Austrian Creole Language?

Redcoat

Banned
An idea popped into my head a while back, about an Austrian creole language, a combination of all the languages in the empire together into one big mess...a microcosm of sorts of the empire itself. I made a scenario about how such a language would develop, it's a bit strange but bear with me.

Austria unifies much of Germany under their rule centuries earlier then Prussia OTL, and through a bunch of dynastic marriages with German allies in the HRE or wars and whatnot, ends up uniting with much of South Germany somehow. This bigger Austrian empire has a larger plurality of Germans, possibly a slight majority who knows. As time goes on migration within the empire becomes a lot more noticeable, such that eventually there's pockets of different ethnic groups all over the empire. A creole language develops that's a combination of German, Hungarian, Romanian, and the many Slavic languages of the empire, though German is one of the most influential thanks to the larger German population then OTL. Anyways my idea might be somewhat ASB, but can anyone knowledgeable on this topic tell me how an Austrian language like this might develop?
 
You have different available levels of structuration for the new language going from sabir (quite limited and poorly structured mix of words meant for the direct use of involved speakers), then pidgin (richer and more structured), to full blown creole. So the process could happen gradually.

You'd have to consider what is the lexical base (or bases) : if German is most widespread, then it would probably constitute the lexical base, and then you'd have to consider which layers would be added by other languages.
 
This wouldn't work. Esp. not with a top-down approach. Even emperor Joseph trying to force everyone to speak German would be less controversial.
 

Redcoat

Banned
You have different available levels of structuration for the new language going from sabir (quite limited and poorly structured mix of words meant for the direct use of involved speakers), then pidgin (richer and more structured), to full blown creole. So the process could happen gradually.

You'd have to consider what is the lexical base (or bases) : if German is most widespread, then it would probably constitute the lexical base, and then you'd have to consider which layers would be added by other languages.
German is the base, I'm guessing the most predominant influences would be hungarian and Serbo-Croatian
 
This wouldn't work. Esp. not with a top-down approach. Even emperor Joseph trying to force everyone to speak German would be less controversial.
OP isn’t saying that this would be something that would be artificially created or imposed on the citizens from above; instead, it would arise organically as a result of cultural syncretism in the Austrian Empire.
 

Redcoat

Banned
OP isn’t saying that this would be something that would be artificially created or imposed on the citizens from above; instead, it would arise organically as a result of cultural syncretism in the Austrian Empire.
That's what I meant yes
 
Austrian German has IOTL borrowed a couple of terms from the different languages of the Hapsburg empire, especially in its' Viennese form, but they constitute only a small percentage of austriacisms (i.e. terms that are used in Austria, but not in Germany or Switzerland) and are mostly culinary in nature, e.g. Kukuruz for maize, Powidl for plum jam or Kolatschen. On the other hand there are certain terms in the other countries of the former Hapsburg empire which are derived from Austrian German like the term matura/maturita for secondary school exams.
 
Basically none of the intellectuals setting the trends in at least governmental and "high" language will want this. The Austrians will just want to speak German, the Hungarians Magyar. The intellectuals speaking the various west Slavic languages will try to purify them as OTL, and resist any Germanization (or Magyarization for that matter). Essentially, nobody wants to compromise, and the dual monarchy makes Austria-Hungary very good at avoiding stable compromises. If the 1848 revolutions are more successful, something might change if the power of the Magyar magnates is broken more thoroughly than OTL, but there's no guarantee that such wouldn't simply reaffirm minority-intellectual's positions.

Fundamentally, the structure of the dual monarchy wasn't condusive to forming a creole. Creoles usually arise when one group is so completely dominant over all others that the suppressed linguistic group(s) must acclimate to a single elite language, which was never the case for A-H.
 
Created an Artificial Austria languange? one spoke all hasburgs subjects and be the one make them unique? something german based as the austrians are german, would be something unique.
 
Scattered populations of Germans live all across Hungary, Transylvania, Bohemia, and Galicia. The bulk of the political power is spoken in German. It would just be German.
 
Outside regional creole I can't see such things form, and regional creole I can only see be established if some local groups assimilate relative late. Maybe early large scale canal building (connecting Vienna and Fiume) result in groups like the Slovenians creating a local German based pidgin, which later develop into a creole language, Simply because the influx of worker from elsewhere and increased trade result in greater need for German.
 
Top