With a POD from 1300- how is it possible to have a Europe in which there are many more languages than OTL, such as Yola, Dalmatian, and Pictish?
AHC: More Languages in Europe that Survive to the Present
- Thread starter Baconheimer
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With Dalmatian and Pictish, I assume having the people that spoke them have their own Country/Kingdom would be a start.
Will Kürlich Kerl
Banned
Have the German dialects in the North, Central, and South become their own languages. Also, the northern and southern parts of France spoke two somewhat different languages until the 1800s in OTL. Have France be broken into two countries north-south could probably accomplish that. Also, prevent Spain from taking over Granada.
Getting a Europe with more languages in general is tricky. The disappearance of many languages is due to one people being conquered and absorbed by another. Major nations like France and Germany used to have various regional languages, but those are disappearing fast.
Centralization played a major role. Take France: up until the French Revolution, different languages were spoken in the various regions of France. The revolution introduced the idea the France had to be a single, centralized nation-state, and the language of Paris was made the one official language. The other languages were discriminated against. The remaining native speakers call it a cultural genocide, even (and they are right about that, in my opinion). Similar developments have played out in nearly every European country. The language of the politically dominant region became the language of government, and once state-sponsored education got off the ground, it became the language that the children had to learn.
If you want to preserve one or two regional languages, break up any major country (during the eighteenth cenrury at the latest). Pick any major country. Breaking up Spain will be good for Catalan and Basque languages. Breaking up France can be used to preserve the Occitan languages as well as Breton. Breaking up Germany can help, for instance, Low Saxon or Allamanic to remain the standard language of their respective regions.
If you want to prevent regional languages disappearing all across the board, I believe you have two options:
1. break up the bigger countries that incorporate multiple linguistic groups, or (even better) allow those linguistic groups to retain their national sovereignty from the outset.
2. find some way to make confederalized/decentralized states the norm, and centralism the exception. That way, regional identy will be preserved more strongly, and regional languages stand a better chance.
Centralization played a major role. Take France: up until the French Revolution, different languages were spoken in the various regions of France. The revolution introduced the idea the France had to be a single, centralized nation-state, and the language of Paris was made the one official language. The other languages were discriminated against. The remaining native speakers call it a cultural genocide, even (and they are right about that, in my opinion). Similar developments have played out in nearly every European country. The language of the politically dominant region became the language of government, and once state-sponsored education got off the ground, it became the language that the children had to learn.
If you want to preserve one or two regional languages, break up any major country (during the eighteenth cenrury at the latest). Pick any major country. Breaking up Spain will be good for Catalan and Basque languages. Breaking up France can be used to preserve the Occitan languages as well as Breton. Breaking up Germany can help, for instance, Low Saxon or Allamanic to remain the standard language of their respective regions.
If you want to prevent regional languages disappearing all across the board, I believe you have two options:
1. break up the bigger countries that incorporate multiple linguistic groups, or (even better) allow those linguistic groups to retain their national sovereignty from the outset.
2. find some way to make confederalized/decentralized states the norm, and centralism the exception. That way, regional identy will be preserved more strongly, and regional languages stand a better chance.
Most of them were French dialects, or Occitan Dialects. Breton was already dying except in a few small regions as it was losing ground to the Gallo (a French dialect). Basque was here but it didn't really lose any number of speaker until the advent of televised mass media.
Except it is wrong. French was already France official language since 1539. At the beginning of the french revolution there were project to translate the laws into all the regional languages but the project was quickly abandoned due to the cost. It wasn't until 1992 that French was added as the language of the Republic in the constitution. And current French is closer to the Normand dialect than to the Paris dialect IIRC.
Except during the 3rd Republic there wasn't any coherent discrimination against regional language, except if you argue that writing laws into French was a discrimination. Yes there was discrimination during the 3rd Republic, mostly in schools, but the truce is that those discrimination didn't do shit to kill the regional languages. Regional languages died because of the increase of communication and voyage inside the country. When the average peasant child could go easily to Paris in a train regional languages began to die. The next step was mass media, especially the television, which was far more efficient than any discrimination.
Similar developments have played out in nearly every European country. The language of the politically dominant region became the language of government, and once state-sponsored education got off the ground, it became the language that the children had to learn.[/QUOTE]
The truth is that prestigious language often expand without State intervention, even outside their country of origin. Look for example to the expansion of Scots into Scottish Gaelic speaking area. Of German into Bohemia. Look at Mandarin, which was adopted by all east Asia without occupation by Imperial china. The only way to have more language is to have more countries, and no powerful ones which can influence the others.
Livonian: Prevent conquest of Baltia by Teutonic Knights or with later POD less strict russification politics. Livonian hardly would be very common language but it could be still exist. And without Teutonic Kinights there might be other Baltic languages. Perhaps surviving Prussian.
Dalmatian: With that POD it could survive. Perhaps if Republic of Ragusa stay as independence country.
Flamish: Keep Flanders somehow outside of influence of other Low Countries.
Multiple Italian and Russian languages: Keep Russia balkanised and try avoid Dante's Italian writing spread to whole Italy.
Dalmatian: With that POD it could survive. Perhaps if Republic of Ragusa stay as independence country.
Flamish: Keep Flanders somehow outside of influence of other Low Countries.
Multiple Italian and Russian languages: Keep Russia balkanised and try avoid Dante's Italian writing spread to whole Italy.
Italy still has strong regional dialects.
Russia by contrast does not. Its native language was very similar over a very large area, its medieval liturgical language (Church Slavonic) was standard everywhere in Slavic Europe. The biggest split happened during the Mongol/Lithuanian era that gave rise to modern Ukrainian and Belarusian (from the Chancellery Language of Lithuania).
Anyway, it's linguistically pretty homogenous. Medieval Novgorod dialect could have evolved into its own language given enough time being independent, but it was not territorially widespread (only around Novgorod proper, not its vast tributary lands or even Pskov).
I would have liked to see an Eastern Germanic language like Gothic surviving to modern days, but hard feat...
Dorozhand
Banned
An early Esperanto movement could be really interesting. An international auxiliary language, far from destroying regional languages as many claim it would, would actually be a boon to them. It would encourage cultures to retain their native languages and dialects, by allowing speakers of those dialects to communicate with others through a universal channel, cancelling out the advantages of abandoning regional identity entirely to merge with whomever is in charge at the moment.
If you stop the Mongol invasions, you might be able to save the Crimean Goths.
Mandarin was never adopted outside of North China, and it only began to gradually assume its current form around the transition from the Yuan to the Ming. In fact, South China continues to host various dialects which are unintelligible with Standard Mandarin, as most of them began to diverge during the Tang, although the younger generations are also generally fluent in the standard dialect due to education. On the other hand, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam never adopted the Chinese language itself, although it continuously borrowed numerous loanwords for almost two millennia, while each region also went through its own language evolutions regarding phonological developments.
You're probably thinking of Classical Chinese, which was widely used by the four countries stated above until the 20th century, but that was a written language, and was probably never used in spoken form. Within China, the two forms continued to diverge for more than two millennia to the point where the written form went through significant reforms in the 20th century in order to approximate Standard Mandarin. In any case, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam continued to maintain their native words and grammatical structures, similar to how English borrowed words extensively from Latin, using it as a literary language for centuries, but continued to maintain its core Germanic structure.