AHC: a completly alien "English" language.

Looks like folksy Newspeak. Compare words like yearhundred, wealthships, folkstems, with plusgood, crimethink, thinkpol. Sticking together two commonplace words to make one longer one.

...which is what OTL German and Dutch does anyway (compare "Jahrhundert" to "yearhundred", or "Volkstamm" to "folkstem"). I suppose one could draw a comparison to Newspeak, but honestly I don't have any issue with that if shorn of the Orwellian political implications. That is, except for the redundant ones like "plusgood". In those instances, I could see the English language being pretty much re-written along those Ingsoc lines, which might yield the results the OP requested to begin with.
 
Looks like folksy Newspeak. Compare words like yearhundred, wealthships, folkstems, with plusgood, crimethink, thinkpol. Sticking together two commonplace words to make one longer one.
Bewær þē folk þæt wȳsc to folkgaderen ēowr werk!
 
I imagine that if I'm a tourist in an alternate Great Britain (especially,in England) and watch a news bulletin from the BBC in this alternate English language... I'm like watching Taggeschau or Journaal
 
It does seem that no Norman Conquest does have the most interesting alternatives, however, that is still slightly recognizable. What about a conquest from another place, like Spain, or Holland, or even Ireland?

Honestly butterflies alone would probably make Anglish into a much more unrecognizable direction due to time and unpredictable linguistic changes like OTL's vowel shift which while different from OTL may still happen.
 
I imagine that if I'm a tourist in an alternate Great Britain (especially,in England) and watch a news bulletin from the BBC in this alternate English language... I'm like watching Taggeschau or Journaal

Maybe something like "Se
Dæywhomly Tidinge"? Of course, that's just butchered/"updated" Old English, so maybe something else would work.
 
I personally don't think that a conquest from Spain in the 16th century is going to result in a "completely alien English language". I mean, sure you might get some differences here and there in vocabulary and spelling, but I think it was tool late in the language's history for Spanish or any of its close relatives to have affected English as drastically as Norman did.


Besides, if there's no Norman Conquest you can affect English at a much more fundamental level not only phonetically, but grammatically. The things I talked about in the last post were smallish (I don't think the first one was that insignificant) changes, but there's a lot more that you could do as well. I'm not as well versed on the subject as I'd like to be, but I think one of the biggest affects that Norman had on English may have been the decline of nominal inflection, which I'm fairly sure was either already lost in Norman or almost completely lost at the time of the conquest. Almost all of the other Germanic languages, especially mainstream ones like German and Dutch preserve nominal declension to some degree. That is a concept that's almost completely alien to English speakers today. Can you imagine declining your nouns for nominative, accusative, and dative cases?


Another phonological change that you could into the mix would be changing [æ:] to [a] and maybe eventually [ɑ] or even [ə] later on. The first part of that, the [æ:] to [a] is a feature of my native dialect of English and could easily be worked in with the droll that I was talking about earlier. Another thing that happened in Middle English was the unrounding of [Y] and [y:] to [ɪ] and [i:]. What if the vowels were to continue to round, instead morphing into [ɪ̈] and [ɨ]? So maybe instead of the word 'cyning' being pronounced [kʰʏnɪŋ] and then [kɪnɪŋ] and finally just [kʰɪŋ] (after some syncope), you could end up with [kʰɪ̈nɪŋ], and eventually, by Early Modern English [kʰʊŋ]. That almost sounds Swedish, doesn't it?


If you were to continue with the aforementioned droll a la Southern American English Dialects, that added in a palatal [j] instead of the Middle English Smoothing, you could easily wind up with 'four' being pronounced like 'fire' and 'fire' being pronounced like 'fair'. Then voice the /f/ so you get [væɪəɾ], [veɪəɾ] (with the option of a rolled /r/ or regular modern /r/). That would definitely be VERY different. So maybe when saying 'four kings' by Early Modern English times you're pronouncing [væɪər kʰʊŋəs] instead of [fuwoɹ kɪŋs].
 
On the whole, I agree with the thrust of your post. However, I have some commentary on each of your points;

I personally don't think that a conquest from Spain in the 16th century is going to result in a "completely alien English language". I mean, sure you might get some differences here and there in vocabulary and spelling, but I think it was tool late in the language's history for Spanish or any of its close relatives to have affected English as drastically as Norman did.

The biggest change I imagine resulting from this is the transformation of "-tion" to the Spanish "-cion", which IIRC was dialectically used from time to time anyway in England prior to the Modern English period. Other than that, I concur that English wasn't nearly as malleable at this point as during the Anglo-Saxon period.

