AHC Maximum Hellenic Languages

With a POD no earlier than 323 BCE, how many distinct Greek derived languages can develop with different literary traditions, government usages, orthographies, etc. Think of the various Romance languages for a template.

For Example:
Language family
Indo-European
A number of Afghan hill country dialects identified in the 19th century as being descended from the language of Indo-Greek settlers. Written in both Perso-Arabic and recently introduced Greek scripts.

Obvious bonus points for pushing the POD forward, 1453 is real impressive.
 
Well, in 1797, I believe France conquered the Ionian islands. Owing to the long-term Venetian control of the area, Italian was also spoken there, and the Greek of the area was more Italian-influenced and less Turkish-influenced than Ottoman Greek. So, if France continued to hold those islands, a new Greek dialect could emerge, with French influence as well.
 
Cyrenaican Greek would have evolved into its own language, probably moreso than most other Greek dialects, had it survived. It was a Doric Greek dialect which would have been closest to modern Tsakonian. Because of the isolation and separation, I think it would be easiest to have it became seen as its own language and not as just a Greek dialect like OTL Pontic, Griko, Tsakonian, etc. are seen as.
 
If the Normans had not conquered Sicily and southern Italy and it had gone its own way, it's likely you would've had the S. Italian and Sicilian dialects of Greek diverge into their own languages.
 
Regarding this, I've always wondered how much of the population of the Levant, Egypt, and Libya spoke Greek as a first language on the eve of the Arab conquests? @metalinvader665 mentions Cyrenaican Greek, but why did Greek here and in Egypt/Levant die out, but not Greek in Cyprus? And how much of eastern Anatolia/Syria/northern Mesopotamia was Greek-speaking in the 6th-7th centuries AD compared to speakers of Armenian, Syriac, etc?
 
Romance languages multiplied because the Western Empire was overrun by barbarian tribes.
If you could get the Byzantines to be overrun similarly, you'd have multiple Hellenic languages.
 
Greek culture with its maritime traditions and trading networks had a reason to develop koine even in the absence of unifying state.

And remote regions were often thinly Hellenised, which is why Greek disappeared there.

You might need multiple Pods.
 
Classical Greek with Latin influences and lots of neologisms develops in the 18th and 19th centuries as an international lingua franca for scientists, to help international collaboration and facilitate the spreading of new discoveries?
 
Kill Carthage with the Ptolemies, kill Rome with Epirus and Brennus, preserve the Seleucids and the Indo-Greek kingdoms, have Massalia become the Athens of the western Mediterranean.

The Hellenic family thus includes Massalian, Alexandrian, Epirote, Italic, Pontic, Persic, and Indic Koine dialects, which evolve into different languages. :p
 
I made a thread on a stronger Bosporan Kingdom, which regains strength in Late Antiquity to rule all of Crimea and also refusing Christianity for centuries. Unlike OTL's Crimean Greeks (and other Greeks on the north side of the Black Sea), these Crimean Greeks would speak a unique Greek language, probably the second most distinct from "Standard Greek" besides Cyrenaican (I guess we'll assume both co-exist in the same TL). Bosporan/Crimean Greek TTL would diverge from Koine Greek in Late Antiquity, and would have more influence from Scythian/Sarmatian as well as well later on Turkic languages and likely East Germanic as well. Pontic Greek would still be the closest language to it, though.

Romance languages multiplied because the Western Empire was overrun by barbarian tribes.
If you could get the Byzantines to be overrun similarly, you'd have multiple Hellenic languages.

It wasn't like Greek was spoken as a first language by many people outside of Greece proper and the western half of Anatolia. Compared to the 5th century, when Gaulish, for instance, seems to have been in severe decline, and the same with Illyrian languages, pre-Roman Hispanic languages, etc. Plus Armenian, Georgian, Aramaic, and Egyptian, the languages Hellenic languages would be replacing, all had an extensive written tradition AND by Late Antiquity were associated with churches in opposition to the Orthodox church.

Even if the Arabs and Turks hadn't replaced the local languages, you'd just end up with probably multiple Aramaic languages, Egyptian, and lots more Armenian.

Classical Greek with Latin influences and lots of neologisms develops in the 18th and 19th centuries as an international lingua franca for scientists, to help international collaboration and facilitate the spreading of new discoveries?

As opposed to Latin with Classical Greek influences? It seems more likely that such a lingua franca would be based on Latin instead.
 
With a POD no earlier than 323 BCE, how many distinct Greek derived languages can develop with different literary traditions, government usages, orthographies, etc. Think of the various Romance languages for a template.

Let's see... First, keep the Seleucids or some other Hellenistic state in control of Iran and Mesopotamia for longer, spreading Greek language more in these areas. Then, make sure you butterfly the Muslim conquests or any TTL analogues. By the present day OTL's Turkey, the Levant, Mesopotamia and Iran would all be speaking languages descended from Koine Greek. The precise number of languages would depend largely on the political history of the area TTL.
 
For languages to really diverge political authority needs to collapse I would think. So yes the Seleucids in Iran should stay around for a while and the Indo-Greek kingdoms could get more settlers than OTL and keep a dialect going.

A revolution or invasion occurs; say, a delayed rise of the Parthians around 0 AD. However, they're even more successful than OTL, taking over Bactria to Egypt for a brief period. The border regions break off as petty states and devolve into anarchy for a bit (anarchy's good for language divergence).

Rome snaps up Egypt, Greece, and Anatolia, then has an alt-Crisis of the Third Century and splits into multiple states. Egypt stabilizes under a Greek-speaking "pharaoh," the new Persian state has a Greek-speaking court and practices Zoroastrianism, and the Indo-Greeks establish a new empire in Afghanistan. This latter state gets heavily involved in Indian trade and Indian Greek (or whatever it's called) becomes an important trade language of the region, with creoles emerging in trade cities across India and even into East Africa.

New Greek states arise in Anatolia and Greece as well; migrating Slavic tribes invade but are assimilated into Greek culture because of the numerical disparity and some of these states even expand into the Balkan hinterlands.

Anyway, that's just a start; from here wildly divergent Greek languages can range across Europe, Africa, and Asia.
 
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