AHC: Make a non Indo-European language become the global Lingua Franca

IMHO the issue is that in Europe, or most of it, you had Latin as the language of the Church and the educated for a long time after the Roman Empire went away. This meant that something based on Latin was going to be easier to be a lingua franca. Written records (bills of lading, credit documents, etc) are part and parcel of a lingua franca. With Chinese, not only is written Chinese extremely difficult, but culturally there was no push to simplify it - the educated classes retained wealth and privilege because only they were adequately literate given the effort it took to become literate. One reason why at some point the Koreans invented the written form of Hangul, which is like the Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic etc alphabets, phonetic. Another strike against Chinese is to reverse the overall policy of non-exploration/expansion - let the barbarians come to the Celestial Kingdom to trade, not the other way around.

I can't peak to tonal languages, but IMHO even with poor grammar you can make yourself understood in a non-tonal language than with a tonal one - and even today spoken Chinese is difficult between regions after a lot of effort to standardize it. Yeas, English has a lot of weird stuff, but my experience is that non-native speakers, even with bad accents and poor grammar can be understood a lot easier in English than many other non-tonal languages.

English is not based on Latin (though distantly related and still heavily influenced by it and its derived languages), and it managed to become lingua franca anyway.
 
With Chinese, not only is written Chinese extremely difficult, but culturally there was no push to simplify it - the educated classes retained wealth and privilege because only they were adequately literate given the effort it took to become literate.
The literacy rate of Qing China was comparable to Europe, with a phonetic script, and far outstripped India and the Ottoman empire, both with phonetic scripts (admittedly rather unsuited for the language in the Ottoman case). The perceived difficulty of a script does not appear to have much to do with the actual literacy rates.

my experience is that non-native speakers, even with bad accents and poor grammar can be understood a lot easier in English than many other non-tonal languages.
This is because English speakers are much more likely to have contact with non-native speakers with an imperfect grasp of the language (not to mention dialectal diversity), not due to any characteristic intrinsic to the language.
 
Also, the majority of the world’s languages are tonal.
By raw number or by number of speakers? Because the first is frankly misleading at best, you could have had less centralization in regions with non tonal languages and you would have many more non tonal languages even if numbers of speakers are roughly the same.
 
By raw number or by number of speakers? Because the first is frankly misleading at best, you could have had less centralization in regions with non tonal languages and you would have many more non tonal languages even if numbers of speakers are roughly the same.
By raw number (~70% of the world's languages are tonal), but it's not unlikely that the majority of the world spoke a tonal language in 1300. All Chinese, most African languages, and many Mesoamerican ones are tonal, as is Punjabi now (though probably not in 1300).
 
By raw number (~70% of the world's languages are tonal), but it's not unlikely that the majority of the world spoke a tonal language in 1300. All Chinese, most African languages, and many Mesoamerican ones are tonal, as is Punjabi now (though probably not in 1300).
Since when was Chinese tonal? Middle Chinese?
 
By raw number (~70% of the world's languages are tonal), but it's not unlikely that the majority of the world spoke a tonal language in 1300. All Chinese, most African languages, and many Mesoamerican ones are tonal, as is Punjabi now (though probably not in 1300).
The demographics don't add up to a majority, Chinese would amount to 25%, Bantu Africa to 10% and Mesoamerica at 5%.
 
The demographics don't add up to a majority, Chinese would amount to 25%, Bantu Africa to 10% and Mesoamerica at 5%.
Almost all African languages are tonal except for non-Chadic and non-Omotic Afroasiatic languages, and in 1300 their speakers would have numbered something like 12% of the world's population. Swahili, which was not much spoken in 1300, is the main exception.

The Chinese share of the world population in the late Middle Ages is hard to tell, especially under Mongol rule, but it was probably somewhat larger than 25% (Mote suggested 33% during the Song-Jin era). The majority of Mainland Southeast Asia (though less in 1300 than now, since Mon and Khmer were much more widely spoken then) also spoke tonal languages, as did Koreans in 1300, which gives us another 4% or so.

The majority of Mesoamericans spoke tonal languages, especially in 1300, when Otomi was more widely spoken than it is now and the non-tonal Nahuatl had not spread as much.

Depending mainly on how many Chinese people there were compared to the rest of the world, we have 45~50% of the 1300 world speaking tonal languages.
 
Almost all African languages are tonal except for non-Chadic and non-Omotic Afroasiatic languages, and in 1300 their speakers would have numbered something like 12% of the world's population. Swahili, which was not much spoken in 1300, is the main exception.

The Chinese share of the world population in the late Middle Ages is hard to tell, especially under Mongol rule, but it was probably somewhat larger than 25% (Mote suggested 33% during the Song-Jin era). The majority of Mainland Southeast Asia (though less in 1300 than now, since Mon and Khmer were much more widely spoken then) also spoke tonal languages, as did Koreans in 1300, which gives us another 4% or so.

The majority of Mesoamericans spoke tonal languages, especially in 1300, when Otomi was more widely spoken than it is now and the non-tonal Nahuatl had not spread as much.

Depending mainly on how many Chinese people there were compared to the rest of the world, we have 45~50% of the 1300 world speaking tonal languages.
33% seems excessive, as far as I know Chinese population peaked before the Mongols at 120 million, it would mean that the world population was just 360 million during the 12th century which is a bit too little.
 
Punic in a Carthage-defeats-Rome world?
(recalling Manse Everard telling the Ynus yr Afallon woman that in addition to Attic Greek he speaks Latin; she has to chew on it for a second, then says "Oh, the language of the Romans? You won't find anyone speaking that...")
 
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Also, I am surprised nobody yet mentioned Malay. It emerged as a local trading lingua franca IOTL, if an Indonesian empire emerges with strong and lasting power (based on naval and trading dominance) it may work. Perhaps not the easiest path, but it seems a decent candidate to me. While as noted ease of learning really does not count for much relative to prestige factors, Malay has that element working heavily in its favor as well.

A 1300 PoD of devastating Iberian Christians having a long-running civil war and delay of expeditions to the Indies (both East and West) could be fun, with Malay sultans and traders progressively Malayising more and more of the Pacific until they hit South America.
 
early song chinese set up basically an early capitalism by doing (at first private, then governmental) colonization in the philippines/indonesia, the Song discover the americas and industrialize centuries ahead of otl. Mandarin fills the role of OTL's english/french/spanish as far as international spread due to a massive chinese empire+former colonies.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
Uralic,Caucasian,Non Indo European Anatolian languages,Hurro-Urartian,Basque macrofamily if they were allowed to flourish,Minoan,Semitic languages have the best bet.
Ranking wise
* Uralic/Finno-Ugric
*Caucasian
*Hurro-Urartian
*Semitic
*Non Indo European Anatolian-Caucasian macrofamily
*Basque macrofamily
 
Also, I am surprised nobody yet mentioned Malay. It emerged as a local trading lingua franca IOTL, if an Indonesian empire emerges with strong and lasting power (based on naval and trading dominance) it may work. Perhaps not the easiest path, but it seems a decent candidate to me. While as noted ease of learning really does not count for much relative to prestige factors, Malay has that element working heavily in its favor as well.

If one or another Malasian kingdom develops along lines similar to the British or Portuguese empires. Relying on trade and cartage as much as conquest. There are some industrial development questions, but the idea is worth looking at to see what actually takes.
 

samcster94

Banned
One of the Turkic languages. With religion, a Turkic Chingiz Khan might create a global-spanning empire that stays longer.
Tamil, in an Indian-subcontinent’s age of discovery.
Hokkien
Aramaic.
All interesting. Middle Chinese and early forms of Arabic are both too easy.
 
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