AHC: Have an OTL Extinct Language become the Lingua Franca of the modern world

Iacobus

Iacobus

Aramaic if Judea became the centre of a Christian theocratic empire maybe with Yeshua I (Jesus) as there first King and Emperor. Coptic if Egypt becomes the centre.

Etruscan if Rasna overcomes Rome and establishes itself as the dominant European power.

There were opportunities for Scythian languages to establish themselves in parts of Europe and Asia possibly pushing aside the Slavs. Also other extinct Persian languages like Khwarazmian could have come to dominate central Eurasia or even Tocharian....
 

Arcavia

JacobFenrir said:
Aramaic if Judea became the centre of a Christian theocratic empire maybe with Yeshua I (Jesus) as there first King and Emperor. Coptic if Egypt becomes the centre.

Etruscan if Rasna overcomes Rome and establishes itself as the dominant European power.

There were opportunities for Scythian languages to establish themselves in parts of Europe and Asia possibly pushing aside the Slavs. Also other extinct Persian languages like Khwarazmian could have come to dominate central Eurasia or even Tocharian....
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All good ideas except Aramaic descendants still have native speakers today.
 

Falecius

Arcavius said:
All good ideas except Aramaic descendants still have native speakers today.
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Jewish Palestinian Aramaic at the time of Jesus has no direct living descendants however. All living forms of Armaic derive from other varieties (mainly Eastern ones) that had already separated to a noticeable extent by that time. Similar situation to Punic relative to Hebrew actually.
 

Falecius

JacobFenrir said:
There were opportunities for Scythian languages to establish themselves in parts of Europe and Asia possibly pushing aside the Slavs. Also other extinct Persian languages like Khwarazmian could have come to dominate central Eurasia or even Tocharian....
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Tocharian is interesting. One could imagine a different Kushana Empire has potential... Perhaps a very successful Buddhist school adopts it as its "sacred" language and it spreads both as commercial lingua franca on the silk road and major religious/learned language? That would be a start (a similar path could apply to extinct Iranian languages of the steppe belt and Central Asia).
I know that Buddhism IOTL is not really into the notion of a "sacred" language as such, but it is not an impossible development either.
 

Arkenfolm

Late Antiquity is loaded with potential PoDs, but the simplest would be to have the Anglo-Saxons assimilate into the Brythonic peoples and the British (and their colonies) still rise to global power, leading to the lingua franca being a now extinct Brythonic language. More distant possibilities from the same era could be an East Germanic language supplanting West Germanic in Germany (and TTL's Germany is North Sea focused and later colonizes the New World), or maybe an African Romance language.
 

Falecius

SeaCambrian said:
Hebrew arguably died as a living language and was revived, making it already satisfy this scenario as well as making Punic eligible. The point about Classical Latin is interesting. Vulgar Latin is a descendant of Classical Latin so even though Romance languages came from Vulgar Latin, Classical Latin has direct descendants through Vulgar Latin.
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My point was a bit more nitpicky than that: Classical Latin as we know it was a codified literary variety nobody really spoke as such, branching from the spoken language of Rome and remaning "frozen" as a formal standard while the spoken langauge (mainly of the "rustic" varieties, as opposed to the "urban" form that gave rise to Classical Latin) spread to evolve into Vulgar Latin and then Romance.
In this sense, you could regard Classical literary Latin as a branching without direct decendants (the same applies more or less to other classical written languages such as Literary Syriac, Early Official Aramaic, Biblical Jewish Aramaic, Middle Babylonian, Old Egyptian, Geez, Literary Attic Greek, Old Church Slavonic; no-one really ever spoke these in everyday use, and whether they can be counted to have direct descendants is blurry). On the other hand, treating these entities as full, complete branchings is also inaccurate; these varieties existed within a continuum.
 
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Vuu

Vuu

Banned
Tbh the idea of the Sumerians figuring out how to properly irrigate without ludicrous salting of the soil would probably give them an edge over others is entertaining, but much more hegemonic states collapsed and their languages went into total irrelevancy

These PoD's are the kind of ones where anything is possible
 
Iacobus

Iacobus

metalinvader665 said:
Late Antiquity is loaded with potential PoDs, but the simplest would be to have the Anglo-Saxons assimilate into the Brythonic peoples and the British (and their colonies) still rise to global power, leading to the lingua franca being a now extinct Brythonic language. More distant possibilities from the same era could be an East Germanic language supplanting West Germanic in Germany (and TTL's Germany is North Sea focused and later colonizes the New World), or maybe an African Romance language.
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I'd have thought that Brythonic would morph into Welsh overtime or something very similar. It's also a possibility that a Brythonic-Latin Hybrid language develops from British Romance. Take a look at this: https://www.frathwiki.com/Brithenig
 
Iacobus

Iacobus

Falecius said:
Tocharian is interesting. One could imagine a different Kushana Empire has potential... Perhaps a very successful Buddhist school adopts it as its "sacred" language and it spreads both as commercial lingua franca on the silk road and major religious/learned language? That would be a start (a similar path could apply to extinct Iranian languages of the steppe belt and Central Asia).
I know that Buddhism IOTL is not really into the notion of a "sacred" language as such, but it is not an impossible development either.
Click to expand...

