languages

Between the 15th and 20th centuries Europeans expanded across the world, spreading their languages in the process. English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and Russian are spoken in far wider of an area than they were a few centuries ago, whether it be in parts of Asia, Africa and Oceania or...

Originating on the Pontic Steppe in Eastern Europe 6,000 years ago, the Indo-European language family is far and away the most widespread language family in the world. First they spread out of their Eastern European urheimat across Eurasia from Iceland to Bangladesh, and then with the European...

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the colonial borders resulted in very linguistically diverse countries in the aftermath of decolonization. As a result, many of those countries retained the colonial language as the lingua franca, and as the official language of the state. The closest a Sub-Saharan...

I have been trawling through the forum to see if this has come up before, but I can't seem to find anything. Basically, I am wondering how easy it would be for a distinctive Galician (the East Slavic variety) language and culture to develop, separate from Ukrainian. Basically, it needs to be...

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, there was a wave of European immigration to the United States. Germans, Swedes, Czechs, Poles, and Danes all moved to the "Golden Country" to find a better life than in their home countries. And they brought with them, along with their culture, their language...

Interslavic is a composite language promoted as a means of understandable communication between speakers of all Slavic languages. While at first glance it may sound modernistic, Interslavic is actually a few centuries old, with prototypes dating back to the 17th century. So, with that in mind...

You've heard of creating alternate history about languages, but how about dialects, or even accents? The challenge this thread contains is to create a dialect found in an alternate history of your design. Your format is: Name Language Family Range Influences/Divergences History Number of...

Okay, so Norn was a North Germanic language closely related to the Faroese and Norwegian languages and slightly more distantly related to Icelandic, Danish, and Swedish that was spoken in the Northern Isles (Orkney and Shetland) off the North Coast of Scotland (yes, I am copying the wikipedia...

So basically the idea is to pick a language, any language that isn’t spoken anymore, and write a scenario where it survives. Some ideas: Wendish, Aramaic, Old Prussian, Latin (as a conversational language), or Norman. Any ideas?

Why did Barbarian conquorers adopt the languages of the peoples they conquered in the former Roman empire? What could lead to Romans adopting barbarian languages? What barbarian languages that were subsumed in favor of a Latin or other pre migration era language, had the highest liklihood of...

Is it known what point the romance languages stratified, ie ceased to be a fluid continuum? is it at the formation of nationstates? the translations of the bible? something else? am i right in thinking most of the continental germanic language continuum remained intact given that most of it was...

I’m gonna make a language map for y’all. My original source is MuturZikin, their maps are amazing, and are pretty much the only good source I found for languages. This will be in VT BAM. I am open to anyone having better sources that they can share

Could the Croatian language standardise based on the Chakavian and the Slavonian language on the Kaykavian if Hungary remains intact, keeps and conquers Northern Serbia (Macva/ Syrmia South to the Danube) and the Great Serb Migration doesn't happen? If yes, what could be the consequences. Also...

In OTL the HRE ended up being divided into Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Chzekia, Belgium, the Netherlands and a couple bits of France & Poland. What other nations could plausibly have formed from it? Alternatively, to give it something of a smaller scope; the Germanic-speaking...

With a POD anytime during the provenance of the script, though preferably before its decline, have Futhorc survive as the primary writing system for English, with the Latin script remaining in use for Latin alone, til the modern day. Bonus if runic scripts survive as the writing systems for all...

With a POD in 1200, make the following languages the top 20 most spoken languages by native speakers. Have fun! 1. Mandarin Chinese (all types) 2. Portuguese 3. Spanish 4. Hindi 5. French 6. Arabic 7. English 8. Bengali 9. Greek 10. German 11. Russia 12. Japanese 13. Punjabi 14. Javanese 15...

lately I have been researching ethnogenesis and it's relation to historical events. I was just wondering if anyone has any ideas for alternate or new ethnic or linguistic groups and what the point of divergence that eventuallly creates them would be. Examples Other surviving Chinese ethnic...

Many have imagined an alternate version of English without the Norman conquest, a much more Germanic, speculative language often called "Anglish". What about the opposite? A maximally French, Romance, Latin-influenced English with the fewest Germanic words possible. Only the most basic words...

I figured it would help if we had a master thread for all alternate terminology/vocabulary discussions. Most of the threads started for asking this kind of advice die pretty soon, only lasting for a couple of posts or a couple of pages at most. So, to prevent cluttering the forums with these...