If English wasn't the global lingua franca, what language would be on an alt internet?

Language of an alt internet without dominant English?

  • French( Francophone)

    Votes: 69 43.1%
  • German( could possibly invent alt internet?)

    Votes: 29 18.1%
  • Spanish ( spoken across multiple countries with more native speakers than English)

    Votes: 6 3.8%
  • Russian( possible inventers of alt internet? Alt population larger than USA?)

    Votes: 1 0.6%
  • Multiple languages( no dominant language)

    Votes: 40 25.0%
  • Universal translator ( no dominant language means earlier push and focus for this?)

    Votes: 7 4.4%
  • Other language

    Votes: 8 5.0%
  • Portuguese ( large population of speakers, in top 7)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Arabic ( large population , possible inventers of alt internet through surviving Ottoman empire?,

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    160
So, for reasons English doesn't dominate, let's say a "juche" Britain, an isolationist America, etc. Let's also assume that an alt internet is still created by some country. So, what would be the main language of the alt internet? Would there even be a main language? Could the lack of dominant languages have lead to a constructed language on the internet or earlier and more efficient translators like a sort of "universal" translator that you only see in fiction? What do you guys think? I've created a poll for options, but still keep your ideas going.

Edit: It's possible really that any of the languages/countries spoken above could be inventers of an alt internet. Especially if the Hispanic nations had better luck, they would have a reason for widespread communication. Spanish is spoken in multiple continents, Europe, North and South America. Same with French. German not so much, but still they could have the technical know how. Russian would have the widespreadness across Siberia, so good communication network is logical. Also pop culture could lead to each language being very popular in cinema as the Hispanics, French, Germans, and Russians, plus others, could have very popular cinema if they had better luck in their history.
 
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It would depend on who 'fills' that vacuum. Some one would have done my guess is that who ever dominated the world trade and became the subsequent Super power during the industrial revolution and beyond - then that language!
 
Population of the speakers has nothing to do with it being the lingua france, but how widespread and how economically dominant states that speak that language.

So French
 
Why not Chinese? If English isn't dominant then Chinese would have the potential to be the largest globally and have a good chance of dominating the internet. That said, I chose French due to France's prosperity at home, its widespread use, and the rapidly growing population of African French speakers.
 
A combination of all those you listed, Spanish would dominate the Americas by a large degree, German in Central Europe and competing regionally in Western with French and in Eastern Europe with Russian. French would dominate much of Africa and parts of Asia, the Pacific and a sliver of the Americas. Russian would own the region north of Persia, but be competiting with the Chinese in Central Asia. Chinese would be competing with various regional languages like Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indo-Malaya, Hindi/Urdu. In Southwest Asia you have Arabic, being dominate but Persian and Turkish playing a role as well. Portugese would be ran by Brazil and play a role in Africa as well.

In short the major powers would dominate regionally unless there is a war in which one nation becomes and obvious superpower.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
Depends on - as already said - the most widespread language used for trade and economics but as well as the language most used for science and research and ... the language of the inventors
of IT-hardware
of IT-languages
of the internet, based on the above mentioned.

Overall to NOT get English as the global lingua franca I would say it's necessary to avoid somehow Anglo-American world-domination, polical, militarily, cultural, scientific as well as esp. economical.
Looking at what country/culture/people could fill the 'gap' from middle to late 19th century in the fields mentioned above ... Germany.

Thats why I vote for german. ... Not because I am a german.
 
French was generally the lingua franca of international diplomacy for quite sometime, and it was considered the second language for the educated classes in many countries. Even in the U.S. French was more widespread than Spanish as a foreign language, at least until the 1970s.
 
My vote goes to something Latin alphabet-based.

EDIT: Sinosphere and Arab sphere have the numbers, but are a challenge, both technical and have a fairly high entry level for foreigners.

Arabic has RTL writing direction AND it omits vowels in normal writing. A TL could probably force inserting vowels, like in kid material OTL. But the RTL is a big technical problem.

Chinese has the problem of being logographic. Fascinating, yes, but hard to master.

A Chinese-Japanese mix, however, might be more palatable to foreigners (by which I mean, Japanese has syllabaries for words of foreign origin and if you don't know a kanji, you can always spell it in kana :p)

EDIT 2: And I'm not just talking wind, I am roughly A2 in Arabic and I know around 50 kanji. Maybe 60?
 
Latin, and it would be the "Internexus"

I can actually believe this.

If we imagine the point of divergence is that France is top dog as of 1900 rather than Britain, their academic culture could easily turn to Latin, and this could easily become the standard for the early academic internet, and this could possibly become the standard for all communication online. We'd need a softer introduction of the WWW to the public than in our time line, so new surfers tend to learn the Latin rather than impose standard French on it.
 
