AHC: more languages like Maltese

samcster94

Banned
Maltese is an unusual language due to being in Europe, yet is technically a form of Arabic under some definitions. What can be done so more languages like this pop up? Semitic languages being in Europe would change things, given in OTL, other than the Uralic speaking countries and Basque, most people in Europe speak a form of Indo European(which makes both Greek and Latin distantly related to Sanskrit). Bonus points if said languages are not in southern Iberia or southern OTL Italy.
 
Keep the Emirate of Sicily around long enough for Siculo-Arabic to become ingrained as the majority language of the island. It was pretty similar to Maltese. If you keep Al-Andalus united and keep out the Almohads you might see Spain adopting an Arabicized version of Mozarabic as well.
 
Keep the Ottoman Empire together for longer and you might get a number of Turkish-speaking cities in the Balkans. Although they'd likely be overwhelmed by Indo-Europeans from the countryside during the 20th century unless we figure out a creative way for the Ottoman Empire to encourage assimilation to a Turkish identity (maybe European Muslims are encouraged to identify as 'Turks' as a form of solidarity against a rising Christian majority).
 
Mongols are able come deeper to Europe and found khanate which last some decades. Then there could be Mongolic language in Eastern or Central Europe with Slavic/Germanic influence.
 
Mongols are able come deeper to Europe and found khanate which last some decades. Then there could be Mongolic language in Eastern or Central Europe with Slavic/Germanic influence.
In that case, Turkey is an OTL example of Central Asians penetrating into Europe and eventually forming a nation-state. There are the Crimean Tatars to consider, as well.
 
Maybe a surviving Etruscan state or enclave in northern Italy in a timeline where Rome falters early on (obviously the butterflies world wide would be pterodactyl sized however).
 
In Late Antiquity, Malta was practically abandoned, so it could conceivably have been resettled by Punic-speaking people from North Africa. Maybe even get a "greater Malta" by adding Lampedusa and the nearby Italian islands to Malta, which would also speak Punic. You might be able to do the same with a Berber language in Malta.

It probably wouldn't be too hard for the Cumans to survive in Transylvania or even Hungary proper--OTL they were there until early modern times, speaking the Turkic Cuman language. Maybe if the Mongols utterly crush the Hungarians, the Cumans will resettle Pannonia and assimilate most of the surviving Magyars?

Keep the Ottoman Empire together for longer and you might get a number of Turkish-speaking cities in the Balkans. Although they'd likely be overwhelmed by Indo-Europeans from the countryside during the 20th century unless we figure out a creative way for the Ottoman Empire to encourage assimilation to a Turkish identity (maybe European Muslims are encouraged to identify as 'Turks' as a form of solidarity against a rising Christian majority).

Isn't that OTL? The 19th century Balkans had a significant number of people labeled "Turks", and Greek and Slavic Muslims tended to adopt a Turkish identity.

Successful Carthage means a Phoenician-derived language would be spoken in the Iberian peninsula.

I wonder how late you could have a part of Iberia Punic speaking? Given the spread of the Punic language during Roman times, I wonder if you could have a community there which speaks Punic into modern times?
 
Isn't that OTL? The 19th century Balkans had a significant number of people labeled "Turks", and Greek and Slavic Muslims tended to adopt a Turkish identity.

Some Greek and Slavic Muslisms. Bosniaks are a notable exception, and they're the only ones who ended up with a country of their own (well, half a country). If the Bosniaks could be assimilated to a Turkish identity, the idea is that we could wind up with a Turkish-speaking Bosnia. Or, more likely, a state carved out of the Muslim-majority areas of Bosnia, Albania, FYROM, and Bulgaria (maybe called "Rumelia"??) with Turkish as the common language. Over the course of the 20th century, a dialect of Turkish would eventually become the language of education and then the majority first language as Greek and Slavic speakers gave up their ancestral languages.

Although, to a certain extent, Turkish IS a European language OTL because of Turkish Thrace, so maybe I shouldn't be trying so hard to create a Turkish-speaking state in Europe.
 
