AHC: Have an OTL Extinct Language become the Lingua Franca of the modern world

With any POD you like (before 1900, of course) have a language that IOTL became extinct become the lingua franca of commerce, diplomacy, and education to a similar degree that OTL English is.

For a language to qualify as "extinct" for the purposes of this AHC, it must be a language that disappears completely, not one that leaves behind linguistic descendants. Thus, whilst they both do not have native speakers, things like Latin and old Chinese do not qualify, since their descendants are still spoken today.

However, it may be a language that is still "known" in the present if neither it nor its linguistic descendants have native speakers. Coptic would be an example in this category.

Edit: POD's must ideally be before the extinction of the language--i.e. no resurrecting a language from the grave.
 
Last edited:
Off the top of my head some form of Coptic is one of the better contenders, honestly—Egypt is in a fantastically central position from which a language could spread.

The easiest way to do it would be to have an aggressively proselytizing faith begin in Egypt and create a huge theocratic empire, sort of akin to the Islamic conquests. Hell, it could even be an alternate Islam where the Arabs conquer Egypt first and more thoroughly assimilate into Coptic culture, eventually adopting the language.
 
i'm planning to have Sumerian used as the basis for the spacefaring Republic of Humankind in one of my non-AH writing projects, reasoned as having been deliberately chosen and enforced as (one of) the earliest languages in human history and therefore fitting as a unified language for the entire species. it'd be subject to a translation convention, though, and would of course mainly just be rendered as English :p
 
Not sure on the exact POD, but I could imagine the emergence of a unified Gaulish state. Say more-centralized-than-OTL transalpine Gauls ally with Hannibal, giving him a larger force that is able to win the Second Punic War with his Italian campaign. But Carthage isn't able to crush Rome permanently, this opportunity for hegemony taking a back seat to struggles between pro-Barcid and anti-Barcid factions, and no power in the Western Mediterranean is able to break from these continued Punic Wars long enough to build an empire outside of the area. Over the next three hundred years, the "First Gaulish Empire" benefits from entreaties and bribes (and occasionally plunder) from rulers to the south, expanding to cover all the lands between the Rhine and the Ebro.

No empire lasts forever, though, and Gaulish power contracts amid fiscal crises and dynastic squabbles. Contenders for the throne (or whatever metonym they use for supreme leadership) recruit mercenaries from outside the nation, most notably from east of the Rhine. These armies end up in charge, and the Second Gaulish Empire emerges. Its highest leadership has ties to the Germans of the east, who due to the era's environmental factors are interested in new lands to settle, but its Gaulish subjects don't want to give up any of their land. The solution is expansion into Iberia and Italy, using the Volkerwanderung as ready manpower. The Second Gaulish Empire remains strong long enough for its central Celtic governance to percolate out to the scattered Germanic settlers of the new frontiers.

And there we have Continental Celtic strongly dominant over continental Western Europe at the end of antiquity. I hope you agree that there's a path from there to world dominance (OTL is pretty close to it).
 
Let Etruscans win Romans in Veji and conquer Italy. Then they spread their influence to Mediterranean and their languages finally becomes global lingua franca.

Or then Carthagians win Second Punic War and destroy Rome. Then their language might be widely used.
 
Perhaps Gothic or some successor in a world where Theoderic had laid the groundwork for a revival of the Western Roman Empire led by the Goths. It does not seem inevitable that they would have ultimately been subsumed into Latin culture - perhaps in a world without the Gothic Wars, the language would have slowly gained more currency among the native populations of Italy and Hispania in the same way that Arabic ultimately did in large parts of the Levant and North Africa, with Arian Christianity playing a similar role to Islam in this process. Anyway, one of the Gothic successor states could have easily become a colonial power centuries down the line, thus spreading the language globally in the same way that Spain, Portugal, France, and the United Kingdom did in our world.
 
i'm planning to have Sumerian used as the basis for the spacefaring Republic of Humankind in one of my non-AH writing projects, reasoned as having been deliberately chosen and enforced as (one of) the earliest languages in human history and therefore fitting as a unified language for the entire species. it'd be subject to a translation convention, though, and would of course mainly just be rendered as English :p

Since Sumerian is likely the oldest language attested in writing, and probably the first written language to cease to be naturally spoken, well before we have written records of nearly all other languages, this is the ultimate answer to the OP. Kudos to you!
 
i'm planning to have Sumerian used as the basis for the spacefaring Republic of Humankind in one of my non-AH writing projects, reasoned as having been deliberately chosen and enforced as (one of) the earliest languages in human history and therefore fitting as a unified language for the entire species. it'd be subject to a translation convention, though, and would of course mainly just be rendered as English :p

How would you resolve the homophones, which were probably tonal distinctions in Sumerian but not recorded in Akkadian transcriptions?
 
