Languages survive which OTL became extinct

How could we have these languages survive:

1. The Anatolian languages
2. The Tocharian languages
3. Illyrian
4. Dacian
5. Thracian
6. Prussian
7. Pomeranian
8. Gaulish
9. British
10. Gothic
 
Errr...
british Did survive. Its called Welsh. And Breton, and up to a century ago, cornish.

Similarly, illyrian probably survived, as is called Albanian. I ll admit theres a bit of argument about the latter.

Prussian would be 'easy'. Get them to convert before the teutonic knights rolled over them.

You note the slavs who converted before being conquered tended to survive, and the others didnt.


Gothic is hopeless. Note that none of burgundian, frankish or lombard survived, and they had better chances than gothic.
 
Gothic in Crimea, maybe. Or somewhere in *Romania. That said, it was always a minority language with most Goths (along with Alans, Khazars, and others) speaking Greek by the time of Kievan Rus.
 
<offtopic>I would love to see ancient Macedonian language survive.</offtopic>

Was'nt Ancient Macedonian just a dialect of Ancient Greek?

Actually, that's somehow fitting, that both ancient and modern Macedonian are simply dialects of a near-by language that have come to consider themselves an entirely seperate language.
 
Errr...
british Did survive. Its called Welsh. And Breton, and up to a century ago, cornish.

Similarly, illyrian probably survived, as is called Albanian. I ll admit theres a bit of argument about the latter.

Prussian would be 'easy'. Get them to convert before the teutonic knights rolled over them.

You note the slavs who converted before being conquered tended to survive, and the others didnt.


Gothic is hopeless. Note that none of burgundian, frankish or lombard survived, and they had better chances than gothic.
I read that the Vandals or Lugii used to be associated with the term "Lech" just like the Poles, because the river Lech River is named after Lugii.
 
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Actually, Gothic survived until the mid-18th century in the form of Crimean Gothic.
Gah!! Yes, of course, i was thinking of the majority that moved west to italy and spain, and the ones that tried to fight byzantium in the balkans. I totally forgot the remnant left behind. You are right.

If Breton, Cornish, and Welsh count, shouldn't Dutch, at least, count for Frankish?
Hmmm... maybe. Im not sure off hand what the relationship between frankish and franconian is. But you may be right.

The analogy I was trying for was barbarian germanic overlords ruling over romans. Which isnt the whole story even for goths as Iori pointed out.
 
Hmmm... maybe. Im not sure off hand what the relationship between frankish and franconian is. But you may be right.

Frankish and Franconian, are two different languages within different sub-branched of Germanic, even, separated by several centuries in their high points.
 
No replies as of yet for Dacian or Thracian.

For the Tocharians it seems that you just need to keep the Uyghurs out of the Tarim Basin.

For Pomeranian, would the convert-before-the-Teutonic-Knights-come route work?
 
Was'nt Ancient Macedonian just a dialect of Ancient Greek?

Actually, that's somehow fitting, that both ancient and modern Macedonian are simply dialects of a near-by language that have come to consider themselves an entirely seperate language.
Actually they are in an unclassified category they could be anything for example according to wiki it might be:
An Indo-European language which is a close cousin to Greek and also related to Thracian and Phrygian languages, suggested by A. Meillet (1913) and I. I. Russu (1938),[6] or part of a Sprachbund encompassing Thracian, Illyrian and Greek (Kretschmer 1896, E. Schwyzer 1959).
An Illyrian dialect mixed with Greek, suggested by K. O. Müller (1825) and by G. Bonfante (1987).
A Greek dialect, part of the North-Western (Locrian, Aetolian, Phocidian, Epirote) variants of Doric Greek, suggested amongst others by N.G.L. Hammond (1989) Olivier Masson (1996) and Michael Meier-Brügger (2003).[7][8][9]
A northern Greek dialect, related to Aeolic Greek and Thessalian, suggested among others by A.Fick (1874) and O.Hoffmann (1906).[7][10]
A Greek dialect with a non-Indo-European substratal influence, suggested by M. Sakellariou (1983).
A sibling language of Greek within Indo-European, Macedonian and Greek forming two subbranches of a Greco-Macedonian subgroup within Indo-European (sometimes called "Hellenic"),[4] suggested by Joseph (2001), Georgiev (1966)[11] and others.[12]
 
Errr...
british Did survive. Its

Gothic is hopeless. Note that none of burgundian, frankish or lombard survived, and they had better chances than gothic.

Hate to break it to you, but Frankish did, in fact, survive. It's currently called Dutch.

And, as to Gothic, it has one thing going for it that your other examples do not have; namely, it was already a literary language. Although this des not mean thst its survival is guaranteed, I could see it surviving in a TL with a surviving Gothic state; albeit with a good deal of Latin influence to its vocabulary.
 
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