Alternate World Languages
- Thread starter tom
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Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
There are 25 threads on the front page of this forum. Having 6 of them be identical and yours is obnoxious narcissism at best and spamming at worst. "Have a major language other than English be the world language" and listing your six choices would have been perfectly workable, and much preferable to 6 identical threads.
Ah, they've all been combined. That's good.
Anyway, the only one that's really plausible is French. The way to keep French dominant as a world language is to keep Europe more powerful than America. When Anglo-Americans rose to dominance over the world, French died as a language of inter-European communication. As long as there's a number of European great powers running the world, they're going to need a language to communicate with each other with, and that language will probably be French.
Cheers,
Ganesha
Anyway, the only one that's really plausible is French. The way to keep French dominant as a world language is to keep Europe more powerful than America. When Anglo-Americans rose to dominance over the world, French died as a language of inter-European communication. As long as there's a number of European great powers running the world, they're going to need a language to communicate with each other with, and that language will probably be French.
Cheers,
Ganesha
Why not Arabic or one of the Chinese languages? Or German, in a scenario where the HRE is the one that makes it and France isn't?
And why would the rise of something in North America by whatever name necessarily be English speaking?
With a PoD far back enough neither Arabic or Spanish are implausible as the World Language.
Well, I was thinking of a more recent scenario - 18th century onwards or so. Sorry, I should have mentioned that in my post.
With an older POD, practically any of the choices are possible, along with some not listed like, Hindi, Tamil, or Persian.
Cheers,
Ganesha
Fair enough. Post-18th century, French and English are the only languages in a position to be competing.
I'd even argue post 17th, really.
Persian actually has a pretty good chance in an Indian-dominated world. If India comes to be ruled by Muslim empires, they're likely to use Persian for communication with each other, as the Mughals did. There was also a long tradition of Muslim intellectuals throughout the Arab and Turkish worlds learning some Persian to communicate with each other. In an Islamic-dominated world based in India and Persia, Persian has a fair shot at becoming a second language of a good percentage of the world's elite.
Cheers,
Ganesha
What about a Russian-Dominated Communist World, or a ATL where the USA takes on German as it`s de-facto main language?
Yeah. Arguably better than Arabic, IMO, given those circumstances.
I don't see the first happening, and I'm not sure about the second - that would be quite a bit difference than OTL's US (mostly English speaking even with a POD involving that vote on German).
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
So what about Sanskrit? Could that be an alternate world languge since it was pretty much the mother of all Indo-European languages.
Well, it is true that throughout the Warsaw Pact, Russian was the de facto second language, and all the elites in Poland, Romania, etc spoke Russian. However, getting the Warsaw Pact powerful enough that the same becomes true for most of the world is exceedingly difficult.
The "vote on German" thing is called the Muhlenberg legend, and is an urban legend. On the other hand, it would be interesting to see a POD with much greater German immigration to North America during the colonial period. IIRC, German-speakers made up about 20% of the Thirteen Colonies' population at the time of the Revolution. It might be plausible to increase that to 30-40% so that German becomes self-sustaining and viable in the long run as a second or even first language for many Americans.
Cheers,
Ganesha
Yeah. I don't know how, but I don't see any reason it couldn't be done. And in such a situation, it might well have the Muhlenberg legend be reality.
Sanskrit is tricky, since it hasn't even been used in India except for liturgical purposes for hundreds of years. Sure, there's a few villages which speak Sanskrit, but as a language of diplomacy it's long dead.
Cheers,
Ganesha
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
If Tamerlane's empire had endured or one of his successors created an improved version of the Timurid Empire, then Farsi could have been dominant.
Sanskrit could work in a world dominated by Hindu Indian states (it would be akin to Latin in medieval Europe), though they could just as easily use another prominent Indian language.
Also, Sanskrit is not the "mother of all Indo-European languages"; it's firmly Indo-Iranian and Indo-Aryan (though it can be considered the "mother tongue" of all languages in the latter sub-family).
Delvestius
Banned
Arabic could never become the dominant language, if only because Europeans would under no circumstances use a "not European" language as the world language... Look at France; The sillies can barely understand their language has fallen so far from dominance in comparison to other languages and yet they're asserting it's dominance through tradition and well played coercing. Imagine their disposition regarding English or Spanish; Multiply that be a gillyun if it were Hindi or Arabic..
Spoze there might be a case if you want to have the Arabs explore and colonize, but if this is done too early then their language will fall from being #1 (Such as what happened to Spanish.) Not to mention, if they wanted to have a chance at keeping on to their power and establishing Arabic as #1, you would need to have them industrialize, and good luck to the TL writer who want's to play their game on "ultra-difficulty" level...
What Arabic CAN be is a friggen buffed supergiant of a language, dominant in the third world. Perhaps a stricter adherence to the "Language of God" scripture, or it being made more of an Importance, would require all Muslims to learn Arabic. Sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey and some of the Balkans, Persia, Transoxiana, Northern India, Bengal, and Indonesia would all be Arabic speakers. But even without that, all regions mentioned sans Indonesia might have adopted Arabic as an official language for religious, trade or cultural reasons if the Arabs had been a bit more forceful in that endeavor... Worked in Spain, anyways.
Spoze there might be a case if you want to have the Arabs explore and colonize, but if this is done too early then their language will fall from being #1 (Such as what happened to Spanish.) Not to mention, if they wanted to have a chance at keeping on to their power and establishing Arabic as #1, you would need to have them industrialize, and good luck to the TL writer who want's to play their game on "ultra-difficulty" level...
What Arabic CAN be is a friggen buffed supergiant of a language, dominant in the third world. Perhaps a stricter adherence to the "Language of God" scripture, or it being made more of an Importance, would require all Muslims to learn Arabic. Sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey and some of the Balkans, Persia, Transoxiana, Northern India, Bengal, and Indonesia would all be Arabic speakers. But even without that, all regions mentioned sans Indonesia might have adopted Arabic as an official language for religious, trade or cultural reasons if the Arabs had been a bit more forceful in that endeavor... Worked in Spain, anyways.