Besides, if there's no Norman Conquest you can affect English at a much more fundamental level not only phonetically, but grammatically. The things I talked about in the last post were smallish (I don't think the first one was that insignificant) changes, but there's a lot more that you could do as well. I'm not as well versed on the subject as I'd like to be, but I think one of the biggest affects that Norman had on English may have been the decline of nominal inflection, which I'm fairly sure was either already lost in Norman or almost completely lost at the time of the conquest. Almost all of the other Germanic languages, especially mainstream ones like German and Dutch preserve nominal declension to some degree. That is a concept that's almost completely alien to English speakers today. Can you imagine declining your nouns for nominative, accusative, and dative cases?

Last time I checked, Afrikaans (hardly a "minor dialect", unless 6+ million people speak jibberish on a daily basis) has NO declension to speak of outside of set phrases, and Swedish ain't much different. And really, Dutch isn't either. If one were to use a Germanic language as an example of declension's survival other than German, I'd use Icelandic and its insanely thorough retention of case endings.

As far as English goes, the loss of those cases are IMHO totally unrelated to the Norman win and overlordship given how the Wessex dialect saw those cases merging and/or disappearing since the 900s. Something I can see being retained without Norman rule is the use of compound nouns that English seems to have lost ("Greatvowelshift", "insuranceadjuster", "nativedialect", etc.), and possibly the "ge-" prefix if the Wessex dialect's transformation of the "g" to a modern "y" sound isn't adopted so universally.

Another phonological change that you could into the mix would be changing [æ:] to [a] and maybe eventually [ɑ] or even [ə] later on. The first part of that, the [æ:] to [a] is a feature of my native dialect of English and could easily be worked in with the droll that I was talking about earlier. Another thing that happened in Middle English was the unrounding of [Y] and [y:] to [ɪ] and [i:]. What if the vowels were to continue to round, instead morphing into [ɪ̈] and [ɨ]? So maybe instead of the word 'cyning' being pronounced [kʰʏnɪŋ] and then [kɪnɪŋ] and finally just [kʰɪŋ] (after some syncope), you could end up with [kʰɪ̈nɪŋ], and eventually, by Early Modern English [kʰʊŋ]. That almost sounds Swedish, doesn't it?

Which dialect would that be of yours, incidentally? And that alt-vowel shift sounds neat, I think that Danish would also be a good model (they underwent the GVS to a certain degree along with English, at least the "a" and "e" did).

If you were to continue with the aforementioned droll a la Southern American English Dialects, that added in a palatal [j] instead of the Middle English Smoothing, you could easily wind up with 'four' being pronounced like 'fire' and 'fire' being pronounced like 'fair'. Then voice the /f/ so you get [væɪəɾ], [veɪəɾ] (with the option of a rolled /r/ or regular modern /r/). That would definitely be VERY different. So maybe when saying 'four kings' by Early Modern English times you're pronouncing [væɪər kʰʊŋəs] instead of [fuwoɹ kɪŋs].

Again with the Southern American reference, it's interesting how much influence could be seen in an alternate English that would resemble that dialect. I actually think it could happen, given how old the dialect is (either that or a "New Englander" accent, both have been around a good while) and the fact that New World dialects tend to be more "conservative" than their European counterparts; just compare Spanish or Portuguese across both sides of the pond for proof.

As far as the "r" goes, don't forget the guttural "r" in English too. Maybe all three could exist, depending on how regionalized the kingdom becomes :). And for some reason, the sound of this English variant in my head sounds like Til Schweiger trying to play Rhett Butler.
 
The biggest change I imagine resulting from this is the transformation of "-tion" to the Spanish "-cion", which IIRC was dialectically used from time to time anyway in England prior to the Modern English period. Other than that, I concur that English wasn't nearly as malleable at this point as during the Anglo-Saxon period.



That would just be an orthographical change. Spanish was still pronouncing -cion as [tsjon] as the time, and I imagine it still would've been palatalized in English.


Last time I checked, Afrikaans (hardly a "minor dialect", unless 6+ million people speak jibberish on a daily basis) has NO declension to speak of outside of set phrases, and Swedish ain't much different. And really, Dutch isn't either. If one were to use a Germanic language as an example of declension's survival other than German, I'd use Icelandic and its insanely thorough retention of case endings.



Oh yes, Afrikaans... I forgot about Afrikaans. Yeah they're 'to be' verb has been massively simplified too. But in reference to the others, that's why I said "to some degree". I understand that in most other Germanic languages it's not all that prominent, but it is still present where in English it's almost entirely non-existent beyond -s and your pronouns and such.