Off the top of my head some form of Coptic is one of the better contenders, honestly—Egypt is in a fantastically central position from which a language could spread.

The easiest way to do it would be to have an aggressively proselytizing faith begin in Egypt and create a huge theocratic empire, sort of akin to the Islamic conquests. Hell, it could even be an alternate Islam where the Arabs conquer Egypt first and more thoroughly assimilate into Coptic culture, eventually adopting the language.

That does sound like a good base to start from; but my question is how well Egypt or a Coptic nation would undertake the process of colonization that made English the dominant language that it is. It could become just as influential as Arabic, but I fail to see how it would extend beyond that.

Hebrew was dead for some time until the zionists revived it. Does it count if it's still used as a liturgical language?

Yes, but the POD would ideally be before the death of the last native speaker, though I'm unsure as to when that would be.

Perhaps Gothic or some successor in a world where Theoderic had laid the groundwork for a revival of the Western Roman Empire led by the Goths. It does not seem inevitable that they would have ultimately been subsumed into Latin culture - perhaps in a world without the Gothic Wars, the language would have slowly gained more currency among the native populations of Italy and Hispania in the same way that Arabic ultimately did in large parts of the Levant and North Africa, with Arian Christianity playing a similar role to Islam in this process. Anyway, one of the Gothic successor states could have easily become a colonial power centuries down the line, thus spreading the language globally in the same way that Spain, Portugal, France, and the United Kingdom did in our world.

Or, for a real challenge, have the Crimean Gothic language become dominant over the Rus'...


I believe that neo-Aramaic is a descendant of Akkadian but am not sure...if somebody with more knowledge of Semitic linguistics could clarify that'd be great.
 
Last edited:
How would you resolve the homophones, which were probably tonal distinctions in Sumerian but not recorded in Akkadian transcriptions?
the other factor to it, at least trying to complete the language (if i ever worked it out as a true conlang) would be to supplement it with other extremely ancient languages, probably starting with Phoenician. there's probably a distinct alphabet to it, too, though based on the International Phonetic Alphabet rather than any "standard" alphabet (i've got an idea for the actual narrative where a character's given name is Will but, when spelled out in dialogue at one point, he gives different letters than he's typically described as in part to demonstrate the translation convention, basically a finalized version of an old idea where, sort of like in Japanese, some characters may explain that their name is written one way but is pronounced a different way, boiling down to something to the effect of "Actually, my name is written as John but it's read as James", though in actual uses it would be for names of a similar meaning, like a character being initially misnamed as Amelia and then they clarify that it's supposed to be Emilija, versions of the same name in different languages IOTL)
 
I believe that neo-Aramaic is a descendant of Akkadian but am not sure...if somebody with more knowledge of Semitic linguistics could clarify that'd be great.
It is not.
Akkadian represents (alongside Eblaite, which some actually class as a divergent dialect of it) the Eastern branch of the Semitic language family, while all other known Semitic langauges living, dead, in suspended animation or resurrected, belong to the Western branch. This is among the least controversial points of Semitic historical branching, actually, as the distinctive features of Akkadian especially in the verbal system (but also, phonology and syntax) set it quite apart from the rest of Semitic in a very recognizable way.
Some forms of neo-Aramaic spoken in Mesopotamia and surroundings, such as neo-Mandaic, exhibit quite detectable substrate influences from late dialects of Akkadian, but they are not their descendants (as did earlier Aramaic varieties in the relevant areas). Akkadian also left an imprint on other forms of Aramaic and many other languages (Semitic or not) with which it had contact, but it is believed to have become entirely extinct, even as a written language, by the second century CE at latest. Its latest known derivates (Late Assyrian and Late Babylonian) probably had disappeared from ordinary spoken usage centuries earlier.
 