Some Greek and Slavic Muslisms. Bosniaks are a notable exception, and they're the only ones who ended up with a country of their own (well, half a country). If the Bosniaks could be assimilated to a Turkish identity, the idea is that we could wind up with a Turkish-speaking Bosnia. Or, more likely, a state carved out of the Muslim-majority areas of Bosnia, Albania, FYROM, and Bulgaria (maybe called "Rumelia"??) with Turkish as the common language. Over the course of the 20th century, a dialect of Turkish would eventually become the language of education and then the majority first language as Greek and Slavic speakers gave up their ancestral languages.

The catch here is that the Bosnians were never really culturally all that different to their Serbian cousins. Turkish influences on Balkanic cultures were widespread equally to the point that the relics of these influences on local cultures are highly controversial today in the region.

Having them shift languages would require much more Turkish influence than IOTL. I’d suggest a PoD at least a few centuries back, maybe with larger numbers of Turkish settlers in Europe.
 
The Wild Fields of Western Ukraine were inhabited by Nogais up until the 18th century, so if they'd been more numerous there would be a Turkic language with heavy Mongolic influences spoken in the region to this day.

And, since there seem to be many Latin loanwords in the Berber language(s) to this day, maybe a Southern Romance enclave could survive in North Africa as well.
 
I'm always curious of the migration patterns that would occur in a more intact and stable Ottoman Empire in the 19th and 20th century. Should it industrialize (especially if it keeps parts of OTL Bulgaria), one would presume that it would receive a significant flow of migrants from elsewhere in the Empire, Arabs among them: much like how the United States attracted European immigrants or even had blacks moving from the South to the North to work in factories. For at least a time, you could have Arab communities thrive and prosper in Rumelia. Or at least before eventually assimilating and adopting Turkish.
 
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And, since there seem to be many Latin loanwords in the Berber language(s) to this day, maybe a Southern Romance enclave could survive in North Africa as well.

A WI I've pondered a couple times. A non Arabic & possibly Christian state dominating what is not Morroco & western Algeria into the 20th Century? Perhaps connected to & extending a Reconquista in Iberia?
 
A WI I've pondered a couple times. A non Arabic & possibly Christian state dominating what is not Morroco & western Algeria into the 20th Century? Perhaps connected to & extending a Reconquista in Iberia?

If Islamic expansion is halted at the Atlas Range, both present day Morocco and Algeria could end up speaking a language not dissimilar from Sardinian:

AtlasRange.jpg


Maybe the early medieval Regnum Maurorum et Romanorum does better than in OTL? The history of Spain would become unrecognizable as a result, and Cantabria might, with a little bit of luck, end up speaking a Celtic language with heavy Basque influences.
 
Maybe the early medieval Regnum Maurorum et Romanorum does better than in OTL? The history of Spain would become unrecognizable as a result, and Cantabria might, with a little bit of luck, end up speaking a Celtic language with heavy Basque influences.

Apparently some of the rulers of that nation may have been Jewish, so that’s another major butterfly if the nation persists...
 
Apparently some of the rulers of that nation may have been Jewish, so that’s another major butterfly if the nation persists...

Well, the only way it's going to survive as a Southern Romance nation, it's as a Christian nation - a Jewish state stuck between a Christian anvil and a Muslim hammer will not last long, even though "Mauretania" could become as tolerant of Jews as Poland was in OTL. Christianity could also spread from "Mauretania" to West Africa through trade, and the existence of black Christian kingdoms connected to Western Europe through the Southern Romance polity could alter our OTL views about ethnicity and race so much to make them unrecognizable. "Mauretania" could also be one of the first states to attempt the trip to America, too - or even just the circumnavigation of Africa, given their interests near the Gulf of Guinea.

However, unassimilated Berbers could end up becoming the local version of the Sami people, discriminated against despite their very close ties to the dominant ethnicity...
 
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