue more homely and welcoming, more English-sounding, more true to the core of English and to its forbearer, Anglo-Saxon— that wonderful Germanic tongue so seldom studied, so too often ignored, and so too little known.