Anglese is a constructed language derived from English, based on an alternate version of history in which the Roman Empire is never divided, and the Latin language dominates the British isles, instead of Anglo-Saxon and later Norman French taking over from the indigenous British (Cornish and Welsh) population. Due to the lack of Germanic language supremacy, the English language instead evolves as a Romance language.

Anglese was developed in 2020 by conlanger and music composer Ludovico Leone, and the 2020 edition of Leone's online Anglese phrasebook can be found here on reddit and here on Medium (paywalled but not difficult to bypass), so if either link ever fails, the other may serve as a backup. The most comprehensive current Anglese dictionary, in the form of a Google spreadsheet, is found here, and is a collaborative effort between Leone and the members of the r/Anglese and r/Conlangs subreddits. Leone makes exaggerated claims about what percentage of modern English word usage is originally Romance vocabulary (either Latin words outright, or French words with Latin origins), but these exaggerations are not so extreme as to offend the sensibilities of a prospective learner. Frankly, it's just true that a majority of Germanic words used daily in English are "grammatical glue," the articles and conjunctions and prepositions which allow English syntax to hold itself together. While these words are the most commonly used in the language, by raw wordcount, they are also usually short words, and substituting them one-for-one with Latin or French words does not even disrupt the rhythm and flow of the language.

Anglese also updates the spelling and pronunciation rules of English to be more "intuitively Romantic," with most pronunciations falling somewhere between modern French and Vulgar Latin, in a way that scans fairly naturally for a modern anglophone. For the most part, the Anglese phonology amounts to "things are pronounced how they look," and the reader does not need to go out of their way to adapt to any change on this front.

Anglese can be seen as the counterpart (or nemesis) of the Anglish conlang, which attempts to replace every non-Germanic word of English with a Germanic equivalent. Major differences between them are that Anglish does not have the worldbuilding effort of an entire alternate history designed around it, to justify it, and Anglese is not an attempt to restore truly obsolete and archaic words, but only substitutes words which already have current French (or other Romance language) usage, for English words.

Anglese is fun and rather easy to read, especially if the reader already has deep familiarity with Italian, Latin, Spanish, or French. Leone has published a number of creative writing projects on Medium, with verbatim interlinear translation into Anglese, alongside the English text, so samples of Anglese are abundant, both within and outside the Anglese subreddit. In Anglese, modern English is called Moderne Anglesh,, and Leone provides a sample translation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which text is frequently used by the language documentation website Omniglot to demonstrate a language:

Tote human esseres son nated liber ed equal in dignitie e dirites. Illes son doted de ration e conscience e deben ager une vers altres in spirite de fraternitie.

Which means, in modern English:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

As constructed variants of English go, Anglese is rather fun and quickly picked up, and its subreddit boasts a thriving and active community. That community has significant member overlap with the r/Anglish community, and the two conlang communities occasionally have "mock wars" with each other, in the form of "invading" each other's subreddit and speaking the opposing conlang there. Very few conlangs have any kind of "relationship" or "kinship" to any other conlang, but this specific dynamic helps both conlangs to thrive and continue growing in membership and in the size of their respective lexicons.

Iron Noder 2024, 13/30