Greek. The Byzantine Empire survives. Sometime in the 1600s the /dromos telegraphikos/ is invented. By 1800 there is a public /diadiktyo/ (internet)
 
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When I read the thread title, two other ideas immideately came into my mind:

- Dutch (the Netherlands once were a naval and economic powerhouse with a colonial empire, and if they had dominated the waves after the wars with Britain, they might have set up a North American empire, thus making Dutch a global language in different continents)

- Swedish (Sweden also being a European super-power in the 17th century, and today also very much a hi-tech nation)

Greek and Arabic might be interesting options for a surviving Byzantine empire or a longer and continuous 'Golden Age of Islam' period respectively. Of all the options in the above poll, I see French as the most likely fitting language (for similar reasons as Dutch).
 
You've got this in after 1900, so I think the best shot of English not being the lingua franca is a German victory in alt WW1 , still Germany on one side, France, Russia, and Britain on the other, other countries can get mixed up whatever way works out. USA participates on British side, but far too little far too late. Germany and german minorities, and germanics (in AH, the baltics, scandinavia, low countries, etc) end up dominant over europe. Harsher depression, and less confidence in government after losing the great war leads to USA, Britain, and the US and British colonies, becoming weaker, possible civil wars and revolutions, possible german/germanic or nationalist decolonization happening earlier, or maybe if the german colonies, some of the nicest places to be subjugated and oppressed OTL, end up even nicer (less terrible) TTL, then a few british colonies might even try to transfer over to being a german protectorate. A second world war, or a world wide depression, revolutions, etc. leads to new political order in europe, with maybe more liberal and modern administration in germany and germany's dependent states becoming more tightly economically and politically attached to it, like OTLs european union.

Come 2016, the Europäische Union encompasses most of Europe, and despite have dozens of official languages its de facto language is german. In most of Europe's nations, especially the germanic ones and those bordering germany, a majority of citizens are fluent in german, and a minority even speak it as a first language. Europe's worldwide dominance has continually decreased for a century now, but it is still the single largest economy, the centre of the global finance, trade, and research, and the origin and centre of telecommunications; including the WeltWeites Netz (WWN). Europe's population continues to grow largely thanks to immigration from africa and asia, with Germany recieving the lion's share of that.

The "success" of nationalism in Europe led to a mid century attempt to impose that structure over Africa, which failed under the weight of Africa's thousands of thoroughly mixed languages, cultures, and religions. Subsequently a loose Afrikanische Union was established, with German as the most convenient lingua franca.

In the americas, asia, and oceania german is not as dominant (excepting the former german colonies), but german is still widely taught in schools as a second or third language, and Europe is the main trade partner of many states around the globe.

German is also the international language of computer programming, aviation, and science.

********

We could probably make similar scenarios for French or Russian instead, perhaps with most change happening around the second world war instead of the first. Any other language, I think, would require a POD before 1900.
 
You've got this in after 1900, so I think the best shot of English not being the lingua franca is a German victory in alt WW1 , still Germany on one side, France, Russia, and Britain on the other, other countries can get mixed up whatever way works out. USA participates on British side, but far too little far too late. Germany and german minorities, and germanics (in AH, the baltics, scandinavia, low countries, etc) end up dominant over europe. Harsher depression, and less confidence in government after losing the great war leads to USA, Britain, and the US and British colonies, becoming weaker, possible civil wars and revolutions, possible german/germanic or nationalist decolonization happening earlier, or maybe if the german colonies, some of the nicest places to be subjugated and oppressed OTL, end up even nicer (less terrible) TTL, then a few british colonies might even try to transfer over to being a german protectorate. A second world war, or a world wide depression, revolutions, etc. leads to new political order in europe, with maybe more liberal and modern administration in germany and germany's dependent states becoming more tightly economically and politically attached to it, like OTLs european union.

Come 2016, the Europäische Union encompasses most of Europe, and despite have dozens of official languages its de facto language is german. In most of Europe's nations, especially the germanic ones and those bordering germany, a majority of citizens are fluent in german, and a minority even speak it as a first language. Europe's worldwide dominance has continually decreased for a century now, but it is still the single largest economy, the centre of the global finance, trade, and research, and the origin and centre of telecommunications; including the WeltWeites Netz (WWN). Europe's population continues to grow largely thanks to immigration from africa and asia, with Germany recieving the lion's share of that.

The "success" of nationalism in Europe led to a mid century attempt to impose that structure over Africa, which failed under the weight of Africa's thousands of thoroughly mixed languages, cultures, and religions. Subsequently a loose Afrikanische Union was established, with German as the most convenient lingua franca.

In the americas, asia, and oceania german is not as dominant (excepting the former german colonies), but german is still widely taught in schools as a second or third language, and Europe is the main trade partner of many states around the globe.

German is also the international language of computer programming, aviation, and science.

********

We could probably make similar scenarios for French or Russian instead, perhaps with most change happening around the second world war instead of the first. Any other language, I think, would require a POD before 1900.
Or USA, could just avoid the war all together and live in military isolationism, with no World hegemony/ superpower status. Also your scenario is very improbable.
 
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