Kushano actually spoke Bactrian with a Greco-Bactrian Alphabet which still qualifies as an extinct language and a curious case of culture mixing. You could have seen the Kushans project power up into Central Asia, protect the Tocharians from Turkic invasion and repel the Muslims when they march east. I'm imagining Afghanistan as a well protected natural fortress guarding India and extending over Greater Khorasan possibly until the Mongols arrive but they, for all their brutality, tended to assimilate after a time so Kushan culture, language would be preserved in Afghanistan and Central Asia and it would be prominent in India as well. Buddhism would do well too, having what is in effect a continuous theocratic empire from it early expansion. It would be a fusion of Mahayana and Vajrayana sects that would be predominant in Kushan territory and East Asia which they would have helped convert, which Tocharian assistance.

Another scenario is that the Tocharians somehow, perhaps with, say, Scythian help, manage to conqueror China and establish an influential dynasty or explore and settle new lands on the frontiers. They could survive that way, not 100% certain but the chances improve. Come and have a look at this: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ti-the-scythian-redhairs-of-east-asia.459451/
 

Arkenfolm

JacobFenrir said:
I'd have thought that Brythonic would morph into Welsh overtime or something very similar. It's also a possibility that a Brythonic-Latin Hybrid language develops from British Romance. Take a look at this: https://www.frathwiki.com/Brithenig
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Welsh would be to this language what some of the more arcane rural dialects of England are to English. British Latin is another possibility but would take a different POD during Roman times since it wasn't spoken over a large area. But if it did survive it would superficially resemble French but with more Celtic influences.
 
English Nationalist

English Nationalist

Something a little more unusual, how about a random branch of Protestants towards the start of the Reformation decide to adopt some sort of form of Aramaic in an effort to make Christianity more like "Jesus Time" or something. Whatever the reasoning, this form of Protestant Aramaic catches on firstly through some of the more radical sects of Protestantism. Skipping forward in time a little bit, P.A. has caught on becoming the language of many Protestant communities while many more use it purely for religious reasons. Slowly but surely P.A. becomes a sort of Lingua Franca between Protestants and other groups who adopted the language in some fashion. Today, many millions speak it as their native tongue with millions more L2 and L3 speakers exist across the globe. Despite this position, P.A. is declining in parts amongst younger generations due to such factors as Nationalism and Non-Theism.

Might not be the entire world but could potentially be a linguistic plurality.
 
oshron

oshron

English Nationalist said:
Something a little more unusual, how about a random branch of Protestants towards the start of the Reformation decide to adopt some sort of form of Aramaic in an effort to make Christianity more like "Jesus Time" or something. Whatever the reasoning, this form of Protestant Aramaic catches on firstly through some of the more radical sects of Protestantism. Skipping forward in time a little bit, P.A. has caught on becoming the language of many Protestant communities while many more use it purely for religious reasons. Slowly but surely P.A. becomes a sort of Lingua Franca between Protestants and other groups who adopted the language in some fashion. Today, many millions speak it as their native tongue with millions more L2 and L3 speakers exist across the globe. Despite this position, P.A. is declining in parts amongst younger generations due to such factors as Nationalism and Non-Theism.

Might not be the entire world but could potentially be a linguistic plurality.
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i could see that working, to an extent--i'd say, more likely, it would have a role like Hebrew in modern Judaism or Latin in Catholicism, something mainly with a religious context and not something that people use as an everyday language
 

Arkenfolm

English Nationalist said:
Something a little more unusual, how about a random branch of Protestants towards the start of the Reformation decide to adopt some sort of form of Aramaic in an effort to make Christianity more like "Jesus Time" or something. Whatever the reasoning, this form of Protestant Aramaic catches on firstly through some of the more radical sects of Protestantism. Skipping forward in time a little bit, P.A. has caught on becoming the language of many Protestant communities while many more use it purely for religious reasons. Slowly but surely P.A. becomes a sort of Lingua Franca between Protestants and other groups who adopted the language in some fashion. Today, many millions speak it as their native tongue with millions more L2 and L3 speakers exist across the globe. Despite this position, P.A. is declining in parts amongst younger generations due to such factors as Nationalism and Non-Theism.

Might not be the entire world but could potentially be a linguistic plurality.
Click to expand...

Very few would ever use it as their main language, just because there's no reason to. The one exception would be something like the Sanskrit-speaking villages in India today, maybe here enforced by an isolated, very pious denomination (like the Amish) which uses it as a sign of their piety and separation from worldly society. Something like this could never become mainstream without changing immensely.

Otherwise you have something like how many Protestants (and other Christians) historically and now are encouraged to study Hebrew and Ancient Greek to better read the Bible.
 
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