As far as English goes, the loss of those cases are IMHO totally unrelated to the Norman win and overlordship given how the Wessex dialect saw those cases merging and/or disappearing since the 900s. Something I can see being retained without Norman rule is the use of compound nouns that English seems to have lost ("Greatvowelshift", "insuranceadjuster", "nativedialect", etc.), and possibly the "ge-" prefix if the Wessex dialect's transformation of the "g" to a modern "y" sound isn't adopted so universally.



Ok. I like the compound nouns idea, but I kind of have a hard on for Mercian dialects having a greater influence on the language.


Which dialect would that be of yours, incidentally? And that alt-vowel shift sounds neat, I think that Danish would also be a good model (they underwent the GVS to a certain degree along with English, at least the "a" and "e" did).


Thank you :) They also did it with /i/, did they not? And I'm from the Pacific Northwest.


Again with the Southern American reference, it's interesting how much influence could be seen in an alternate English that would resemble that dialect. I actually think it could happen, given how old the dialect is (either that or a "New Englander" accent, both have been around a good while) and the fact that New World dialects tend to be more "conservative" than their European counterparts; just compare Spanish or Portuguese across both sides of the pond for proof.


Ha indeed. But Southern American English is a collection of dialects, not all of which exhibit the stereotypical 'Southern Droll'. I was just using it in this instance though. My favorite dialects of English are mine and Kiwi English.


As far as the "r" goes, don't forget the guttural "r" in English too. Maybe all three could exist, depending on how regionalized the kingdom becomes :). And for some reason, the sound of this English variant in my head sounds like Til Schweiger trying to play Rhett Butler.


Hahahahaha...


Yeah, maybe, dialectally speaking. Perhaps as allophones of one another, or as differentiated sounds? I also like the idea of more palatalization a la Swedish/Faroese. Especially Faroese. Faroese does a lit of palatalizing of velar stops.
 
It's a bit funny that this thread is discussed again - and with a "no Norman Conquest" POD no less - because one of my favorite linguistic sites just made a new article with just such a scenario :D
(for the record: as far as I can tell, it's actually pretty darn close to OTL English... which is about what I expected, considering that, linguistically, a divergence of 1000 years isn't that much - it's less than the difference between OTL Russian and Polish)
 
Lol, tell that to the French. Skip to 4:20 on this video, it's in Old French:

As far as I know, much like Middle English, "Old" French is essentially the modern version except with all the silent letters pronounced :)
Seriously, Polish and Russian are also not very mutually intelligible when spoken, either. (Maybe Spanish and Italian, or possibly either of them and French, might be a better analogy; the difference is roughly similar, though a big larger if French is involved.)
 
As far as I know, much like Middle English, "Old" French is essentially the modern version except with all the silent letters pronounced :)
Seriously, Polish and Russian are also not very mutually intelligible when spoken, either. (Maybe Spanish and Italian, or possibly either of them and French, might be a better analogy; the difference is roughly similar, though a big larger if French is involved.)


Not exactly, although even then, if you pronounce the silent letters, it's still pretty different. As far as I know, Old French in the 11th century had not yet palatalized velar stops in a lot of places, which is where we get the word 'castle' from Norman 'castel' which has now become 'chateau'. So in IPA, that's the difference between [kʰastɛl] and [ʃɑto:]. The vowel system was also a lot more similar to modern European Portuguese, with nasal consonants still pronounced at the end of words and /oi/ was still [ɔɪ] and /r/'s were trilled up until the 18th century I believe. So the modern word for 'king', 'rois', pronounced [ʀwɑ] would have been [ɾɔɪs] or [rəis] depending on dialect, cuz I've seen in written 'rois' and 'reis' in Old French texts.


I'm also fairly sure that a number of consonants that are no longer even spelled were still around. Wikipedia used to have a nice chart demonstrating the evolution of the past participle of 'to know' (known) from Latin 'sapitum' to Modern French 'su'. I believe in the 11th century it would have been said [sevyð], but I can't tell you how it was spelled.


Spanish and Italian on the other hand, have been on different routes since at least 100 BC and probably 200 BC just after the Roman Conquest of parts of Iberia. Distinctive verbs like 'fabulare' (to speak, the progenitor of hablar and falar) are retained in Iberian Latin where they were lost in other varieties and the verb 'quaerare' which meant 'to inquire' was already being to mean 'to desire/want' pretty early on as well. Spanish has also done a lot of changing not only phonologically speaking, but also grammatically (the construction of the future conjugations of verbs from compounding old conjugations 'ir'), so I think 1,000 years is plenty of time for English to sound very, very different.


