Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to spread Anglo-Saxon and/or English as far as you can during the medieval period. Points will be particularly awarded for having it spoken in a large area of continental Europe or for it becoming the lingua franca in either trade or diplomacy. You're allowed some flex with what is defined as "English" - anything that could be counted as an Anglic language counts.
AHC: Maximize the spread of English in the Middle Ages
- Thread starter Socrates
- Start date
A rough timeline with a POD likely around 450-500 CE:
-The Franks manage to conquer Northern France but don't unify and you have Salian Franks and Ripurian Franks. They don't conquer the Alemanni or Burgundy either, we have a divided NW Europe.
-The Frisian push southwards and expel the Salian Franks out of Flanders in the early 6th century. By 600 Frisians control all of the modern low Frankish speaking areas, lower Rhine and the Ems basin in Germany.
-The Anglo-Saxons conquer England a bit faster, maybe by avoiding losing against the Britons in the battle of Badon or whatever historical counterpart of this battle there was. By 600 CE all of England is under stable Germanic control.
-Let's postulate that a different strain of Christianity, maybe some Arian-like heresy, ends up taking over Germanic speaking areas, the Frisians slowly convert to this faith and spread it around the North Sea, let's postulate also they translate the Bible in North Sea Germanic, thus giving a base to maintain a prestige dialect for the tongues spoken from Jutland to Wales during this period.
-The Frisian kingdom eventually ends up conquering the Saxons to their East and control a large kingdom Rugen to Calais by 800 CE.
-A Frisian backed Anglian kingdom ends up defeating a Frankish backed South-Western Saxon kingdom around the 7th-8th century and ends up with a situation analogous to the Mercian hegemony during the OTL 8th century.
-Alt-Norse entering the scene during the late 8th century would be more marginalized to raiding and settling the North-West of the British isles and the Baltic. Instead of being pagan they start already as an hybrid between Arian Christian and Norse Pagans and their religious difference from the more Chalcedonian Celts is maintained. They eventually Norsify all of the Scottish Highlands, Isle of Man and some enclaves in Ireland but their language eventually drifts towards the Frisian-like prestige variant as the Anglic kingdom to their south subjugates them in both violent and non violent ways. The Norse also settled Iceland and Greenland during this time.
-A more united Anglian kingdom in the 8th century would be eyeing both to Ireland France to the south, with the Norse going around the Anglos use them as mercenaries and allies to raid and attack Breton and Frankish isles, coasts and rivers. Eventually you have a Anglo-Norse kingdom in Britanny and Western Normandy by 900 CE.
-The Frisian kingdom during this period would end up slowly englobing areas upstream from the Rhine, the Weser and the Elbe, conquring Thuringia and defeating pagan Slavs around OTL Upper Saxony and Brandenburg. North Sea Germanic becomes the primary language north of the Thuringia forest and north of the Main river and the Frisians would control all of that region by around 1000 CE.
In this timeline I really define "English" broadly because frankly before 1066 and especially before the Frankish conquest of Frisia and Saxony North Sea Germanic was far more cohesive.
English, despite many people wishfully thinking the contrary, has very little Celtic influence and if we postulate a North Sea Germanic language being the prestige dialect instead of Latin it would also have far less Romance influence, by 1000 CE we would see this rather cohesive language area dominating from the Oder to Britanny, all deriving from Frisians and the Anglo-Saxons people that came from the Jutland-to-Frisia coast starting from the 5th century.
We also had multiple events that made this language more cohesive and also hegemonic in its influence over Norse people, thus also maintaining unity beyond the rather arbitrary West/North Germanic lines that exist IOTL given the different circumstances.
-The Franks manage to conquer Northern France but don't unify and you have Salian Franks and Ripurian Franks. They don't conquer the Alemanni or Burgundy either, we have a divided NW Europe.
-The Frisian push southwards and expel the Salian Franks out of Flanders in the early 6th century. By 600 Frisians control all of the modern low Frankish speaking areas, lower Rhine and the Ems basin in Germany.
