AHC: Have a Widely Spoken Germanic Language That's Mutually Intelligible With English

What it says on the tin. It can be from the Anglo-Frisian family (Scots, or perhaps an alt-Frisian dialect), or one of the other Germanic branches. The following stipulations are in effect:

-A POD no earlier than 800 AD. The Norman conquest can still be included, but that means the other language must still be able to be understood by speakers of OTL English (and vice-versa),
-Orthography can be different (even radically so), but speakers of this language and English (alternate or as in OTL) must still be able to carry on a conversation,
-English must still be spoken as widely (or at least nearly so) in this TL as IOTL, and
-The alt-language must have at least 5 million speakers worldwide (whether it's only spoken in its country of origin, or as an international trade/imperial language); it can't be a minority language like OTL's Frisian dialects.

Is this doable? Or is it not in the cards with the given POD? Personally I think the Scots language could reach this level of development were the Act of Union not to happen, but are there any other possibilities? Perhaps a prosperous Frisia overtaking the Netherlands in importance on the world stage? Perhaps a surviving Frankish language with similar Gallo-Roman influence that OTL's English received from the Normans?
 
I suppose the various English creoles would'nt count?

That depends on one's definition of "creole": they gotta be full-fledged and established languages with complete and concrete lexical and grammatical foundations. A pidgin or patois of English like that spoken in Jamaica or the Philippines does not count.

That being said, a reformatted dialect of English with heavy foreign (e.g. Austronesian or African) influences on grammar could work; however those would likely be relatively recent developments and likely lacking in the requested scale of speakers. Perhaps an English-based equivalent of Haitian Creole could work; after all, they have dictionaries and courses in that language.
 
I recall reading that Frisian was quite mutually intelligible with English.

And interesting solution to me would be to create another situation where a German-speaking population has a Romance-speaking upper class - let's say that the Spanish Netherlands see an immigration of Spaniards for some reason; the resulting "Dutch" could well be shockingly similar to strange English (or incredibly different, naturally)
 
less French influence on the English language (shoot William with an arrow before or doing Hastings) and you might have something that could very well be at least somewhat mutually intelligible with the scandinavian languages,(depending on specific butterflies)
 
less French influence on the English language (shoot William with an arrow before or doing Hastings) and you might have something that could very well be at least somewhat mutually intelligible with the scandinavian languages,(depending on specific butterflies)

This is true. I go over that whole 'Anglish'/'Anglo-Saxon purism' thing enough at times I can recognize a surprising amount of Dutch and German cognate to a native English word replaced by Anglo-Norman.
 
I recall reading that Frisian was quite mutually intelligible with English.

Is there any way for this to be continued into modern day? ISTR that the two languages began to seriously diverge in the early to mid 19th. Century.

And interesting solution to me would be to create another situation where a German-speaking population has a Romance-speaking upper class - let's say that the Spanish Netherlands see an immigration of Spaniards for some reason; the resulting "Dutch" could well be shockingly similar to strange English (or incredibly different, naturally)

Like a reverse-Francia of OTL? Only the Latins would be the upper-crust minority and the majority would be Germanic-speaking?
 

birdboy2000

Banned
I recall reading that Frisian was quite mutually intelligible with English.

And interesting solution to me would be to create another situation where a German-speaking population has a Romance-speaking upper class - let's say that the Spanish Netherlands see an immigration of Spaniards for some reason; the resulting "Dutch" could well be shockingly similar to strange English (or incredibly different, naturally)

Doesn't Flanders have more or less that history? Or at least pretty long periods of Romance domination, whether French or Burgundian or Walloon or Spanish.
 
I recall reading that Frisian was quite mutually intelligible with English.

And interesting solution to me would be to create another situation where a German-speaking population has a Romance-speaking upper class - let's say that the Spanish Netherlands see an immigration of Spaniards for some reason; the resulting "Dutch" could well be shockingly similar to strange English (or incredibly different, naturally)

This seems kind of unlikely to me. Like trying to create dogs capable of mating with foxes by breeding dogs for red fur. (That bizarre analogy is the best thing I can come up with for trying to say what I mean.)
 
Not quite fitting the OP but if we stop the Mercians from achieving supermacy over the other AS kingdoms we could theoretically divide the Anglo-Saxons between an Anglian north and a Saxon south (on a line roughly from the Essex Estuary towards Chester).
Add in a Danish Conquest of Northumbria/Anglia - perhaps Alba/Kdm of the Picts is added in keeping the Scots in the west and concentrating "Anglia" on the north and Scandinavia - and we'll get a result much like Danish and the Swedish.
If there's then a later Anglo-Saxon union and they create colonies...
 
Scotland becomes a satellite state of England rather than a full-blown union. She gets a colony in the River Plate where Scots is the main language.

Done.
 
Doesn't Flanders have more or less that history? Or at least pretty long periods of Romance domination, whether French or Burgundian or Walloon or Spanish.

If that were true, then why isn't Flemish as Latinized as English? ISTR that the Flemings actively tried to prevent the same level of Walloon French influence on their dialect that English suffered. I honestly have no idea how Flemish would look if they'd failed, but it might be intelligible with English or it might not (Norman and Walloon French were quite different in many ways IMHO).

EDIT: I fail to see why English and Frisian couldn't evolve to be mutually intelligible; that language's current status has no bearing on how it sounded 200+ years ago any more than how English sounds today has to do with Shakespeare's language.

Socrates,

I like this idea, it sounds more plausible than the Scots holding on to the Darien Peninsula at any rate...too tropical there. At any rate, I personally consider Scots to be a good indicator of how English might've sounded were it not for a few linguistic incidentals (then again, I consider Scots a full-blown separate language and NOT an English dialect, unlike some other folks).
 

ingemann

Banned
Avoid the union with Scotland, and Scots English would likely be seen as a separate language, or maybe Ireland succeed in keeping the Parliamentarians out under the English Civil War, in an independent Irish Kingdom the English language would stay dominant, but it would evolve differently and likely be seen as a separate language today. As for other Germanic languages I don't see them evolve toward English, Dutch like English have had significant French influence, but English is still not mutual intelligible with Dutch. The only way to push them toward mutual intelligible is push English influence directly into them.
 
This seems kind of unlikely to me. Like trying to create dogs capable of mating with foxes by breeding dogs for red fur. (That bizarre analogy is the best thing I can come up with for trying to say what I mean.)

Absolutely.

The odds of two different languages evolving convergently like that are tiny - in all honesty, the end result would probably be less understandable than "uninterfered-with" Dutch. Still, English is the result of two different languages from two different language families merging and I'm hard-pressed to think how to get something to be similar to it without just having massive English influence
 
Absolutely.

The odds of two different languages evolving convergently like that are tiny - in all honesty, the end result would probably be less understandable than "uninterfered-with" Dutch. Still, English is the result of two different languages from two different language families merging and I'm hard-pressed to think how to get something to be similar to it without just having massive English influence


Remember, the POD is far back enough that one could butterfly both the Danelaw and the Normans away in order to achieve the OP. In other words, assuming no Viking kingdom being successfully established, and no Norman overlordship imposed, could such a relationship between languages be established?
 
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