And then you have all the seriously different languages in Italy, like Lombard v. Friulian v. Venetian v. Piedmontese v. Tuscan v. Emilian-Romagnol. I was looking at some Bergamasco (a dialect of Lombard) for one of the characters in my book, and it's COMPLETELY different from Standard Italian. The 'to have' verb is 'igà', and in Italian where you would say: 'Io sono da qua.' for: 'I'm from here.' you would apparently say in Bergamasco: 'Mé só de sà.'


But anyways... lol
 
That would just be an orthographical change. Spanish was still pronouncing -cion as [tsjon] as the time, and I imagine it still would've been palatalized in English.

Exactly, it's little more than window dressing. I guess we could see a few adopted Spanish words into English, but I doubt it'd be any more than what English picked up in OTL only with a Castillian slant in the place of Latin American Spanish.

Oh yes, Afrikaans... I forgot about Afrikaans. Yeah they're 'to be' verb has been massively simplified too. But in reference to the others, that's why I said "to some degree". I understand that in most other Germanic languages it's not all that prominent, but it is still present where in English it's almost entirely non-existent beyond -s and your pronouns and such.

The weird thing is I like Afrikaans in written form, but think it's relatively ugly when spoken. If they'd drop the super-hard "g"/[x] just a bit, it wouldn't rankle at all. But yeah, I see your point in that the other Germanic tongues do thing still like having gender distinctions, irregular singular/plural distinction and such. I broke out the Swedish thing since the grammar is still quite simple overall (moreso than Spanish, which I picked up fairly easily), it's one of the prettiest sounding languages around IMO, and one of the closest Germanic languages to English purely in terms of phonology (I'd put it in the order of Scots>Frisian>Danish>Swedish).

Ok. I like the compound nouns idea, but I kind of have a hard on for Mercian dialects having a greater influence on the language.

I wasn't recommending Wessex as the likeliest "main register" of the language, just outlining differences in "g" usage. That link posted a bit upthread about a notional Norman-less English (good read, incidentally) seemed to use a more Mercian-focused dialect coming to the forefront.

Thank you :) They also did it with /i/, did they not? And I'm from the Pacific Northwest.

I'm not entirely sure about the /i/, but it's certainly possible. The main issue with Danish is their consonant system and "creaky voice" (the latter of which exists in the Pacific NW, doesn't it?) but their vowels seem to have followed a similar pattern as that of English. And on the Pacific NW English thing, doesn't "creaky voice"/throatier vowels exist there too? I'm not from there, so I have to ask.

Ha indeed. But Southern American English is a collection of dialects, not all of which exhibit the stereotypical 'Southern Droll'. I was just using it in this instance though. My favorite dialects of English are mine and Kiwi English.

Oh believe me, I know from personal experience. I was just generalizing for the sake of brevity. Really, it's New England English (perhaps of the "Boston Brahmin" variety), and the "Virginian/Piedmont Received" set of Southern American English that are the oldest in the country as those spots were the first English footholds on the continent (unless you count North Carolina's Missing Colony). Kiwi English just sounds weird to me. Not good, not bad, just unusual (it's the /i/>/u/ shift that throws me, I think). I didn't really notice too much different about English in Washington state, but then again I spent most of my time on base there.

Hahahahaha...
Yeah, maybe, dialectally speaking. Perhaps as allophones of one another, or as differentiated sounds? I also like the idea of more palatalization a la Swedish/Faroese. Especially Faroese. Faroese does a lit of palatalizing of velar stops.

Allophony could work, although in Northumbria I think all "r" instances had this sound, whereas elsewhere it could be just word terminal or something along those lines. And Faroese sort of reminds me of a cross between Icelandic and Danish, with a fairly heavy amount of that palatalization you brought up.
 
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The weird thing is I like Afrikaans in written form, but think it's relatively ugly when spoken. If they'd drop the super-hard "g"/[x] just a bit, it wouldn't rankle at all. But yeah, I see your point in that the other Germanic tongues do thing still like having gender distinctions, irregular singular/plural distinction and such. I broke out the Swedish thing since the grammar is still quite simple overall (moreso than Spanish, which I picked up fairly easily), it's one of the prettiest sounding languages around IMO, and one of the closest Germanic languages to English purely in terms of phonology (I'd put it in the order of Scots>Frisian>Danish>Swedish).


Really? I kind of like the sound of Afrikaans when compared say, Standard Dutch. I think it would be better if the /g/ moved back to become a soft voiceless uvular fricative [χ] instead of [x] though. Maybe something like that would be good for this alien English as well? That way instead of [nɑɪt] you wind up with [neɪχt] (per the vowel shift I was talking about earlier).


I wasn't recommending Wessex as the likeliest "main register" of the language, just outlining differences in "g" usage. That link posted a bit upthread about a notional Norman-less English (good read, incidentally) seemed to use a more Mercian-focused dialect coming to the forefront.


