Birdlore

"Pure Saxon English or Americans to the Front" is a curious little book, authored by one Elias Molee. It was published in 1890. Molee wants the English language to rid itself of all foreign loanwords, including those from the Romance languages. This would make English more similar to ancient Saxon, and also to other Germanic languages, which are less influenced by French and Latin. He is very consistent at this point, even specialized scientific terms such as "ornithology" should be replaced by nativisms, in this case "birdlore".

In essence, Molee wants the United States to adopt a modified, modernized version of Saxon as its official language. Molee argues that such a Saxonized English would be more logical and easier to learn that the Norman-Latin version, and that it would facilitate unity among the Germanic nations (constantly referred to as "Gothic"). The author himself was apparently of Norwegian descent.

Pure Saxon English should be based on a phonetic spelling as well, making it somewhat difficult to render on my word processor. But OK, here's a brave attempt: "But when Herod was ded, behold, the ainjel ov the Lord ersheineth in a drim to Josef in Egipt, saiing, Areis and taik the yung cheild and his mother, and go intu the lahnd of Israel, for thai ahr ded hu siko the yung cheildo leif".

Molee's book probably wasn't as nuts when it was published as we may think today, since he mentions several attempts in different nations at spelling or grammar reforms, probably connected to the establishment of a public school system. He also mentions the success of Volapük, a "universal language" constructed by the German pastor Schleyer.

In the end, however, it wasn't very realistic to expect a radical change of the English language through some kind of central decree, and in the United States, to boot! Undeterred, Molee continued his efforts to create a pure "Gothic" tongue, his next attempt apparently being called Tutonish. Graciously, he also published a Romance version of Tutonish! Well, thank you.

Not sure how to rate this obscure product, but three stars seems enough.