AHC: German Languages have Seperate Alphabet

Baconheimer

Baconheimer

How is it possible for most Germanic languages to be written in an alphabet other than the Roman one, be it cyrillic or another new alphabet?

Please no "Vikings in Russia only survivors of plague that destroys western and northern europe".
 

Roberto

They did at one point, Futhark, aka Runes. I'd imagine that the adoption of Roman Catholicism and the need to read Latin scripts mainly dictated the shift over.
 

Widukind

As Roberto points out, the Futhark was essentially an existing Germanic alphabet. It also evolved over time. During the 12th century, the Younger Futhark developed into what is generally called 'Medieval Runes', which incorporated a specific rune for each phoneme of the Old Norse language. This was used side by side with the Latin alphabet up to at least the fifteenth century.

Ultimately, the Latin alphabet won out. It was standard in the south of Europe, the Church used it, etc. etc.

To retain the Medieval Runes, have an official version of the bible translated into those runes as early as possible, and make that bible the standard bible of Scandinavia. That should do the trick.
 
LSCatilina

LSCatilina

Widukind said:
To retain the Medieval Runes, have an official version of the bible translated into those runes as early as possible, and make that bible the standard bible of Scandinavia. That should do the trick.
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Are you sure it would be enough? After all, Gothic script was introduced by Wulfila Bible and it wasn't enough to preserve it. Admittedly, Goths settling in roman lands, and mixing with the population, you had more factors for the use of Latin script.
Still, I don't think the religious use of futhark would save it : I wonder even if it would able, regarding how Latin missionaries saw it OTL as a pagan feature. Maybe with a really early christianisation of Saxons?
 

Widukind

LSCatilina said:
Are you sure it would be enough? After all, Gothic alphabet was introduced by Wulfila Bible and it wasn't enough to preserve it.
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I'm not sure, no. I think it would certainly help, though. After all, those Medieval Runes were used through the 15th century, and isolated communities continued to use them even longer. Translating the bible often had a profound effect on language: the language that the bible was translated into often became dominant. After all, people read the bible in that language, so they became familiar with it. I'm guessing it might do the same trick for the runes, but I can't be sure.
 
LSCatilina

LSCatilina

Widukind said:
After all, people read the bible in that language, so they became familiar with it. I'm guessing it might do the same trick for the runes, but I can't be sure.
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That's another point : reading of the Bible wasn't that widespread, predication was essentially oral.
Now, if christianisation is made earlier (not beyond the VI, making the whole thing a bit hard), a bit like Slavic evangelization used a new script...Maybe a mix between runic and latin script could be used.
 

Widukind

LSCatilina said:
That's another point : reading of the Bible wasn't that widespread, predication was essentially oral.
Now, if christianisation is made earlier (not beyond the VI, making the whole thing a bit hard), a bit like Slavic evangelization used a new script...Maybe a mix between runic and latin script could be used.
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A hybridized form actually emerged at some point IOTL, so that's plausible. Given early christianisation, such a script would stand a fair chance of surviving. :)

Does a hybrid script meet the OP's intent, Baconheimer?
 

funnyhat

It would be interesting to see what would happen to English in this case. Would it still end up using the Roman alphabet, because of the Norman Conquest? If so, would this cause it to drift further apart from the other Germanic languages?
 
LSCatilina

LSCatilina

funnyhat said:
It would be interesting to see what would happen to English in this case. Would it still end up using the Roman alphabet, because of the Norman Conquest? If so, would this cause it to drift further apart from the other Germanic languages?
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Err...Anglo-Saxons used Latin script waaaay before the Norman Conquest, at least since VII century.
 

funnyhat

LSCatilina said:
Err...Anglo-Saxons used Latin script waaaay before the Norman Conquest, at least since VII century.
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Yes, but we are talking about a hypothetical where Germanic languages have their own alphabet. In this situation, the Anglo-Saxons would use the Germanic alphabet.
 
LSCatilina

LSCatilina

funnyhat said:
Yes, but we are talking about a hypothetical where Germanic languages have their own alphabet. In this situation, the Anglo-Saxons would use the Germanic alphabet.
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I see...

Anglo-Saxons used Runic script (an alphabet is something else, by exemple French and English does have different alphabet but use Latin script) up to the VII century where Latin script began to be used, mainly because of the presence of a romanized population in which the germans began to mix.

If Anglo-Saxons were held by Britto-Romans on the eastern part, you could have a greater incitative to keep runic alphabet for a greater length of time. However, christianisation (that definitly going to happen later in this case) would use Latin script and seeing runic script as pagan, would search to replace it.

So, I would say, no you won't have a runic script lasting in these conditions.
 

Horatius Cocles

Well, it kinda had its own "alphabet", if you count Fraktur as an alphabet. IIRC Bismarck once said that he would never read a German book with Latin letters, it was a great issue in Germany over the 19th and early 20th century. Old German cursive (Kurrent), for instance, is incomprehensible to any reader of a Latin alphabet.

PS: Also IIRC the first Afrikaans language book was a Muslim prayer book written in the Arabic script.
 

LeX

You don't need for this to be pre-1900 even. Just have WW2 go worse and make Germany or parts of it an SSR. Bam, there you get Cyrillicized German.
 
ModusViv

ModusViv

Possible for the Germans to be proselytized early on by the Eastern church? Then they would probably be using the Greek alphabet ...
 
LSCatilina

LSCatilina

LeoXiao said:
You don't need for this to be pre-1900 even. Just have WW2 go worse and make Germany or parts of it an SSR. Bam, there you get Cyrillicized German.
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Seeing that Baltic language were cyrillized, I admit I've an hard time believing German would have, critically when it wasn't the case in pre-war German ASSR.
 
LSCatilina

LSCatilina

ModusViv said:
Possible for the Germans to be proselytized early on by the Eastern church? Then they would probably be using the Greek alphabet ...
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Not really. Even with weakening as much as possible the Latin Church, it's quite unlikely that the Christianization would have been made by Greek rite Church.

Not only a great part was already proselytized even before the fall of Roman Empire, but the others were standing just as neighbours of Latin Christian lands.
 
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