AHC: have english be concidered a romance language

With a PoD starting after the formation of Anglo-Saxon culture and language, have English become more Latin than Germanic to the point where it's considered a romance language by today. how would a Latin England differ from OTL's? Would it still be the foremost power in the later modern era? how would its relationship with France, Spain and the German states change?
 
English already is the most latinized germanic language thanks to the Norman Conquest. So, basically, you just need to make the connections of England with France and other latin countries even closer. Perhaps if the Plantagenet had won the one hundred years war, making France and England almost the same country, with the french language and culture keeping it's prestigious place. Other way would be if the union of England and Spain under Bloody Mary and Philip Von Habsburg had consolidated, with english receiving lots of spanish influence. Stil, it's more about what things are changed in the language, sunch as basic grammar and pronouns, which are still very germanic in OTL english.
 
I'm not sure that a different language would affect international politics, or at least not until the XX century. In the centuries before that, Latin and then French were the diplomatic languages, and British governments respected this.
 
With a PoD starting after the formation of Anglo-Saxon culture and language, have English become more Latin than Germanic to the point where it's considered a romance language by today.
Is that actually possible? Would it not then rather be, say, Norman French instead?

I heard something about a language somewhere that has shifted language family, but it sounds odd to me. The family is the historical background, and if you import so much of basic grammar from another language, how is it still English?
 
An earlier POD might be better, one where the Roman colonisation lasts longer and whatever eventual Germanic invasion takes place is less successful. You might wind up with more widespread Latin and less influential Germanic resulting in a more Latin "English". Of course for it to still be called "English" I guess you'd need the Germanics to be Angles.
 
Perhaps have there be more connections between the English Church and Rome? Perhaps England benefits from earlier "crusaders" during the Dark Ages against the Norse who bring in a hodgepodge of late vulgar Latins/early Romance languages to the point where vulgar Latin becomes something of a lingua franca among some subsets of the common people where those crusaders settle. Then, assuming the Norman Conquest isn't butterflied, the Normans heavily promote a Gallicized English Latin rather than OTL Old English?

Eventually Old English goes the way of OTL Goidelic languages and English becomes the common name for English Latin much like Scots is a Germanic language unrelated to Scottish Gaelic.
 
Is that actually possible? Would it not then rather be, say, Norman French instead?

I heard something about a language somewhere that has shifted language family, but it sounds odd to me. The family is the historical background, and if you import so much of basic grammar from another language, how is it still English?

Simply, it would not be the same language. It would be called "English" because it is spoken in England, but would be different than the "English" before it. This is what happened with French, which (etymologically) means the language of the Franks, but is a Romance language whereas Frankish was Germanic.
 
En réalitee, les Normands peuvent realiser beaucoup plus que dans la LTO en ce qui concerne la conqueste de l’Angleterre, pois maintenir une dynastie angevine plus longue, pour de permetter à d’avantage de francophones d’émigrer en Angleterre dans plusieurs classes sociales. Ça aiderait une langue romance à futur un concurrent en tant que langue majoritie, tout en "portant" le nom de "anglais" comme la francais LTO l'ha fait aveu le “francique salian”.

...and now I feel the need to wash out my mouth repeatedly from butchering Gallo-Roman AND contributing to a "Romance English" scenario.
 
This is impossible without either A) Anglo-Saxon genocide lol, or B) a completely different science of linguistics in ATL. Even if most everyday words were Romance-influenced, English would still always qualify as a Germanic language. I'd be impressed if you got any farther than, say, Albanian in terms of Romance influence, but we still don't consider Albanian a Romance language because historical linguistics is based on descent rather than influence.
 
English can't be considered a Romance language unless you completely wipe out Old English and replace it with a variant of Norman called 'Anglais' (which would have considerable OE/Germanic influence).
 
I mean, I wouldn't go so far as to call it impossible for that to happen. Just look at language in Scotland. The "scots" language without any further qualification is much more closely related to English than it is to Scottish Gaelic.

Of course, there wouldn't be anything near a 1:1 comparison, but at the same time we could see "English" and "English German" used in similar ways to "Scots" and "Scots Gaelic" IOTL, though with Romance and Germanic languages respectively rather than Germanic and Goidelic.
 
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I mean, I wouldn't go so far as to call it impossible for that to happen. Just look at language in Scotland. The "scots" language without any further qualification is much more closely related to English than it is to Scottish Gaelic.
That's because Scots is descended from Northumbrian Old English not Gaelic.It's only called Scots because it's been in Scotland for a while, it used to be known as Inglis.
The only way to get non Germanic English is for that English to be named after England and not descendant from anything originally called English.
 
That's because Scots is descended from Northumbrian Old English not Gaelic.It's only called Scots because it's been in Scotland for a while, it used to be known as Inglis.
The only way to get non Germanic English is for that English to be named after England and not descendant from anything originally called English.

Yeah, that was my point. They speak a Germanic language but call themselves Scots at this point despite the Scots (Scotti) initially being a Gaelic people, with elements of them still being so to this day. Thus you can have a parallel situation where people speak a Romance language which they call English and still consider themselves English, though instead of by border change by broad linguistic developments over the course of centuries as, according to the idea I proposed above, more and more warriors from the rest of Western Europe pour in to fight the Norse as essentially proto-Crusaders. From there, they start using vulgar Latin as their lingua franca, which later develops into the overall language of England.

Another good comparison might be Prussia up until the 1940s, where there was a distinct Prussian identity speaking a Germanic language rather than a Baltic one.
 
Yeah, that was my point. They speak a Germanic language but call themselves Scots at this point despite the Scots (Scotti) initially being a Gaelic people, with elements of them still being so to this day. Thus you can have a parallel situation where people speak a Romance language which they call English and still consider themselves English, though instead of by border change by broad linguistic developments over the course of centuries as, according to the idea I proposed above, more and more warriors from the rest of Western Europe pour in to fight the Norse as essentially proto-Crusaders. From there, they start using vulgar Latin as their lingua franca, which later develops into the overall language of England.

Another good comparison might be Prussia up until the 1940s, where there was a distinct Prussian identity speaking a Germanic language rather than a Baltic one.

They just have a similar name, they're not genetically related. That's his point.
 
English already has a higher percentage of Romance vocabulary than Germanic. However, many of the "base" words the language is built on are Germanic. And the romance words are fitted into the structure as if they were Germanic. But English is a borderline case. Kenneth Branagh, in his history of English, says that if things had gone on for just a little longer, French would have taken over completely. It was close.

The turning point was the loss of Normandy in 1204ish. This severed the links between France and England, with many nobles losing their lands in France and cutting off the regular influx of new blood from marriages with French nobles etc. It was this event which gradually began the slow move back towards English. By the early 1400s, even the king could speak English

...if you import so much of basic grammar from another language, how is it still English?

I think this is what has happened with Moroccan language. I.e. so much vocabulary was imported that it changed language family.

Berber was originally the local language (and is still spoken by some), but over the centuries Arabic became the overwhelming majority language. However, IIRC in a study of what percentage of Classical Arabic words are found in various Arabic dialects as one moves further away from Arabia, Moroccan was at 60% or so.

Which implies that although most of their daily vocabulary is Arabic, there is significant substrata of the original language remaining. Which also explains why outsiders from the Gulf countries have a hard time understanding them! x'D
 
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Albert.Nik

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The only timeline I can think of is a more powerful Norman influence. It would still be called English then. If Roman influence never fading away and such timelines take place,then it wouldn't be called English but something like Brittisch/Britanese/Britese or even like Romansh/Romanese or something. So the Norman influence is the only thing I can think of.
 
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