AHC: Surviving East Germanic languages

Considering the isolation of the Crimean Gothic communities it was likely that at the time of extinction it could well have been multiple languages depending on how people measure the whole language/dialect thing....
Maybe a scenario such as those Goths who convert to Islam keep using Gothic as so it becomes what we would call Tatar today but from a different origin with a equally massive Turkic influence by atl 2018. Another group could arise resisting the Turkic-Islamic influence and potentially becoming what we would consider to be Cossacks. While Russian would also replace it to a great degree, Gothic would remain the de facto language of the regiment and their kin. Straight away we have two modern Gothic languages. For more maybe we could see an earlier expulsion of these Gothic Tartars and as a group they are divided in multiple directions. Therefore we could have by the present day multiple highly divergent dialects in Turkey, Siberia and likely Central Asia. That could give you four related though all uniquely descendants of Gothic with very little butterflies (assumedly).

Certainly the Alps could provide for maybe a handful of villages speaking Gothic and or Burgundian much like we have Romansh otl. Maybe a group of descendants of Visigoths could survive somewhere in Asturias or even in say Andorra.

That wouldn't avoid Russian conquest and gradual assimilation to Russians. Better would be keep Crimea as part of Byzantine Empire and avoid its decline and fall.
 
Apart from the Crimean Goths I think the Gepids are probably the next easiest to have survive. We just need to shift them east to the Transylvanian plateau among the Southern Carpathians where it appears the ancestors of the Daco-Romanians survived. This might push out the Romanians/Vlachs and only the southern Aromanians etc might survive.
The main problem is avoiding assimilation into Slavic; following the Avar Khaganate being established Slavic quickly became the lingua franca and population density at the time might not support 3 languages in the region - Vlachs and Slavs seem to have coexisted by dividing up into highlands and lowlands respectively.
 
One ASB idea I've been toying with is a large island in the middle of the Black sea which remains an independent Gothic speaking kingdom.
 
One ASB idea I've been toying with is a large island in the middle of the Black sea which remains an independent Gothic speaking kingdom.

I suspect that such nation can remain independent if then it not control all coastal areas of the sea.
 
One ASB idea I've been toying with is a large island in the middle of the Black sea which remains an independent Gothic speaking kingdom.

It's not ASB. It juat requires digging a canal accross the isthmus of perekop. Voila! Crimea becomes a large island.
 
It's not ASB. It juat requires digging a canal accross the isthmus of perekop. Voila! Crimea becomes a large island.

I was thinking of an Island about the size of Crimea (which would still exist) only slap bang in the middle of the Black Sea.
 
I suspect that such nation can remain independent if then it not control all coastal areas of the sea.

At first, then it slowly gets pushed back by neighbouring powers. Gothic is still spoken on the Black Sea coast here though.
 
As someone who has studied the Gothic language, it kicked me on my ass so many times it's not even funny, the damned grammar case system made me take a break, the best I can suggest is having the Crimean Gothic population keep kicking in large enough numbers to be akin to the Sorbs or Rusyns of OTL.
Past that, a POD with larger butterflies is have the Dniper Gothic realm survive and win out against the Huns.
As someone who has studied gothic, what dialect did you study? Is there multiple gothic languages? Are iberian and crimean gothic mutually inteligble? Also do you know how gothic history, especially crimean gothic history?
 
Considering the isolation of the Crimean Gothic communities it was likely that at the time of extinction it could well have been multiple languages depending on how people measure the whole language/dialect thing....
Maybe a scenario such as those Goths who convert to Islam keep using Gothic as so it becomes what we would call Tatar today but from a different origin with a equally massive Turkic influence by atl 2018. Another group could arise resisting the Turkic-Islamic influence and potentially becoming what we would consider to be Cossacks. While Russian would also replace it to a great degree, Gothic would remain the de facto language of the regiment and their kin. Straight away we have two modern Gothic languages. For more maybe we could see an earlier expulsion of these Gothic Tartars and as a group they are divided in multiple directions. Therefore we could have by the present day multiple highly divergent dialects in Turkey, Siberia and likely Central Asia. That could give you four related though all uniquely descendants of Gothic with very little butterflies (assumedly).

Certainly the Alps could provide for maybe a handful of villages speaking Gothic and or Burgundian much like we have Romansh otl. Maybe a group of descendants of Visigoths could survive somewhere in Asturias or even in say Andorra.

