The Languages of the ASB, Part 3: The Established European Languages
(Scots, Gaelic, Swedish, German, Basque, other Celtic languages, other Nordic languages)
The “Established” European languages denote those that have a long history within the ASB, going back to the colonial era or the initial period of modern settlement. You'll notice that all are from western Europe. The first four have sizable populations and official status in at least one state. The map is just for a quick reference to places named in the text. Credit as always to Gian for making the base.
Scotland separated from the English monarchy in the middle of the seventeenth century. But the Scots were not particularly assertive about their language at first. Their ideology of independence consisted in Calvinism and aristocratic pride, not anything like modern nationalism, and its leaders were content to keep following the English lead when it came to language. It was only a century later that a generation of poets and writers began to self-consciously differentiate Scots from English. Rabbie Burns fits so nicely into this world that I’m keeping him, and he was the unrivalled leader of Scotland’s struggle for linguistic independence.
In America, this period corresponded with the Province of New Scotland’s achievement of political autonomy. But economically and culturally, it kept a close connection to the mother country, and this period saw some of the highest rates of immigration from Scotland. The new assertiveness of Scots language also crossed the ocean.
Scots always had a reactive, pugnacious quality to it, characterized above all by a desire not to be English. This has been no different in the American context, for just as Scotland had to deal with England as an ever-present neighbor, so does New Scotland have New England. The southern end of the state has a significant Yankee population, and New Englanders were always a constant presence in New Scottish ports. This produced an acute sense that Scots language and identity needed to be protected from creeping English influence.
The first Scots-language schoolbooks in America were published in the early decades of the 19th century. The first ordinances promoting the language over English date from the same era. In 1854, the New England Academy was founded; New Scotland followed suit four years later by chartering a branch of the Academy of Scotland. There has been relatively little desire to assert the independence of any particularly American variety of Scots; instead, the European form is held up as the standard.
The twentieth century saw an increasingly elaborate body of laws designed to safeguard the distinctiveness of the Scots language in America. English-Speaking New Scottish people like to laugh at the seeming pettiness of some of the rules, but the guardians of the language consider them essential.
Outside New Scotland itself, the Scots language has mostly behaved in such a fashion as to confirm the fears of its defenders. Almost everywhere, speakers have shifted to English. West Acadia is the only other state where the language has any substantial presence, and even there it may be declining, the smallest of the state’s five official languages.
3B. Gaelic · Gàidhlig
Gaelic, the other Scottish language, faces a different set of challenges. It is not threatened by the simple fact of its similarity to a neighboring language, but its speakers have often faced cultural and class-based prejudices, as well as easy mixing with other groups. It has to contend not only with Scots, but also with French and English.
Gaelic speakers settled much of the interior of New Scotland from the early eighteenth century. Their settlements were isolated, clannish, and self-sufficient - the perfect climate for language maintenance. This provided Gaelic with a solid center within the cultural melting pot of Acadia. The colonial era saw a good deal of intermarriage between the Highlander and Franco-Acadian populations, resulting in a mixing of cultures and a switch from Gaelic to French in some villages.
New Scotland as a whole has had contradictory attitudes toward this minority group. On the one hand, the Gaelic language is a source of pride and a link to Scotland’s ancient past. The public display of Gaelic, things like signs and mottoes, is popular all over the state. On the other hand, the Highlanders themselves are stereotyped as ignorant peasants. Gaelic speakers who want to advance professionally need to use an additional language. Scots and French have some presence in even the remotest villages of the province, so it is not uncommon for people in Gaelic-speaking villages to grow up trilingual, perhaps adding English as a fourth language later on.
To confront these pressures, Gaelic speakers have also taken steps to protect their language. Throughout Acadia, each municipality has a declared official language, and those that are part of the Acadian Gàidhealtachd take strict measures to maintain the language’s use in education and the public sphere. This extends into parts of West and East Acadia as well as New Scotland itself.
To protect and promote Gaelic, the Acadian states have cooperated to set up a series of official bodies. The first was a Gaelic Association (not a full-fledged academy) around the turn of the 20th century. A bit later the Academy of Scotland, both in Europe and America, set up separate departments for Gaelic. The American Gaelic department then split off in the 1990s to join with Gaels from the other Acadian states to found an independent academy. It is located in New Glasgow and is one of the basket of institutions run by the Acadian states collectively.
3C. Swedish · Svenska
The outsized prominence of Christiana leads many people to overestimate the size of the Swedish-speaking population of the ASB. Even within Chrisitana, the language does not command a majority. It is roughly equal in size to the English Christianers, with Lenape- and Dutch-speaking minorities ensuring that neither tops 50% of the population. Still, Swedish is an important part of the confederation’s linguistic landscape, with pockets of speakers in several states.
From the late eighteenth century, some Swedish-speaking populations moved inland from Christiana, largely along lines set by the state’s close connection to the Lenape nation. A large group settled on the western bank of the Poutaxat in what became southeastern Poutaxia. Another went out to the Ohio country, creating a Swedish community in what is now Chalacatha province.
