AHC: More Germanic Languages

Not to mention Afrikaans and Faroese. Then there's the smaller languages like Frisian.......

Faroese, yes, however Afrikaans is a Dialect of Dutch and more comparable to the differences between the English spoken in the (majority English) Anglosphere than say the Chinese dialects (half of which themselves should be considered languages).
 
...And yet, Bulgars speaking a Slavic language when they are Turkic happened.

The Bulgars has the ruling elite and the core of the military as Turkic while the majority of the people were Slavs and Romans. The Bulgar had a problem that they were a minority and completely surrounded by a "sea" of Slavs. There is also a not much discussed question how many members of the horde coming from the black sea were already slavic speaking.
 
The Franks spoke a language median between Frisian and Lower German.
Actually, no. Low German (Saxon) and Frisian are Ingvaeonic languages. Old Frankish was Istvaeonic, and a precursor to Old Dutch. Germans (Irminonic language) love to group everything that didn't undergo the High German Consonant shift together, but that is inaccurate.

Sure, there was a degree of dialect continuum, but the three distinct cultural-lingual Western Germanic groups were well-established by the 1st century AD.

There's two ways of going about this: either split up existing languages by giving them a boost in 'cultural independence' (Scots or Swiss are good candidates, Swiss is so different from Standard German it could be its own language already), or make some more colonial/island languages. Creole languages are very fascinating, though sadly they tend to die out.

The whole Mennonite or Pennsylvania Dutch angle would be easy to explore as well. One could even have some Argentine German language.
 
What about Volga Deutsch, It was spoken along the Volga river into the 1920's and thirty's. then there was the english spoken in southeastern Ireland, which was quite different form standard English, it date from the 1200's, and there's alway Gulla spoken off of the Carolina Coast and Newfee spoken in Newfoundland.
 
What about Volga Deutsch, It was spoken along the Volga river into the 1920's and thirty's. then there was the english spoken in southeastern Ireland, which was quite different form standard English, it date from the 1200's, and there's alway Gulla spoken off of the Carolina Coast and Newfee spoken in Newfoundland.
If you're counting Gulla then you might have to count Melanesian Pidgin too.
 
As for Pennsylvania Dutch, It is 2 languages. A version of Hochdeutsch for church and an eastern mittlesaxionisch for everyday. It is much easier to understand than Swiss German
 
Actually, no. Low German (Saxon) and Frisian are Ingvaeonic languages. Old Frankish was Istvaeonic, and a precursor to Old Dutch. Germans (Irminonic language) love to group everything that didn't undergo the High German Consonant shift together, but that is inaccurate.
Isn't Dutch an ansbau language of Low German languages, whom Saxon is "only" a dialect?
 
Isn't Dutch an ansbau language of Low German languages, whom Saxon is "only" a dialect?

Not as I understand it.
More an ausbau of Low Franconian. (Dutch = "Modern Low Franconian")
If thinking in continuums (continui? ;)) helps:

Austria to N/NE Germany = High German to Low German
Austria to Netherlands = High German to Dutch
Netherlands to N/NE Germany = Dutch to Low German

It's a bit of an oversimplification but could be useful to think about.
 
Going off of the thread title alone, without considering the possibility of slavic or romance languages retreating, have a huge plague enter Europe in the early 1600s, this stops all attempts at missions to the new world, the colonies might begin to develop new languages in the new world, especially when literacy drops nearly to levels of non-existence.
 
1. Gulla is a creole language not a pidgin language. A pidgin language is a contact language with a very simplified vocabulary and grammer. When speakers of pidgin languages have children the language expands both the vocabulary and the grammer and becomes a creole language.
All creole languages have very similar grammers.
2. If there was a big plauge that stopped european colonization after it had started,yes you could easily get new languages even without a loss of educational levels. During colonization there is a process called dialectial leveling, where unless all the colonists come from the same dialect area, the mixing if the dialects gives a new dialect or dialects that are much more similar to each other that the ones at home were and are often simplified. Look at Africaans or the early western Indoeuropean languages.
It has been said that world war one was what kept English as one language.
 
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