AHC: Have the Dalmatian language survive to present day.

In 1898, the last speaker of the Dalmatian language, which used to be spoken throughout the Dalmatian coast, died in an explosion.

The Challenge: With a POD of of course before 1898, prevent the Dalmatian from dying out.
 
I don't know anything about the Dalmatian language, but I guess to survive, it's going to abandon the Slavic influence of the region.
 
Stop the Plague of Justinian, if the Byzantine Empire still has stronger influence throughout its whole empire they may be able to stop the complete occupation of the Balkans by the Slavs, and hopefully then Dalmatian language can survive the death of the Roman empire.
 
Actually what did the Dalmatian language in was the dominance of Venice and later Italian aspirations. The language actually evolved with the slavic influence on the vulgar latin of the east adriatic, without the Slavs you have no Dalmatian as we know it OTL.

edit@ also the language is not completely lost since many words that are described as Italian in local Croatian dialects are actually Dalmatian. The process of reconstructing the language is currently under way but it is doubtfull if it will succeed since Dalmatian was never a unfied language but more a colection of languages/dialects of vulgar latin evolving under slavic influence in the scattered coastal communes.
 
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Actually what did the Dalmatian language in was the dominance of Venice and later Italian aspirations. The language actually evolved with the slavic influence on the vulgar latin of the east adriatic, without the Slavs you have no Dalmatian as we know it OTL.

edit@ also the language is not completely lost since many words that are described as Italian in local Croatian dialects are actually Dalmatian. The process of reconstructing the language is currently under way but it is doubtfull if it will succeed since Dalmatian was never a unfied language but more a colection of languages/dialects of vulgar latin evolving under slavic influence in the scattered coastal communes.
The key phrase is "as we know it", any PoD is going to effect language even if the point of the PoD is to make a language succeed (actually especially if the point of the PoD is to make a language succeed).

It isn't going to be anything like OTL, and that is a given, even if the difference is huge.

Also, if the migration is smaller than OTL or slavic people are absorbed into the Illyrians then you still have Dalmatian with slavic influence.
 
If we follow the line of thought that the Slavic migration is smaller (it wasn't big in OTL either) you get to the question of what Illyrians, considering how they are presented in modern textbooks is a construct of romanticised historians of the 19th century. The scientific circles know for more than 30 (almost 40) years that peoples and groups of people inhabiting the east adriatic coast before the Roman conquest were a very diverese group even speaking different languages and belonging to different material cultures.

Even if we continue with the line of thought that there is very little to no Slavic settlement and influence and Dalmatia remains romance speaking the language will not be called Dalmatian but rather Roman or Latin just as the people did not call themselve Dalmatians but Romeji(Romans) or Latini(Latins).

Also since the endings in the English language are lacking in complexity I should warn you that the English word "Dalmatian language" holds to different meanings. One is the romance language called "Dalmatski" and the other is slavic dialect of Croatian called "Dalmatinski" but unfortunately when translated into English you get the same "Dalmatian" form.
 
If we follow the line of thought that the Slavic migration is smaller (it wasn't big in OTL either) you get to the question of what Illyrians, considering how they are presented in modern textbooks is a construct of romanticised historians of the 19th century. The scientific circles know for more than 30 (almost 40) years that peoples and groups of people inhabiting the east adriatic coast before the Roman conquest were a very diverese group even speaking different languages and belonging to different material cultures.

Even if we continue with the line of thought that there is very little to no Slavic settlement and influence and Dalmatia remains romance speaking the language will not be called Dalmatian but rather Roman or Latin just as the people did not call themselve Dalmatians but Romeji(Romans) or Latini(Latins).

Also since the endings in the English language are lacking in complexity I should warn you that the English word "Dalmatian language" holds to different meanings. One is the romance language called "Dalmatski" and the other is slavic dialect of Croatian called "Dalmatinski" but unfortunately when translated into English you get the same "Dalmatian" form.
I heard that the Latin speakers in Croatia also called themselves Morlachs.
 
No Moralch was one of the names given to the pastoral people living in the Dalmatian hinterlands it was a sinonym for Vlach. It was a mix of people speaking various slavic and romance dialects/languages.
 
Even if we continue with the line of thought that there is very little to no Slavic settlement and influence and Dalmatia remains romance speaking the language will not be called Dalmatian but rather Roman or Latin just as the people did not call themselve Dalmatians but Romeji(Romans) or Latini(Latins).

Just because the people call themselves something doesn't mean that that will be their name or their language's name in English or other languages.

See German/Deutsch, Dutch/Nederlands, Hungarian/Magyar, etc., etc., etc.
 
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