AHC: English at least a co-equal language in Germany by 2000

Your challenge is for the English language to be a co-equal language in Germany by the year 2000. That means English is equally widely spoken in society, business and politics as German. I'm assuming we'll need a POD before 1900 to do this.

Bonus points if you can get English ascendant.
 
Your challenge is for the English language to be a co-equal language in Germany by the year 2000. That means English is equally widely spoken in society, business and politics as German. I'm assuming we'll need a POD before 1900 to do this.

Bonus points if you can get English ascendant.

well, it is already spoken by the majority of Germans and is taught in school since grade five . Aglicism words are widely use, too and the English language is requiered almost everywhere for jobs etc.

Regarding your Pod, maybe something with an English Albertian/Victorian Hanover unites the German states in the 19th century ? Maybe the Union British monarchs and Hanover is maintained longer and there is an early masssive emigration of english speking peoples to the German soil ? Or have the Anglo-Saxon-continental Saxon identedy remainig strong and a rise of Saxionian emerors throughout the Middle ages as natural leaders of the HRE. Maybe close relations of Saxon lead HRE (including marriages) to Anglo-Saxon Britain with Norman invasion and Dane-law prevented...
 
Yes, I'd think British immigration is the only real way to do it. Some sort of war or series of wars that totally screws up Britain pushing people to seek new opportunities and depopulates broad swathes of Germany?
 
This may be weird, but potentially a less successful Saxon invasion of Britain could lead to a smaller Saxon England, one that joins the HRE for extra support etc. This means most of Britain is still Celtic but old English becomes a major language in the HRE, because England (or Wessex and East Anglia) becomes one of the most powerful HRE states, obviously English evolves very differently to otl and I am very unsure of the plausibility of this
 

Puzzle

Donor
For a more violent approach, what if weapons of mass destruction get used on the Nazis? Germany could be hammered hard enough and then occupied in enough force to have English be ascendant. Even Calbear's timeline if the Allies tried, could do it.
 
Is there a way for Hanover, Lubeck, Mecklenburg, Saxony, Hesse, basically the North German principalities ..... to unite around Great Britain instead of Prussia.

Maybe after the Napoleanic wars in which Prussia is less involved and Britain is more involved on the continent.

They initially look to Great Britain to protect them from, so that they can maintain their independence from both Austria and Prussia.

So the United Germany movement is not as big. Or to say differently, the United Germany movement for the small kingdoms is the same just that they would like to be united together and ties to Britain instead of Prussia or Austria.

Maybe Prussia is just Prussia proper and Brandenburg. Westphalia unites with the other North German states and fifedoms. Eventually, they look to Britain as their protector. The United Kingdom expands little by little.

With this, the United Kingdom expands to include these states and English slowly but surely takes hold.

This is probably ASB but it is one way for English to be co-equal
 
well, it is already spoken by the majority of Germans and is taught in school since grade five . Aglicism words are widely use, too and the English language is requiered almost everywhere for jobs etc.

Regarding your Pod, maybe something with an English Albertian/Victorian Hanover unites the German states in the 19th century ? Maybe the Union British monarchs and Hanover is maintained longer and there is an early masssive emigration of english speking peoples to the German soil ? Or have the Anglo-Saxon-continental Saxon identedy remainig strong and a rise of Saxionian emerors throughout the Middle ages as natural leaders of the HRE. Maybe close relations of Saxon lead HRE (including marriages) to Anglo-Saxon Britain with Norman invasion and Dane-law prevented...

Although I was 11 when I went to Germany I remember absolutely nobody who didn't have enough knowledge of English to be able to communicate with me at least a little. Although German is still the first language there I think their understanding of English is enough to accomplish the POD. Hell most Germans I have spoken to over the internet recently have a better understanding of English than most English people I know, I bet most Germans on this site could easily go through what I've just written and critique it. Though I think the Dutch are probably better at English.
 
Your challenge is for the English language to be a co-equal language in Germany by the year 2000. That means English is equally widely spoken in society, business and politics as German. I'm assuming we'll need a POD before 1900 to do this.

Bonus points if you can get English ascendant.
If nothing unforeseen happens (but this is of course never the case) you might see a situation like this in 2100 or maybe 2150 anyway.

If you change history enough to allow for an important role of English in Germany, you`ll most likely alter at least one of the languages involved, and, more importantly, you`ll alter at least the way Germany looks politically, and given Germany`s role in 20th century history, perhaps much of the rest of the world, too.

I don`t think the Hanover monarch idea is going to work because that`s rather late and German nationalism and national identity have developed roughly the way they had IOTL.
You need an earlier PoD - and a reason why English influences in Germany won`t just lead to a new blended language (like Anglo-Saxon and Norman French blended into Middle English).

One way to have two languages in Germany is to have some part of Germany speak English, while the rest speaks German. In the world of today, this could prompt general bilinguality, like Canada`s English-French bilinguality.

I´ll spare us the terrible option of the Nazis conquering the UK and winning WW2, in which the British Isles became an English-speaking part of "Germany"...

... and instead go for a more long-lived Hansa which seeks the support of the English Kings, instead of warring with them and obtaining a Pyrrhic victory in 1474.

If this Hanseatic-English alliance, which begins against Dutch and Danish competitors, is to last into the new age where America is discovered, it´ll have to be directed against other competitors like Spain, too. The Dutch could turn into allies at some point - perhaps with the reformation... and then become enemies again, perhaps because of Reformist-Lutheran/Anglican divisions or for some other reason.

