Alternate World Languages

[WhatIsAUserName]

Originally Posted by Delvestius

MANDARIN...

Mandarin is also a language family with its own languages.

[False Dmitri]

Originally Posted by Delvestius

Oh my, I have a streak ? That must mean I'v had other arguments or opinions that have been decidedly deterministic.. Or were you just referring to this thread?

I admit, determinism has some merit to me. That is, I believe that the world as it is exists in what is the most probable outcome overall, the majority of the time (else my understanding of "most probable" is flawed but I don't really believe that's the case)... Therefore, the more different it is from this TL, the less probable, given this simple logic. I do believe that anything short of ASB could have happened (or may happen, regarding the future), though I regard all of these possibilities on a spectrum on plausibility. Given what we know from history and geography, a German industrialization doesn't seem to be that far of a stretch, but an Egypt-first industrialization just seems to be significantly more unlikely.

So yes, I do believe Industrialism in some way, shape or form is inevitable, save for a change in something major, such as human ability or drive or what have you.

I was talking about this thread specifically (streak as in "of color" rather than "of killings").

So why join an AH site if everything is basically inevitable anyway?

Originally Posted by WhatIsAUserName

Mandarin is also a language family with its own languages.

Oh, if you're going to go that route, then there's no such thing as a language. Just a bunch of ephemeral dialects that disintegrate into smaller ones the moment you get a close look at them.

Anyway, the concept of a "world language" I think clearly implies the standard form of said language. "English as the dominant language" doesn't mean Appalachian and Geordie, you know.

[WhatIsAUserName]

Originally Posted by Benkarnell

Oh, if you're going to go that route, then there's no such thing as a language. Just a bunch of ephemeral dialects that disintegrate into smaller ones the moment you get a close look at them.

Putonghua is something I would call a language. As for that huge language family with eight subgroups that spans Northern China and almost 1 billion people? That's Mandarin to me.

[tormsen]

There is a problem with the idea that OTL represents the most probable timeline. You can't make a blanket statement like that when you have a sample set of one. It suggests there haven't been any improbable events in our history, no unpredictable black swans. It says the history we happen to have was the most likely, because it did. That's just begging the question.

[General Tirpitz]

Originally Posted by tormsen

There is a problem with the idea that OTL represents the most probable timeline. You can't make a blanket statement like that when you have a sample set of one. It suggests there haven't been any improbable events in our history, no unpredictable black swans. It says the history we happen to have was the most likely, because it did. That's just begging the question.

The most probable TL doesn't mean that there haven't been any improbable events in history. There are good reasons why, say Finland, didn't form its own kingdom in the Middle Ages and become a great power later.

Anyway, back to the main question, I think Spanish or French seem most likely candidates. Spanish needs earlier POD though. Maybe Spain also could colonize more places in Africa later and thus spread its language there.

I don't think Dutch is possible as THE world language, but it could have been much more important if they had had more colonies and been more interested in to make their subjects to learn it.

[tormsen]

Surely by definition if improbable events occurred that later had important effects, then the title of most probable timeline isn't based on anything other than our own historical biases.surely there are significant events in our history which likely wouldn't have occurred in most other TLs. That means that judging plausibility based on correlation with our timeline is a flawed strategy.

Great power kingdom of all the Finns didn't arise for good reasons. But that is because of those practical reasons, not because it doesn't happen to have occurred in our history.

[Delvestius]

Originally Posted by Benkarnell

So why join an AH site if everything is basically inevitable anyway?

You clearly miss the point, sir... Things can be different in our TL with a simple PoD, and that's what alternate history is, as I'm sure you know. I never said our TL is inevitable (although certain aspects of it may be), only the most probable on average given people's choices and the various situations of the world. As General Tirpitz pointed out, that does that imply the most probable thing always happens, in fact it happens far less often then most should think. However, our history is the way it is because of thousands of years of what is usuallythe most probable outcome, all snowballing from the first determiner: geography (If we don't want to go into anything further, like Psycology or Physics). So you see, most things could and may happen, so it's okay to change them to see where it would have taken us. And furthermore, I see reason (in fact I do believe it imperative to the study) to recognize what alternate histories could have been more easily achieved than others.