-The Anglo-Saxons conquer England a bit faster, maybe by avoiding losing against the Britons in the battle of Badon or whatever historical counterpart of this battle there was. By 600 CE all of England is under stable Germanic control.
-Let's postulate that a different strain of Christianity, maybe some Arian-like heresy, ends up taking over Germanic speaking areas, the Frisians slowly convert to this faith and spread it around the North Sea, let's postulate also they translate the Bible in North Sea Germanic, thus giving a base to maintain a prestige dialect for the tongues spoken from Jutland to Wales during this period.
-The Frisian kingdom eventually ends up conquering the Saxons to their East and control a large kingdom Rugen to Calais by 800 CE.
-A Frisian backed Anglian kingdom ends up defeating a Frankish backed South-Western Saxon kingdom around the 7th-8th century and ends up with a situation analogous to the Mercian hegemony during the OTL 8th century.
-Alt-Norse entering the scene during the late 8th century would be more marginalized to raiding and settling the North-West of the British isles and the Baltic. Instead of being pagan they start already as an hybrid between Arian Christian and Norse Pagans and their religious difference from the more Chalcedonian Celts is maintained. They eventually Norsify all of the Scottish Highlands, Isle of Man and some enclaves in Ireland but their language eventually drifts towards the Frisian-like prestige variant as the Anglic kingdom to their south subjugates them in both violent and non violent ways. The Norse also settled Iceland and Greenland during this time.
-A more united Anglian kingdom in the 8th century would be eyeing both to Ireland France to the south, with the Norse going around the Anglos use them as mercenaries and allies to raid and attack Breton and Frankish isles, coasts and rivers. Eventually you have a Anglo-Norse kingdom in Britanny and Western Normandy by 900 CE.
-The Frisian kingdom during this period would end up slowly englobing areas upstream from the Rhine, the Weser and the Elbe, conquring Thuringia and defeating pagan Slavs around OTL Upper Saxony and Brandenburg. North Sea Germanic becomes the primary language north of the Thuringia forest and north of the Main river and the Frisians would control all of that region by around 1000 CE.
In this timeline I really define "English" broadly because frankly before 1066 and especially before the Frankish conquest of Frisia and Saxony North Sea Germanic was far more cohesive.
English, despite many people wishfully thinking the contrary, has very little Celtic influence and if we postulate a North Sea Germanic language being the prestige dialect instead of Latin it would also have far less Romance influence, by 1000 CE we would see this rather cohesive language area dominating from the Oder to Britanny, all deriving from Frisians and the Anglo-Saxons people that came from the Jutland-to-Frisia coast starting from the 5th century.
We also had multiple events that made this language more cohesive and also hegemonic in its influence over Norse people, thus also maintaining unity beyond the rather arbitrary West/North Germanic lines that exist IOTL given the different circumstances.
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A very creative approach. I was imagining something later, perhaps related to the Angevins, but I like this a lot.
To be honest I don't think any post-Norman invasion POD is really going to work, for obvious reasons.
Which English? If an ASB took our William Shakespeare to this alternate timeline and our requirement for what counts as English is that he understands it as a derivative of the language he speaks, then it would have to be a post-Norman Invasion POD. If by English we mean Old English, any post-Norman invasion POD is not going to work for obvious reasons. The OP asked for flex, so I think we can chose either, although your first post was very creative so I think it would probably be a better story than another one
What about a scenario where the British Isles get united early while Francia keeps on getting divided up by inheritance? If Britain is the only major power in Europe, English could become the language of diplomacy and start spreading elsewhere.
Spain, Portugal, Scandinavian lands, half of Italy:
Am I a joke to you?
If Britain unites under the Mercian supremacy, that's around 850 AD or so. Iberia, Scandinavia and Southern Italy are broken up between various petty Kingdoms, Duchies and Emirates.
So they'll spread english to......what? Scandinavia, at most IMO.
You said Britain is the only major power in Europe, but when those other countries centralize/join, they'll have more resources than Britain, and will probably supplant it in ~50 years.
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