I didn't even look at it... let me do that.


I'm not entirely sure about the /i/, but it's certainly possible. The main issue with Danish is their consonant system and "creaky voice" (the latter of which exists in the Pacific NW, doesn't it?) but their vowels seem to have followed a similar pattern as that of English. And on the Pacific NW English thing, doesn't "creaky voice"/throatier vowels exist there too? I'm not from there, so I have to ask.


Creaky voice is quite popular out here, but unfortunately I don't speak in it... I'm not really sure why. I have a really deep voice, so it doesn't work, but it's one of those things I really like in a guy.


Oh believe me, I know from personal experience. I was just generalizing for the sake of brevity. Really, it's New England English (perhaps of the "Boston Brahmin" variety), and the "Virginian/Piedmont Received" set of Southern American English that are the oldest in the country as those spots were the first English footholds on the continent (unless you count North Carolina's Missing Colony). Kiwi English just sounds weird to me. Not good, not bad, just unusual (it's the /i/>/u/ shift that throws me, I think). I didn't really notice too much different about English in Washington state, but then again I spent most of my time on base there.


Appalachian English is also a good place to look for particularly old American Dialects. I'm gonna check into some British Dialects after I'm done posting this, specifically some of the Bristol registers and Yorkshire dialects as well. Some Yorkshire accents have this really odd rising and falling tone thing where people raise their voice mid-sentence and then almost mumble the end of the sentence.


Kiwi English also has some really interesting pitches to it. I remember living there and when you'd hear people talk but you weren't listening, it sometimes almost sounded Scandinavian. But I agree the shift from [ɪ] > [ə] is a little odd. I remember one Kiwi down there gave me a little example of vowel changes with the following words: sex, sucks, six. For me, these are pronounced: [sɛks], [sʌks], [sɪks], but in Kiwi English, they're: [sɪks], [saks], [sʌks].


The biggest differences in Pacific Northwest English though is in the vowel rounding that is actually apparently a very Canadian feature, but we lack Canadian Raising. There are also a variety of different phrases and vocabulary differences of course, but another phonological thing is how we tend to roll /r/'s after [θ] in words like 'through', 'thread', 'throw', 'thrash' etc.


Allophony could work, although in Northumbria I think all "r" instances had this sound, whereas elsewhere it could be just word terminal or something along those lines. And Faroese sort of reminds me of a cross between Icelandic and Danish, with a fairly heavy amount of that palatalization you brought up.


In the Northumbrian Dialect of Old English or Northumbrian Dialects pre-television? And I always thought Faroese had very similar phonology to American English dialects specifically, at least in terms of how the consonants are handled.
 
Since IE languages are a big part of what the world speak now and that English is one of them in the Germanic familly for alien-er stuff, bring in a non IE language(s) as a base for changes. HOW, this is kinda going to be hard...

Maybe if a Basques related culture landed in what is now modern UK, due to really changed migration patterns of peoples, conquests, etc... Or some finno-ugrian one. Or Hebrew-a jewish language, OR a muslim conquest and arabic... etc..

ASB, yeah.
 
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IE languages are a big part of what the world speak now and that English is one of them in the Germanic familly for alien-er stuff, bring in a non IE language(s) as a base for changes. HOW, this is kinda going to be hard...

Maybe if a Basques related culture landed in what is now modern UK, due to really changed migration patterns of peoples, conquests, etc... Or some finno-ugrian one. Or Hebrew-a jewish language, OR a muslim conquest and arabic... etc..
Since
ASB, yeah.


Ummm... ok? I thought the subject here is to make the English language as different from its modern form as possible. You're kind of straying off subject here.


On this note though, that's actually fairly easy, I think. Have the Etruscans conquer the Latins, voila! A non-Indo-European language in a place of dominance!


But back on subject, I need to check out those British dialects, I was eating my dinner...
 
Ummm... ok? I thought the subject here is to make the English language as different from its modern form as possible. You're kind of straying off subject here.


On this note though, that's actually fairly easy, I think. Have the Etruscans conquer the Latins, voila! A non-Indo-European language in a place of dominance!


But back on subject, I need to check out those British dialects, I was eating my dinner...

It's very in topic thread. Indo-european languages and famillies share some very basic stuff all, an air de famille that linguists can spot.

And there is other famillies of languages, who at times are quite different - Chinese by example is quite on the other side in a linguistic way...

Of course, by this point, the language spoken in 'Alt Britain' may get that it's not based on Anglo-saxon possibly if the divergence is far enough, so yeah... But who know what the butterflies may do.
 
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