Which of the six Celtic languages had the most chances of survival as a majority language within its country?
How much would have to change?
How much would have to change?
Have at least one Celtic language not wither away?
- Thread starter Abdominalz
- Start date
I have a best bet for the Irish language: Ireland under a rump Stuart rule, like in this short-lived timeline.
Well nearly 15% of the population of Wales consider themselves fluent in Welsh today. It can't be that hard to bump that up to 50% even if they don't really use it often. Perhaps a lot more resurgence in Welsh nationalism in the early 20th leads to a more comprehensive system of teaching the language in schools.
Irish is also a strong possibility if you can create a stronger Ireland that can better withstand the advance of English culture. But I think that would require a much bigger POD than keeping Welsh alive as a majority language.
Irish is also a strong possibility if you can create a stronger Ireland that can better withstand the advance of English culture. But I think that would require a much bigger POD than keeping Welsh alive as a majority language.
If the Romans are destroyed early on and the Huns invade Europe and push the Germanic tribes west like they did in OTL, then you may have a Celto-Germanic hybrid language and culture emerge in Gaul and possibly Iberia and northern Italy if they get pushed that far. The same may very well happen to Britain, which could prove to be an even easier target to the Angles, Saxons and Jutes (if they also are forced to migrate like they did in OTL) due to the absence of Roman-influenced civilization and military.
Ireland may very well survive as the sole bastion of pure Celtic culture and language, and without the Normans to unite and take over England and its Anglo-Saxon-Norse populace, the Irish may not have to fear an English invasion, at least not at the same time as OTL.
Ireland may very well survive as the sole bastion of pure Celtic culture and language, and without the Normans to unite and take over England and its Anglo-Saxon-Norse populace, the Irish may not have to fear an English invasion, at least not at the same time as OTL.
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Ireland's probably your best bet: butterfly away the English invasion, and there's no reason why the country shouldn't be majority-Gaelic speaking to this day. Scotland should also be doable, particularly if you butterfly away the Davidian Revolution.
Alternatively, if you remove the Anglo-Saxon Conquest, the whole of Great Britain would continue speaking a Celtic language, although this might be too big a butterfly for the OP.
Alternatively, if you remove the Anglo-Saxon Conquest, the whole of Great Britain would continue speaking a Celtic language, although this might be too big a butterfly for the OP.
Even with a Norman England, would there have been an invasion without Laudabiliter? Ireland wasn't particularly rich or strategically important, after all, and assuming that the rest of English history goes pretty much as IOTL, her Kings would mostly be too busy trying to conquer France to bother with some impoverished bogland off their western coast.
Precisely, which is why Ireland may well survive as the only remaining country with a 'true' Celtic language and culture, so long as the Anglo-Saxons (if they invade Britain) don't export their culture too much onto Ireland via trade or other means.
On the other hand, Ireland seems too close to Britain to be able to stay outside of its affairs for too long, so you may still get an English or even a Scottish invasion at some point, and considering Scotland OTL was heavily influenced by both Anglo-Saxon and Norse culture, it doesn't really fit the bill of a true Celtic country, at least not to the extent that the OP is asking for. You also have to take into account the potential for Norse settlement on Ireland's eastern coast, should that particular part of history go along as it did OTL, and I don't see any reason why it wouldn't since the Norse weren't compelled by the migration of other tribes, nor were they under threat due to their isolation from mainland Europe.
Did I just crap on my own argument???
Alex Richards
Donor
Wales was still majority Welsh speaking until the late 19th century, if not the early 20th Century. A combination of largescale migration from England to the mines of the Valleys, some anti-welsh government policies and the Church of Wales deciding that losing Welsh was the way forward caused a very significant drop notable from the 1920s onwards.
So perhaps have the Church of Wales, and thus those schools run by it, decide to support the Welsh language?
It's probably easier than any of the others considering its fared the best of the lot OTL.
So perhaps have the Church of Wales, and thus those schools run by it, decide to support the Welsh language?
It's probably easier than any of the others considering its fared the best of the lot OTL.
Really? I thought that Welsh had been slowly dying out for centuries and had only just recently started experiencing a big revival.
Apparently there are 740,000 people worldwide who speak Welsh, with 580,000 of them living in Wales itself. What's funny (and sounds hilariously ASB) is the fact that 5,000 of them live in Chubut Province in Argentina. I have absolutely no clue how they ended up there, but ok, I'll buy it
On a side note, I really don't know much about the Welsh language, but how much has English 'corrupted' it over the centuries, if at all?
Alex Richards
Donor
Really? I thought that Welsh had been slowly dying out for centuries and had only just recently started experiencing a big revival.
Apparently there are 740,000 people worldwide who speak Welsh, with 580,000 of them living in Wales itself. What's funny (and sounds hilariously ASB) is the fact that 5,000 of them live in Chubut Province in Argentina. I have absolutely no clue how they ended up there, but ok, I'll buy it
On a side note, I really don't know much about the Welsh language, but how much has English 'corrupted' it over the centuries, if at all?
A lot of Welsh emigrated to Patagonia in the late 19th century.
But yeah, Welsh did retreat, but it really was a very long very slow, very gradual retreat. Archenfield in Herefordshire was majority Welsh speaking in the late 17th century, and may well have been present to a degree in 1860.
You might be thinking of Scots Gaelic or Cornish- which had died out by the later 1700s and was revived in the mid 20th Century.
Delvestius
Banned
Thiiiis would probably make them wither away faster, seeing as there would be no Romans to halt the Germanics.
Morty Vicar
Banned
The Scottish Highlands and Islands, or more specifically the Gaidhealtachd, lasted up until Culloden. Well obviously it lasted longer than that, but the Gaelic language was largely supressed after the defeat. If Culloden was won by the Jacobites, they would be much better tolerated by the rest of Scotland/ Britain, perhaps even have some level of independence.
The thing is, there is also the english 'dialect' or sister language Scot, I heard...
What's funny (and sounds hilariously ASB) is the fact that 5,000 of them live in Chubut Province in Argentina. I have absolutely no clue how they ended up there, but ok, I'll buy it
They irritate some of my Welsh friends, because they do the S4C translations much cheaper. They say you can hear the dialect.
I'm not 100% certain, but I think French was always the language of the aristocratic class in Brittany, so it probably would have taken over anyway. Also, only the western half of Brittany actually historically spoke Breton; the eastern half spoke Gallo, a dialect of the langue d'oïl.
From what I heard, the ruling class kinda 'frankised' quickly, taking romance-medieval french to integrate themselves in the power game, so to speak...
Albeit the Breton (and probably Gallo) speaking areas recededed slowly westward over history, the language(s) was more extended in the past.
Alex Richards
Donor
If Culloden was won by the Jacobites, they'd have still lost the war due to the general lack of support and overwhelming power differential and the Gaelic Scots would have been just as suppressed, if not more so, than OTL.
Essentially, Scots Gaelic has the fundamental problem of never really being the dominant language of Scotland, either politically, religiously, socially, culturally or by population.
Is there any particular reason for that? I don't see what could have drawn what surely should have been a sizeable number of Welsh people (to maintain the existence of the Welsh language there) to a land as far away and as foreign as Patagonia.
I'm even more surprised that it's been there for as long as you said it has, that's at least over 114 years. Considering it's in a land so far away that the Welsh-speaking population would be unlikely to be reinforced by other immigrating Welsh speakers over a long period of time, it seems miraculous to me that it has managed to survive with a population of 5,000.