AHC: Flip Bulgarian and Hungarian

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
The idea here is to have Hungarian be a European language, but one that is actually primarily Indo-European (perhaps with mostly Germanic or Slavic or Romance vocabulary and grammar instead of Finno-Ugric), while Bulgarian is a European language somewhere in the Balkans or Central Europe and is not slavicized, but remains similar to Volga Bulgarian in vocabulary and grammar.
 
Well, for Hungary, have the Magyars not overrun Pannonia so the local Roman settlers live on and the Pannonian language live on and crystalize.
 

Delvestius

Banned
Well, for Hungary, have the Magyars not overrun Pannonia so the local Roman settlers live on and the Pannonian language live on and crystalize.

But that wouldn't make it Hungarian.

To avoid the Turkic Bulgars from converting to Orthodox Christianity and adopting the Old Church Slavonic language, have them head to the Crimea and set up a Khanate with the Hungarians filling the Balkan vacuum and doing the latter.
 
Constantine IV doesn't have his gout flair up and withdraw before the Battle of Ongal. The Roman Army defeats the Bulgars and they don't cross the Danube, instead settling in the Pannonian Plain. They retain their Turkic language and convert to Catholicism when the Frankish Empire eventually starts knocking on their door. Two centuries later the Magyars successfully cross the Danube and conquer much Balkans from the ERE and Slavicized and Hellenized to a degree.
 
But that wouldn't make it Hungarian.

To avoid the Turkic Bulgars from converting to Orthodox Christianity and adopting the Old Church Slavonic language, have them head to the Crimea and set up a Khanate with the Hungarians filling the Balkan vacuum and doing the latter.

Aaaah, I misread then. I decided to take a stab and I stabbed wrong. :p
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
To avoid the Turkic Bulgars from converting to Orthodox Christianity and adopting the Old Church Slavonic language, have them head to the Crimea and set up a Khanate with the Hungarians filling the Balkan vacuum and doing the latter.


Constantine IV doesn't have his gout flair up and withdraw before the Battle of Ongal. The Roman Army defeats the Bulgars and they don't cross the Danube, instead settling in the Pannonian Plain. They retain their Turkic language and convert to Catholicism when the Frankish Empire eventually starts knocking on their door. Two centuries later the Magyars successfully cross the Danube and conquer much Balkans from the ERE and Slavicized and Hellenized to a degree.

Thanks guys-

I really do wonder though what were the main factors leading the Bulgars to change their language while the Magyars did not. Was there something about the environment of Thrace that meant Slavs (who predated the Bulgars in the region, but not by a long time) ruled over by the Bulgars were sticking more to their language than the environment of Pannonia where the previous Pannonian, Latin, Germanic, Avar, Slavic (Slavic migrants lived throughout the Avar empire and certainly in western Hungary at least) language substrates were replaced by the Magyar speech.

The simple answer would be that the Magyar migration was more numerous than the Bulgar invasion and replaced more of the local population, but linguists and historians always caution against simply extrapolating population and genetic replacement from language replacement.
 
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