Quote:
Originally Posted by masaegu
Thus, those who are more conscious about these historical and linguistic matters, would prefer to write some words without using kanji.
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Interesting. It's kind of like JRR Tolkien except an entire country of such people.
For those of you who do not know what I'm talking about, Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, was a linguist by profession. Apparently he wasn't a huge fan of so many French words having pushed out Old English/Germanic words from the vocabulary, so he found ways around using so many French-based words.
For example, Bilbo Baggins lives at "Bag End." This is obviously a Germanic-originated English word. The modern English word is "cul-de-sac," which is French for, literally, "bag end/bottom." This is a cul-de-sac:
File:Cul-de-Sac cropped.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (for some reason the IMG tags aren't working for me right now so I can't embed it)
This is the type of street Bilbo's Bag End was.
So we see Tolkien finding ways to use Germanic English words over Frankish English words.
Anyway, just a tangent.