Ander-Saxon

Ander-Saxon is a form of constrained writing in English in which words with Greek, Latin, and Romance roots are replaced by Germanic ones in scientific or technical writing. (See etymology.)

The name was coined by Douglas R. Hofstadter as a pun on Anglo-Saxon, with a reference to science-fiction author Poul Anderson, who introduced the form in his article "Uncleftish Beholding," a treatise on atomic theory written in Ander-Saxon. Here is a quotation:

The firststuffs have their being as motes called unclefts. These are mighty small: one seedweight of waterstuff holds a tale of them like unto two followed by twenty-two naughts. Most unclefts link together to make what are called bulkbits. Thus, the waterstuff bulkbit bestands of two waterstuff unclefts, the sourstuff bulkbit of two sourstuff unclefts, and so on. (Some kinds, such as sunstuff, keep alone; others, such as iron, cling together in chills when in the fast standing; and there are yet more yokeways.) When unlike unclefts link in a bulkbit, they make bindings. Thus, water is a binding of two waterstuff unclefts with one sourstuff uncleft, while a bulkbit of one of the forestuffs making up flesh may have a thousand or more inclefts of these two firststuffs together with coalstuff and chokestuff.

The techniques he uses include:

• coinages ("firststuff" for "element");
• replacements ("motes" for "particles");
• calques from the original language ("uncleft" from "atom" - Greek a- not + temnein to cut)
• calques from German ("chokestuff" for "nitrogen" - German Stickstoff).

The article is: Poul Anderson, "Uncleftish Beholding", Analog Science Fact / Science Fiction Magazine, mid-December 1989. It is reprinted (with a translation into more standard English) in Douglas Hofstadter, "Speechstuff and Thoughtstuff", in Sture Allén (ed.), Of Thoughts and Words: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 92, London: Imperial College Press. Excerpts are also printed and discussed in Hofstadter's book Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Beauty of Language.