AHC: Make all of Europe speak a mutually intelligible language

Surely the best analogy is China? OTL the Han Empire fell apart, but was eventually gathered together again by the Tang, who exceeded their predecessors. So if Rome falls, have a successor Empire rise in the seventh century or so which reassembles the Empire, but includes Germany as well.

For this to work Byzantium will need to do worse, or perhaps split into warring kingdoms. The Roman successor state perhaps gains traction by spreading Christianity and by military success in holding back the Arabs.

Latin becomes the de facto language of the ruling class everywhere, as well as for official government business and any seat of learning.

Regards

R
 
Stalin starts WW3 in 1946. The Soviets occupy much of the west, but the logistical difficulties in Spain and Italy are too great and the exhausted Red Army is pushed back to Russia proper. Continental Europe is devastated after WW3 even more than after WW2, making Britain and America more relatively powerful. Meanwhile, the Cold War is avoided as the Soviet Union is either destroyed or a shell of its former self long before 1991. English becomes the universal second language of Western, Central, and Eastern Europe.
 
The Slavic languages might be another potential. I have no clue how you can Slavicise places like Spain or Italy, but the languages are all decently intelligible, I'm told. I knew a college professor who spoke Russian who could comprehend Polish without ever having studied it. Plus from my own knowledge, if the Roman Empire is a potential with the huge diversities of Romance languages, surely the Slavic languages might be another potential language family to invite a mutual intelligibility?

But by that reasoning, I'm sure the Germanic languages can be coaxed into a mutually intelligible form as well. If you strip most if not all of the French influence out, then you get a language which isn't too unlike German or Dutch (plus English speakers can comprehend Frisian to some extent already). The Nordic languages aren't too far from there, and let's just say Eastern Europe still speaks a Germanic language (East Germanic--Gothic and such aren't that bad). To replace classical Latin, perhaps have a universal standard based on Proto-Germanic? If it's as "mechanical" as we've reconstructed it as, then it could serve as a good base for a pan-European language. A POD for that--somehow have the heavy plow show up in Germania, creating an agricultural revolution, and then a subsequent "Germanic" empire conquers Rome and absorbs steppe tribes, the Slavs, etc, while fragmented groups conquer places like Iberia and the Balkans. The runic Proto-Germanic (which would be written down since there would be more runestones, if not a wholescale adaption of the Latin, Greek, or perhaps an original alphabet similar to Gothic) would be the standard. Not particularly plausible or likely, but a reasonable scenario if you want a pan-European language that isn't Latin.

Arabic language should serve as a good example, with the saying that speaking standard Arabic identifies you immediately as a foreigner since no Arab speaks in standard Arabic.
 
The dynamics of Europe don't allow for the circumstances that has allowed English to spread as a secondary language within the last century and a half. Having the entirety or majority of Europe speaking a mutually intelligible language is very different than having that majority having a passing to fluent understanding of a language for purposes other than common day speech. It's just different.

The majority fluently speaking English is the majority speaking a mutually intelligible language.

With a POD in 0 AD, make Europe speak the same language family in 2000 years.

Plus Italian and French are not mutually intelligible yet they are in the same language family.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Primary_Human_Language_Families_Map.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_family

All you need to do is get Finland and Hungary.
 
Plus Italian and French are not mutually intelligible yet they are in the same language family.

Admittedly, as someone who only learned French, Italian is very hard (versus Spanish or Portuguese) and up there with Romanian in terms of difficulty, but I can still get the gist of things from an Italian text even with only 2 years of highschool French. I'm not fluent in French, so I imagine an actual French speaker could do far better than me, especially when it comes to the written word.

This might be impossible, but again, as the Arabic example shows, if you have a unified written word, you can compensate any difficulties in the spoken word--people could use Classical Latin for communication if it were too hard, or alternatively, *Proto-Germanic or *Church Slavonic and be understood. Otherwise we could consider this ASB.
 
Admittedly, as someone who only learned French, Italian is very hard (versus Spanish or Portuguese) and up there with Romanian in terms of difficulty, but I can still get the gist of things from an Italian text even with only 2 years of highschool French. I'm not fluent in French, so I imagine an actual French speaker could do far better than me, especially when it comes to the written word.

Well that's just more evidence in favour of how easy it would be to get all of Europe speaking a language close enough to French as Italian is.
 
But it's just that--a trade tongue, unlikely to become anyone's first language.

Well the OP never said anything about a first language so a pan-European trade tongue would count.

Rough outline to wank Sabir:
-Have Sabir pop up a little farther back and be a little more prevalent. Maybe have Spain be less united and/or more merchantile.
-Have mercenaries be even more prevalent in the early modern period with a lot of them being polyglot enough that they use Sabir among themselves.
-Have a nasty series of wars (alt-30YW) break out in an area where Sabir-using mercenaries are prevalent.
-As the combatants run out of money they start paying mercenaries in land (much like the late Western Roman empire paid allies) which leads to mercenary companies getting more political.
-One or more intelligent and ambitious mercenary captain decides to turn warlord and carve out their own realm. One such warlord state solidifies into a European gunpowder empire that replaces a lot of the old elite with mercenary veterans.
-This gunpowder empire uses Sabir as an administrative language (because they're not educated enough to use Latin and any other language is going to cause issues in a big sprawling polyglot empire) and makes extensive use of printing presses for proclamations etc.
-Due to soldiers, administrators, etc. being posted away from their homes a lot of people have to use Sabir to understand each other.
-Something like the Reformation or a Counter-Reformation happens and Bibles get printed en masse in Sabir so that the European gunpowder empire can have everyone reading the same Bible and have the Bible be in a language regular people can understand.
-Before the European gunpowder empire collapses, Sabir gets established in a lot of cities so that eventually modern successor states use Sabir as the language of universal public education which gets it to penetrate into the countryside in a big way.

Bit rough but that should work as an outline.
 
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