Have Anatolia eventually become majority Galatian linguistically sometime before 1900. It can be either a short game or a long game.
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AHC majority Galatian speaking Anatolia
- Thread starter Hvalrossen
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How might the relationship between the Celtic speaking parts of Europe be with a Galatian speaking Ottoman empire? How does language impact the relationship?
Dude, butterflies would destroy any chance of the Ottomans ever rising to power, maybe even the family line even existing. If the majority of Anatolia is Celtic speaking, that changes a massive amount of European and Asian history as we know it
Besides, the relationship would hardly change, the relationships between Estonian/Finnish and Hungarian hardly changed how the Germanic crusaders viewed the pagans. The "civilized" Hungarians in the Carpathians didn't matter in the Teutons conquests, besides even that, linguistic relations is still quite a new concept at least in how we view it. Depending on the faith and governance of these Celts they may just be viewed as another "other" even by the Insular Celts.
It does not need to be the Ottomans just a equivalent occupying a similar role in history.
Well, there is some (altough meager) indication that Gaulish was still spoken in Anatolia during the late Empire, but probably on a bilingual/diglossial relationship with Greek right from the IInd century BC.
First, you need Gauls to defeat Attalos I, and to remain politically dominant on Central Anatolia : it might lead not only to a longer migration of Balkanic Gauls, and to a lesser drive for socio-cultural Hellenization of Galates a bit like it happened in northern Italy. You might even see a stronger confederation, akin to the Gallo-Thracian Tylis.
Hellenisation is still going to be a thing ITTL, no matter what tough : it could be pointed that without a Roman Empire triumphant in Mediterranean basin, the Hellenization of Anatolia might be more limited (romanisation in eastern Romania was made along Hellenistic structures) but this is essentially relative. But you could end with a larger linguistic spawn of Gaulish in Central/Western-Central Anatolia holding out, thanks to relatively isolated highlands AND to stronger political-cultural centers thanks to absence of strong Hellenistic states nearby); and a Gaulish language more or less being an ancient equivalent to Kurdish in Anatolia.µ
I don't really see it being the main language of Anatolia, even remotely : the lingua franca of the region was Greek since centuries and it's going to stay this way a long time. And even ITTL, Gaulish is likely to be a "lesser" language, even is more widely and longer spoken.
Could not Galatian survive the Roman empire as a dominant language in rural inland Anatolia, or become so?
Thing is, languages depend not just on the demographical strength or relative expension/isolation of its locutors, but as well from centers of power and of learning.
Greek language had, in Anatolia, a real cultural importance since centuries, twinned with transcontinental political-cultural structures. Gauls had the right of conquest, on partially Hellenized populations. Even in the aformentioned scenario, Gaulish wasn't going to be dominant, but at best in a diglossic relationship with Greek (again, think Kurd vs. Turk) or, really, like Phrygian did with Greek in the same time.
And in the case there is still a Roman Empire, Gaulish is toasted in Anatolia as an important language : romanisation was, nevertheless, a complex process of creolisation/acculturation; but giving the already present strength of hellenism and the fact eastern romanisation was made following hellenistic structures with all the strength of a superpower...I'd say it's already remarkable that Gaulish survived in Anatolia up to the Vth century (to be noted that Phrygian seems to have lasted a bit more). Simply said, there wasn't much political-cultural centers from which Gaulish could flourish in Galatia.
While the first scenario, in the absence of the Roman Empire, could give Gaulish a chance of survival in Anatolia as a secondary language; the scenario with the Roman Empire gives little hope for it to outlast its historical lifetime.