What if the Crimean Goths were moved by Russian Tsars, Tatar or Mongol Khans eastward+
 
You would have to prevent the Slavic migrations from occurring to prevent the East Germanic languages from becoming extinct. In that sort of TL Romanian is part of a continuum of Romance dialects stretching through much of the Balkans and Pannonia (although the Maygar migrations would interrupt this). Turkic languages would dominate on the Pontic-Caspian steppes. Finnic languages would dominate much of European Russia, while Slavic would be restricted to OTL Belarus and Western Ukraine.

Much of modern day Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia would be speaking dialects of a East Germanic language.
In your scenario i belive that east germanic would assimilate into the mesh that is german. German is mixture of what was considered multiple germanic languages.
 

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Teejay

Gone Fishin'
In your scenario i believe that east Germanic would assimilate into the mesh that is german. German is mixture of what was considered multiple germanic languages.

I would agree with you, the whole history of Europe is going to be dramatically different without the Slavic migrations. In this TL the boundary between the Germanic and Romance languages would extend all the way from Nord De Calais in France to the Balkans. With the area currently speaking South Slavic languages being spilt between Greek and Romance (Albanian would where it was in OTL) Speakers.

800px-Western_and_Eastern_Romania.PNG
 
As someone who has studied gothic, what dialect did you study? Is there multiple gothic languages? Are iberian and crimean gothic mutually inteligble? Also do you know how gothic history, especially crimean gothic history?
The Dniper dialect, it's what the Gothic bible was written in. Iberian and Crimean Gothic are about as mutually intelligible as Norwegian and Swedish in my opinion, in the sense that Crimean Gothic can be classified as another language due to it being the only other definiable substrate of the language.

Sadly, I'm not as knowledgeable in Gothic history, but if you want an idea of how Gothic works, here

https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/gotol
 
The Dniper dialect, it's what the Gothic bible was written in. Iberian and Crimean Gothic are about as mutually intelligible as Norwegian and Swedish in my opinion, in the sense that Crimean Gothic can be classified as another language due to it being the only other definiable substrate of the language.

Sadly, I'm not as knowledgeable in Gothic history, but if you want an idea of how Gothic works, here

https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/gotol
Dniper dialect, that is in Ukraine i guess. Maybe it is the same dialect as crimean gothic or an predescessor? Thanks for the link. Also why did you study Gothic?
 
What if the Crimean Goths were moved by Russian Tsars, Tatar or Mongol Khans eastward+

By the time Russians or Mongols enter the picture it may be too late—I’m pretty sure what Crimean Goths are left were mostly speaking some Greek creole at that point
 
Dniper dialect, that is in Ukraine i guess. Maybe it is the same dialect as crimean gothic or an predescessor? Thanks for the link. Also why did you study Gothic?
Crimean Gothic is quite a bit different than Dniper Gothic, Dniper is very intellegable between Dniper, Ostrogothic, and Visigothic,

In fact, the three of those are regarded as the same language

In a way Dniper was the predescessor, but Crimean is much different

I simply studied it because I loved the script and the phonetics

Which Goths do intend to focus on?
Dniper Goths
 
By the time Russians or Mongols enter the picture it may be too late—I’m pretty sure what Crimean Goths are left were mostly speaking some Greek creole at that point
According to the wikipedia article the crimean goths began to dissapear from records around the 16th century. While the language and cultural shift had started much earlier. In the 16th century a western diplomat in turkey spoke with two crimeans a goth and a greek of them only the greek spoke gothic, ans he spoke it as a second language. So it seems that by then the language had lost much ground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Goths

EDIT:
It is actually in 1780 we have the last recorded crimean gothic meeting
 
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There are numerous other sources referring to the existence of Goths in Crimea following Busbecq's report, though none providing details of their language or customs. The last known record of the Goths in Crimea comes from the Archbishop of Mohilev; Stanisław Bohusz Siestrzeńcewicz c. 1780, who visited Crimea at the end of the 18th century, and noted the existence of people whose language and customs differed greatly from their neighbors and who he concluded must be "Goths".[16]

Crimean Khanate (1449–1783)[edit]
Main article: Crimean Khanate
Further information: Crimean-Nogai raids into East Slavic lands and Crimean Goths
The Crimean Khanate, a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, succeeded the Golden Horde and lasted from 1449 to 1783.[29] In 1571, the Crimean Tatars attacked and sacked Moscow, burning everything but the Kremlin.[30] Until the late 18th century, Crimean Tatars maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire, exporting about 2 million slaves from Russia and Ukraine over the period 1500–1700.[31]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Russian_Empire

- Russia annexed Crimean in 1783.
- The last known record of crimean goths were in 1780
Can this be in any way related?
 
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