Later on, Christiana served as the point of entry for a new wave of immigrants from Sweden. Drawn by the prospect of farming the plains of Dakota and the Upper Country, many Swedish families passed through Christiana on their journey west. Very often, a new village on the prairies would be anchored by a core of "old Swede" settlers - actually Mixed Swedish-Lenape - which then attracted newcomers from Europe.
The broken line of Swedish settlements stretches from the Poutaxat to the Missouri. Their numbers are not big, but they comprise a proud and vibrant language community. In the mid-20th century, political tension between the ASB and Sweden kindled a desire to promote distinctly American varieties of the language. A few publishers and universities have put forward dictionaries and guides to fill this need. American Swedish has no formal regulatory body.
3D. German · Deutsch
The ASB has no state that started as a specifically German colony, but Germans have taken part in colonizations up and down the continent, a leitmotif playing in the background of the confederation’s history. A number of Protestant colonies intentionally attracted German immigrants to augment their numbers, in particular New Netherland, Christiana, Pennsylvania, and New Scotland.
In Pennsylvania, the Germans at one point came close to outnumbering the English. While this is no longer the case, German is still the state’s second language. Centuries of intermarriage has meant that Pennamites are usually considered a single ethnic group, members of which might speak either English or German (or, frequently, both). The Pennamites carried German westward into Poutaxia, Allegheny, Ohio, and the southern tier of the Upper Country.
Missionaries from the Moravian Church were another source of German language and culture. They had the largest linguistic impact in Labrador, where German is one of the state’s official languages to this day.
After 1833, the newly independent Francophone states of Louisiana and Canada also sought immigrants from Germany to help develop their interior regions, which today are the states of Upper Louisiana and the Upper Country. Louisiana German is mostly a heritage language nowadays, but the community in the Upper Country is still living and active, especially in the Miliouqué, Prairies, and Aux-Fèves countries to the west of Lake Michigan. West Dominica also drew German immigrants. While many Boreoamericans looked askance at the Black-ruled republic, German investors and laborers tended to lack the racial prejudices held by citizens of the colonizer nations. They helped to modernize the state's economy, ensuring the profitability of its sugar and coffee.
As with Swedish, the German language is promoted by a network of associations, schools, and companies, rather than any official body. But the ASB’s Deutschbereich is much more diffuse, not centered on any one state.
3E. Basque · Euskara
Basque fishermen were among the first Europeans in North America. They established many small settlements, some seasonal and some permanent, but the closest they came to having a colony of their own was in St. Pierre and Miquelon. A century and a half ago, Basque was the most common language of the islands. It has been almost entirely eclipsed by French but is still holding on, supported by a Euskal Institutua that is working to revive it. Basque can also still be heard in a few villages along the coast of far eastern Canada and southern Labrador.
3F. Other Celtic languages
The Irish language has a long history in the ASB, mostly in small pockets and often surrounded by English speakers. This geographic scattering has had a deleterious effect on the survival of the language. Most Irish descendants in Boreoamerica speak English, proud though they may be of their roots. A few communities in northwestern Carolina still speak the language, and this pocket is notable for having a sizable Black as well as White population of Irish speakers. Beaver Island in Lake Michigan attracted a population of Irish-speaking fishermen in the years before 1900, and their isolation from the rest of the state helped them keep their language.
Pennsylvania has historic and sentimental connections to Wales, dating back to the days of William Penn. Penn granted Welsh County to a group of Welsh Quakers. They established schools and courts in their own language that thrived for generations. But the county’s proximity to Philadelphia doomed Welsh; there were just too many English speakers moving in. The language community, still rather healthy in 1800, was a curiosity by 1900 and essentially gone today. The only Pennsylvania Welsh to keep their language were those who moved further away, namely to the secluded valleys of Kitchatinny province in Poutaxia. There in the shadow of the Blue Mountain, Welsh-speaking farmers live on in their close-knit villages.
Breton-speaking fishermen together with Normans and Basques were prominent in the history of the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. But the islands’ tiny size fostered intermarriage, and the Bretons did not survive as a distinct language community. Some Breton people of St. Pierre still know phrases they learned from their grandparents, and the language appears on some trilingual signs around town together with French and Basque.
3G. Other Nordic languages
Norwegian and Icelandic people have immigrated in small numbers to the ASB, and as it happens one early settlement project brought people from both nations to Noquet Island in Lake Michigan. Danish turned out to be the most convenient common language for the mixed community, and this is the language that was passed down. Remote Noquet proved exactly right for the maintenance of a minority language. In other places where Danes, Norwegians, and Icelanders settled, they generally did not maintain their languages.
Finns made up a significant number of the original colonists of New Sweden, modern Christiana. They were the ones who introduced the iconic log cabin, which then spread up and down the continent. But the Finnish language did not survive for very long in the colony, and their descendants switched to one of the three main languages of Christiana: Swedish, English, or Lenape. Later arrivals from Finland likewise tended to settle among Swedes and adopt their language after a generation or two.