On a scale of one to ten, one being ASB and ten being a decision made by a flip of a coin, this alternate history seems to be a two, whereas a nicely plausible TL would be sitting around an eight or higher, maybe seven if you have a writer that really knows his stuff. Tormsen, this also addresses your first post.

Originally Posted by tormsen

Great power kingdom of all the Finns didn't arise for good reasons. But that is because of those practical reasons, not because it doesn't happen to have occurred in our history.

It very well could have happened in our history, but it didn't. Now I'm not a god, so I don't know what probability every condition in the entire world had or has, though I do believe that overall the most probable option happened over lesser probable ones. This is the neutral application of what Leibniz used to support his optimism, the main point of criticism in Voltaire's Candide. While I'm no Theodic Optimist, this understanding seems to be pretty sound in it's nature...

Originally Posted by WhatIsAUserName

Putonghua is something I would call a language. As for that huge language family with eight subgroups that spans Northern China and almost 1 billion people? That's Mandarin to me.

You could argue that with any language... English, Spanish, Arabic especially, all have various dialects and regional variations... Mandarin is a language, pure and simple, if only because a government says so. At the end of the day, that's really all we have to classify what an "official language" is.

Do I think Moroccan Arabic or Dubai Street Arabic is really the same language? No, of course not... Moroccan Arabic is more different than the Modern Standard than Dutch is to Afrikaans.. However, the former are to be considered a part of the same language while the latter is not, simply because of political reasons. And in a world where a language could be spoken differently just on the other side of a hill, political classification is the best we can get without us linguists going nuts.

[dilbert719]

One possibility that I haven't seen mentioned here rather surprises me: Latin. I've seen some brief mentions of the Romans, but nothing that implied Latin could have become/remained the "world language." I'm not much of an expert in linguistic history, so is this something that could have taken root as one language, and expanded across the globe, rather than branching out into the Romance language tree and centering primarily on Europe?

[Delvestius]

Originally Posted by dilbert719

One possibility that I haven't seen mentioned here rather surprises me: Latin. I've seen some brief mentions of the Romans, but nothing that implied Latin could have become/remained the "world language." I'm not much of an expert in linguistic history, so is this something that could have taken root as one language, and expanded across the globe, rather than branching out into the Romance language tree and centering primarily on Europe?

Probably not, if only because of the technology available to the Romans at the time. Every language experiences language change, and the older the language is (rather, the less technology there is to keep a language homogeneous) then the more regional divergences the language will experience. If the Romans had the printing press, then Latin would have stayed together for a longer amount of time, but even then... A millennium and a half is a long time for a language to stay constant, regardless of what technology is available.

EDIT: Although it would be possible for Latin to remain the language of European nobility (instead of French), or even be revived (much as Greek or Hebrew was) to be the world language for politics and diplomacy. I'd say that would be pretty neet.

[altwere]

About spreading and not changing. Most languages change much quicker when the are learned and become the language of choice. As an adult languages we after have trouble making all of the sounds and translate saying and some gramer to the new language.
On the edges of Empire the children won't here lots of native Latin speakers but there parents who are the new latin speakers.

[False Dmitri]

Originally Posted by altwere

About spreading and not changing. Most languages change much quicker when the are learned and become the language of choice. As an adult languages we after have trouble making all of the sounds and translate saying and some gramer to the new language.
On the edges of Empire the children won't here lots of native Latin speakers but there parents who are the new latin speakers.

Right, when the language is spreading because people want to learn it because it gives them more opportunities, there is an automatic incentive for the language not to change - everyone tries their best to learn the Standard in order to sound educated and gain the most opportunity. That's why Classical Latin changed so little down through the Middle Ages, and it's why Standard Arabic has changed much less in 1400 years than you might expect. If the Roman system had survived in full in Western Europe, you would see Latin changing much more slowly than the Romance Langauges did in OTL, simply because more people would be educated and would therefore strive to conform to the Standard in their speech and writing.

By definition, a "world" language is going to have these forces acting upon it that pull it away from the usual linguistic tendency of constant change.