AHC/WI: Multilingual nations in the West

somehow keeping Low/Upper German apart for longer?

Somehow keeping France more decentralized, instead of Paris sitting on just about everything, letting Occitan survive as more than a obsurity
 
Have Austria expand further at the Ottoman Empire's expense, permanently taking Serbia, Bosnia, and the Danubian Principalities. This would expand their population of Romanians and Slavs, further making Germans and Hungarians a minority.

Then if Austria federalizes somewhat after a failed Hungarian Rebellion by breaking up the Kingdom of Hungary and playing the various minorities off of each other to create a unified central parliament with many states, each with their own different primary cultures, you get a country with a wide plurality of different cultures.
 
Some are doable, I think, but not all.

With some different POD's, Spain's minority languages can become more prevalent. Honestly all it would take is a 1970's cultural revival in Galicia, Vasco, and Catalonia (even though that kind of already happened in Catalonia).

For the UK, perhaps if the 1960's go a little differently and the imperial guilt angle is played up, then the government could invest in programs that promote the Welsh and Scots languages.

Similarly the Netherlands could become interested in West Frisian and all the tiny populations speaking unintelligible languages for whatever reason, especially if there is international pressure to promote minority languages (perhaps coming from Spain and the UK themselves), but I think this is less likely.

Belgium, Canada, and Switzerland are OTL, of course, but I suppose if the eastern Canada economic depression starts earlier, Quebecois "cultural imperialism" (for lack of a more sensitive word) could make bigger inroads into New Brunswick and maybe even Ontario surrounding Ottawa.

So far we haven't even really changed history that much.

But there are some western nations where I think this multilingual situation CANNOT happen: Portugal, France, Germany, Italy

Portugal simply didn't really have any languages besides Portuguese, that was kind of the point. They're innocently monolingual, in the same way that Finland is innocently racially pure.

In France, Germany, and Italy, I think nationalism is way too powerful of a force to let minority languages survive. Speaking the national language was an integral part of their country's unification process (or in France's case, holding the country together over the centuries).

The US could theoretically end up multilingual, especially with German as a regional language and Spanish as a regional language. But to get a US in which people on the Plains preferentially speak German and in which white people learn Spanish as well as use it with each other require some history-changing POD's.

Also like people said, if somehow Austria-Hungary reforms, that obviously adds to the list.
 
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Take an existing minority language and make it bigger

...either by A): Making the language-speakers more numerous, B): expanding their territory or C): playing with the borders of the country to include more of one language and less of another.

For A: In addition to the 20% French speakers in and around Quebec, Canada also has a large community of Métis (descendants of mixed marriages between natives and mostly French traders/trappers) in the North and East who also speak a French dialect. This encourages immigration from Belgium and France after WWI and lots of French speaking war brides after WWII. Lately, immigrants from French-speaking Africa prefere Canada over the USA while English-speaking immigrants tend to use Canada only as a layover on their way to Chicago and New York. Add the French-Vietnamese of Vancouver and you have an English-to-French ratio closer to 60-40, even 55-45.

2) In Spain, Catalonia and Basque are more successful in their military campaigns during the middle ages and now together make up about half of Spain's territory. Depending
on what king rules Spain at what time they might see their language suppressed in one century, encouraged in another. Under Franco, the languages will be as prosecuted as OTL, but starting in the '80s, they will get their autonomous statute back and with Catalonia now being Spain's economic powerhouse, its population grows as well. In this scenario I dream of a Spain that is 22% Basque-speaking, 33% Catalan-speaking, 40% Castilian and 5% other regional tongues (Gipsy?)

C) Switzerland never incorporates its eastermost German-speaking cantons into the Helvetic Union. Instead it gains the region around Mulhouse (now in France). As a result we have more French speaking cantons and less German-speaking ones and instead of 25%-65%, the ratio is more like 45% both.
 
Instead of keeping Finland as part of Sweden, what about simply enlarging independent Finland's territory to include more of Sweden, and hence more Swedish-speakers making Finland more of a bilingual country. Finland already has a significant Swedish minority between the Finland Swedes and the Aland Islanders, and they haven't been assimilated as Finnish-speakers.

With a POD far back enough, however, anything is possible. Balkanizing North America a bit could get a few bilingual nations speaking English and either French, Spanish, or perhaps German. Colonizing Australia differently could result in a bilingual Western country as well. Halting Spanish nationalism to make Spain a pluralistic country can work, as can keeping significant German populations in the Baltic region.
 
Belgium, Canada, and Switzerland are OTL, of course, but I suppose if the eastern Canada economic depression starts earlier, Quebecois "cultural imperialism" (for lack of a more sensitive word) could make bigger inroads into New Brunswick and maybe even Ontario surrounding Ottawa.

The francophones of New Brunswick are not transplanted Québécois, but Acadians whose ancestors moved there after the expulsion from what is now Nova Scotia.

What you could have though is Quebec maintain its high pre-1960 birth rates for another decade or two, or at least have a more gradual decline (IOTL they plummeted in just a few years' time), leading to a larger population.
 
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