AHC: Make any non-existant language plausible

what about an earlier end to the Holy Roman German Empire followed some time later by a unification into a small number of sovereign state that have mediatized/secularised their neighbour thus creating unified "smaller germanise" each using a different dialect evolving into full blown languages (franconian, saxon, etc...)

I did once a thread on Swiss German dialect(s) becoming a language of it's own, myself.
 
Inspired by this thread, make any language that does not exist or formally existed plausible or to modern times.


Examples:
  • A more prominent Greek language rather then how Latin is.
  • Egyptian language did not get converted to the Arab Egyptian.
  • A different or unrecognizable English.
  • Native American language is more common and is modernized, like some of the native languages in Mexico.
You can always add any more languages as well.
interestingly enough, i'm working on separate projects with all four of these :p

  • Greece becomes a given TL's version of the Roman Empire (using a POD at Thermopylae in my project) and thus Greek is the most common language in the eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia. i hadn't put any thought into it other than that, but the result would more or less be most of the former Greek Empire speaking languages derived from Ancient Greek, unless other events down the line brought about changes which caused a given successor state to abandon Greek (this was already mentioned in this thread)
  • for a project set entirely in fiction, one country's religion is based on Ancient Egypt, so i decided to adapt other aspects of Egyptian culture to them as well, including their language; the actual rendering of the language in the context of the story so far uses fake Egyptian based on fiction (such as "Iye nu sett-ta!", like what Imhotep sometimes says in The Mummy) before it's mentally translated into English for the reader's sake, but i've envisioned their written language as being like if Egyptian hieroglyphics got the treatment that cuneiform did over time to the Nth degree (since their culture is around for alot longer in the context of the story) so that it's still written in glyphs but is very simplified so that it can be written quickly
  • in my ASB ATL, there's no Norman conquest of England, so English (called Anglish ITTL) has alot more German and Scandinavian influences, as well as the *English culturally identifying as Scandinavians (in the same way that Finns and Icelanders are considered Scandinavians IOTL). i'm not sure how plausible it actually is, but a basic idea is that Anglish is so similar to German (and maybe Danish) that native speakers of those languages can hold up a conversation, albeit with some difficulty, without actually knowing each other's language
  • also in my ASB ATL, Nahuatl. specifically, Modern Nahuatl, which requires the admittedly ASB (big surprise there :rolleyes:) large-scale survival of the Aztecs following the Spanish Conquest, meaning the Spanish and Nahuatl are about half-and-half for linguistic dominance until the country becomes independent, after which Modern Nahuatl becomes the official language. i had basically envisioned it as being like OTL's historical Nahuatl, just with Spanish (and possibly Mayan) loanwords for concepts that the Aztecs didn't know about or understand; lots of astronomical phenomena, for instance, would use Spanish words
 
I heard Lombards may have spoken an High German language, like in Swiss germans areas. The german speaking minorities of the northeast may be related to them, distantly..

I have also read that Lombarish was High German, although with some distinct differences; i.e. turning the 'b' sound into 'p' in certain situations. I wish I new most linguistics, because I would love to develop alt-language for a Lombrish that survived to the modern day.
 
Perhaps, instead of the Europeans, a more benign (but still highly overwhelming and dominating) influence from some Southeast Asian power colonizes Australia but does not commit genocide and otherwise treats the Indigenous Australians as actual human beings, unlike the British colonists until quite recently.
I actually recommend you to visit this page
 
• Surviving Elamite/Khuzi. The geographer Istahri wrote in the 10th Century of an unaffiliated language spoken in Khuzestan (ancient Elam). I'll assume this is a survival of some form of Elamite. The Khuzis adopt Islam, but a different branch from the rest of Iran (possibly Sunni or maybe one of the Kharijite sects)and maintain their language through the 'shield of faith'. They are further encouraged by nationalist movements in the 19th century.

• I always thought a surviving Kassite language in the Zagros would be cool. A few isolated mountain communities or nomads may preserve the language, although it would be flooded with Iranian and Arabic loanwords. Actually the Zagros as an Alternate Caucasus with a greater variety of languages would work well since this sort of happened in OTL.

• Nahuatl survives as a national language of Mexico. (There are still Nahuatl dialects spoken in Mexico today, but without any kind of official support). The royal Cédula of 1770 is never signed and things continue like they had before, with Spanish in the cities and government, but Nahuatl remaining the lingua general.

• an idea I've thought of for surviving Egyptian language is a class of swineherds (pigs were considered an animal of the god Seth, and unclean) were somewhat segregated in ancient Egyptian society, and they eventually form a caste unto themselves and even after Christianization and Islamization they remain separate, speaking their own Egyptian language even after everyone forgets exactly why.
 
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The Navajo have always had a large population. I suspect that's because they had a sedentary agricultural society based around large towns. Kind of like a northern-most example of the Central American type of society. But the Navajo weren't the only tribe in North America to be a settled agricultural people, the pre-contact Mississippean culture was as well. I wonder why the Navajo were able to survive the Eurasian disease contact with this type of society intact, while the Mississippeans broke apart.

The Navajo were not sedentary nor were they agricultural in pre-contact times, however. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers, as were most Athabascan peoples. As for what point they became so numerous, it's interesting that when the Navajo first appear in the written records of the Spanish, they're portrayed as a mere subset of the Apache (Apache de Navajo).

The Pueblo peoples who lived in the same region had agrarian towns and villages but they were diverse group encompassing several different, unrelated language families. They were living in the Southwestern United States for a much longer period of time than the Navajo.
 
interestingly enough, i'm working on separate projects with all four of these :p

  • Greece becomes a given TL's version of the Roman Empire (using a POD at Thermopylae in my project)
Simpler to keep good old Alexander alive another decade or two.
 
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Simpler to keep good old Alexander alive another decade or two.
i had thought of mentioning Alexander, but considering the idea for the timeline is really "Greek victory at Thermopylae", i didn't feel like it ;) but Alexander is another good example. in fact, i remember hearing about an AH story from a long time ago which explored what a successful Macedonian Empire could look like, which involved steam engines moving people and cargo all over the empire and pretty much culminated with a particular Jew preaching at the train station in Nazareth, but everyone is too busy to pay him much mind
 
The Navajo were not sedentary nor were they agricultural in pre-contact times, however. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers, as were most Athabascan peoples. As for what point they became so numerous, it's interesting that when the Navajo first appear in the written records of the Spanish, they're portrayed as a mere subset of the Apache (Apache de Navajo).

The Pueblo peoples who lived in the same region had agrarian towns and villages but they were diverse group encompassing several different, unrelated language families. They were living in the Southwestern United States for a much longer period of time than the Navajo.

Ah. I knew they had adapted that lifestyle from the Pueblo rather than Europeans, so I assumed it was pre-contact. I do still think the later adoption of herding may have contributed to their success.
 
The Wallons didnt speak in majority "Royal/Paris French" until Belgium more or less came to be I heard, and perhaps a similar thing happened to the Romans in Swisterland. Maybe the two peoples could speak a 'dialect' or very closely related language to french still nowaday in different circumstances..

I was somewhat surprised when I just found out recently that most Walloons don't actually speak Walloon. It was just an assumption I had made.
 
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