It might go against the spirit of the OC, but the various unsuccessful conlangs intended to facilitate international communication, like Volapük or Solresol, would meet the specifications. They would just need to gain more traction to the point that they were adopted by a major international organization, which would lead to them being taught in schools and used for commerce, diplomacy, and academia.
 
It might go against the spirit of the OC, but the various unsuccessful conlangs intended to facilitate international communication, like Volapük or Solresol, would meet the specifications. They would just need to gain more traction to the point that they were adopted by a major international organization, which would lead to them being taught in schools and used for commerce, diplomacy, and academia.
Can they count as "extinct" however? They were never natively spoken to begin with (OK, in a sense, neither was Classical Latin as we know it, but there's a bit of difference still). Is Esperanto a "successful" case in this regard? I certainly would not regard it as "extinct" either.
 
Punic would be a fun one, if the Carthaginian empire establishes Punic as important as both Latin and Greek and like the Hellenistic cities, "Phoenistic" cities pop up at former Phoenician colonies.
 
Punic would be a fun one, if the Carthaginian empire establishes Punic as important as both Latin and Greek and like the Hellenistic cities, "Phoenistic" cities pop up at former Phoenician colonies.
Does it count if the variety in question is indeed extinct without direct descendants, but it has living very close relatives (Hebrew in this case*) that presumably started branching off before complete mutual unintelligibility developed? Because one could then argue that Classical Latin barely counts then (since it is not strictly speaking the variety from which Romance evolved; I know this sounds splitting hairs).
* Ok, the "living" bit regarding Hebrew has special complexities too.
 
It is not.
Akkadian represents (alongside Eblaite, which some actually class as a divergent dialect of it) the Eastern branch of the Semitic language family, while all other known Semitic langauges living, dead, in suspended animation or resurrected, belong to the Western branch. This is among the least controversial points of Semitic historical branching, actually, as the distinctive features of Akkadian especially in the verbal system (but also, phonology and syntax) set it quite apart from the rest of Semitic in a very recognizable way.
Some forms of neo-Aramaic spoken in Mesopotamia and surroundings, such as neo-Mandaic, exhibit quite detectable substrate influences from late dialects of Akkadian, but they are not their descendants (as did earlier Aramaic varieties in the relevant areas). Akkadian also left an imprint on other forms of Aramaic and many other languages (Semitic or not) with which it had contact, but it is believed to have become entirely extinct, even as a written language, by the second century CE at latest. Its latest known derivates (Late Assyrian and Late Babylonian) probably had disappeared from ordinary spoken usage centuries earlier.

Ah, seems I was mistaken. Thanks for clarifying.

It might go against the spirit of the OC, but the various unsuccessful conlangs intended to facilitate international communication, like Volapük or Solresol, would meet the specifications. They would just need to gain more traction to the point that they were adopted by a major international organization, which would lead to them being taught in schools and used for commerce, diplomacy, and academia.

All else being equal, I don't think that they could become dominant languages in the present given that the first work describing Esperanto dates to 1887...

Does it count if the variety in question is indeed extinct without direct descendants, but it has living very close relatives (Hebrew in this case*) that presumably started branching off before complete mutual unintelligibility developed? Because one could then argue that Classical Latin barely counts then (since it is not strictly speaking the variety from which Romance evolved; I know this sounds splitting hairs).
* Ok, the "living" bit regarding Hebrew has special complexities too.

Even without the Hebrew complexity, I think it still has to, because otherwise we'd be here splitting hairs forever. As I believe it was once said, the difference between a dialect and a language is that a language has an army.
 
Does it count if the variety in question is indeed extinct without direct descendants, but it has living very close relatives (Hebrew in this case*) that presumably started branching off before complete mutual unintelligibility developed? Because one could then argue that Classical Latin barely counts then (since it is not strictly speaking the variety from which Romance evolved; I know this sounds splitting hairs).
* Ok, the "living" bit regarding Hebrew has special complexities too.
Hebrew arguably died as a living language and was revived, making it already satisfy this scenario as well as making Punic eligible. The point about Classical Latin is interesting. Vulgar Latin is a descendant of Classical Latin so even though Romance languages came from Vulgar Latin, Classical Latin has direct descendants through Vulgar Latin.
 
Top