In such a scenario, you`d have a lot of city states in Northern Germany (and elsewhere) where, once linguistic standardisation kicks in, it´s not High German which becomes the norm but Low German (which is pretty similar to Dutch BTW). Let these city states develop their own national identity - and let it be differentiated enough to maintain the differences that prevented them IOTL from becoming a major power, so that when national states become the powerful norm everywhere in the 17th and 18th centuries, most Hanseatic towns look for England / Britain for protection (instead of the atrophied HRE). Depending on how tough pressure from the surrounding states (Sweden, Denmark, Prussia) is, Britain might be able to absorb them temporarily into the Empire, maybe for a century or so, in which English becomes predominant over Low German.

How to bring them back into Germany?
Either this way:
At some point in the 19th century, a military unification of Germany as it occurred IOTL might absorb all or most of these British Hanseatic possessions (the equivalent of the 1870/1 war would have to be conducted against Britain, then, instead of France). During the age of nationalism, High German would be enforced upon the population, but after WW2 (if it still happens in this ATL), English (and Low German) would be granted the status of additional official language in, say, Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck, and a few other cities. Discussions in the Bundestag and Bundesrat etc. might be conducted bilingually then.

Or this way:
The Hanseatic city states had been absorbed during a particularly weak period, becoming crown colonies. In the process of decolonialisation and Western European integration in the second half of the 20th century, they are granted independence, concluding loads of practically determined trade, defense and cooperation treaties with West Germany, and when the unification of Western and Eastern Germany comes along roughly around 1990, they join the FRG and a democratised GDR in a German Confederacy, who would, again, be bilingual out of respect for its few million fish-eating English speakers
icon6.gif
 
Is there a way for Hanover, Lubeck, Mecklenburg, Saxony, Hesse, basically the North German principalities ..... to unite around Great Britain instead of Prussia.

Maybe after the Napoleanic wars in which Prussia is less involved and Britain is more involved on the continent.

They initially look to Great Britain to protect them from, so that they can maintain their independence from both Austria and Prussia.

So the United Germany movement is not as big. Or to say differently, the United Germany movement for the small kingdoms is the same just that they would like to be united together and ties to Britain instead of Prussia or Austria.

Maybe Prussia is just Prussia proper and Brandenburg. Westphalia unites with the other North German states and fifedoms. Eventually, they look to Britain as their protector. The United Kingdom expands little by little.

With this, the United Kingdom expands to include these states and English slowly but surely takes hold.

This is probably ASB but it is one way for English to be co-equal

What if we simply take Prussia off the scene by destroying it through a 7YW Disaster at Leuthen scenario? If the major powers in Europe are Catholic France and Catholic Austria, would North German principalities look to Britain?
 
Originally, the Old German language migrated north into Norway, then Norwegians took the language to the British Isles, creating a Germanic language with thousands of borrow words from: French, Spanish, Hindi, Chinese, etc.

OTL English became popular in West Germany immediately after WW2.
Germany was devastated ... looked like hammered shit. The only people who had enough to eat were occupying soldiers. Radio Free Europe and (USA) Armed Forces Radio were the only free entertainment. American negro music .... er ..... blues and jazz also became popular. After Elvis Presley served in the US Army in Germany, rockabilly music also became popular.

Just listen to the song "Mein Land" by the German heavy metal band "Rammstein."
 
Originally, the Old German language migrated north into Norway, then Norwegians took the language to the British Isles, creating a Germanic language with thousands of borrow words from: French, Spanish, Hindi, Chinese, etc.

I think you're confusing a few things here.
 
Germany is a large enough economy that there isn't the same pressure to use a more widely-spoken language in the business world, as there is in the Nordic countries or the Netherlands. In the latter countries, their economies require a high degree of openness with the rest of Europe, given their smaller scale and the fact that their languages have relatively few speakers. That facilitates English as a second language.

This might happen in Germany if larger multinationals start to use English in the workplace rather than German. This is starting to happen in some industries, but by-and-large German remains standard.
 
OTL, German was THE second language in much of Europe, and Germany (once unified) was the most powerful single nation. Getting their language demoted like that is going to take huge changes.

1) WWI and WWII happen, but are worse. Some equivalent of the Morgenthau plan is enacted, Germany is split into several mini-state, and the Anglo-American occupation (of at least the West) continues much longer. English replaces German as the language of administration and higher education. Possibly massive numbers of Germans are deported to isolated settlements around the world (all *Nazi party members, say).

Possibly e.g. Bavarian becomes the official language of Bavaria - with English replacing Hochdeutsch as the language outside the duchy.

To get this to happen, you probably need Operation Vegetarian or multiple nukes dropped. A MUCH worse WWII equivalent, anyway.


2) Germany never unifies. Prussia is prevented from taking over even the north. Due to French invasions (or threats thereof), Hannover and some of the Hesses (say) join a British led alliance and commercial union, of which English is the language of administration. Essentially, they end up becoming Dominions of the Empire, and there's massive intermarriage between these Germans and the British, especially in the merchant and administrative classes. Slowly, as the economic advantages become more and more obvious, the other German states join in (possibly excepting Prussia, which refuses, and Austria, which is its own empire). The biggest problem

-----
Basically, the only way to achieve this is to knock Germany down massively from its status iOTL, AND to introduce a British (and/or American) hegemony over large chunks of it. That's tough.
 
Top