Sean of Ojingo Blog proposes removing all French roots from English, inspired by his encounter with a sincere believer in "Freedom Fries". Linguistic ideologues have been proposing to de-romancify English since long before the present conflict. See for instance "The Ayenbite [Againbite] of Inwit", a 1340 work whose title we as well as most of its contemporaries would render as "The Remorse of Conscience". I've read that Chaucer made a point of using more Germanic and fewer Romance words than were already common in the Middle English of his day.
Since the 1300's most such efforts have been tongue-in-cheek. I Googled around a bit looking for some, but the only one I've found is Ander-Saxon, a creation of SF writer Poul Anderson also written about by Douglas Hofstadter. Here's a sample on the subject of atomic physics, with annotations to be found at WikiPedia:
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 unclefts of these two firststuffs together with coalstuff and chokestuff.Any other attempts people know of to restore English to its Germanic roots?
(On a related note, Dr. Fun also thought of the "Liberty Tickler" -- but of course the word "liberty" is Romance in origin.)
