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
A
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.
Also, I believe it was the world wars and the continuous destruction of Europe that led to Anglo American dominate, plus the cold war, with the West fleeing under Americas cover. Without those Europe would be able to stand on it's own, with it's various economies challenging American cultural dominance. Just look at Germany, before being destroyed in World war two, it had some if the best scientists and film actors and directors. Their film scene could have rivaled the US. I think,but the Nazis didn't make it better, that's for sure. Even today, Japan and India are having movies that are popular in other countries, especially Japan. And they are the only country that speaks Japanese. So English language dominance isn't inevitable even after world war 1.
 
IIRC the USA had a vote for what would be its national language not long after it gained independence. English only barely won, with German in 2nd place. Considering the influence the USA has had on the world, combined with the fact that the majority of internet users are from the USA, likely means German becomes the most dominant.

Of course, such a situation could butterfly the internet away entirely, but I see it more likely that Germany will become more involved in US affairs and vice versa, leading to a strong friendship between the two that could result in a German victory in WW1, which would force German into popularity across pretty much all of Europe in some capacity.

- BNC
 
If there is no language to fill the gap English created in the 20th century, then the answer is no language will predominate. No one's gonna learn Esperanto or Latin or whatever just to browse the Internet, or otherwise the Internet will never take off. The Internet will be much more fragmented as a result. It already to some degree is--look at the lack of interaction between the Chinese and Japanese Internet and the Anglo Internet. There's some, but it's fairly low. Also look at Wikipedia--look up some historical subject of regional interest (be it European, Chinese, Japanese, whatever) in English, then follow the link to the corresponding foreign language Wikipedia and notice how little detail English Wikipedia tends to have on the subject compared to the foreign Wikipedia. Now imagine that on a much bigger scale. That's what would happen on the internet without English or a language to fill the gap. And I'm not convinced either German or French ever could have filled the gap English did, even with, say, German Empire victory in WWI.

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)

So bopomofo/zhuyin? Because using kana to spell Chinese words while writing in Chinese is just weird. Plus there's always pinyin.

IIRC the USA had a vote for what would be its national language not long after it gained independence. English only barely won, with German in 2nd place. Considering the influence the USA has had on the world, combined with the fact that the majority of internet users are from the USA, likely means German becomes the most dominant.

That is an urban legend and never happened.
 
Alright, I'm wrong on the vote part. But if such a legend can exist, doesn't that mean that German was spoken widely enough in early USA that it has a possibility to take off?

- BNC
You know who believed in that legend? Hitler, that's who! Seriously though, now that that piece of Reductio ad Hitlerum is out of way, I imagine that even if they did translate things into German it would have been of dialects that are as different as modern Swiss German is to modern German. Besides, back then the different German communities tended to keep to themselves or at least settle in different areas. On the East Coast they would be diluted but he free travel of Americans as well as generations of children using English and tax payers not wanting to keep printing things in two languages when everyone understood one of them perfectly. Also, suggesting that a legend CAN exist is not the best way to argue for something. Though it does lead to interesting ideas for other legends. But yah, Germans didn't spread out nearly as widely as English speakers and I see no real way it would be a lingua franca. Even in a Nazi victory scenario it would limit German to Europe, as thos elf German descent in the Americas and Australasia would keep mum about it.
 
I selected French, assuming that we're going with a post-1945 POD. The Minitel videotex service, deployed in the 1980s, was precocious, and I can imagine that if things went differently that model might have been more widely dispersed.

More broadly, the language of the Internet analog would be intimately linked to the nature of the global power structure.
 
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.
In my EDC universe (Great War fizzles out in 1915, US splits in the 1930s, UK goes fascist/authoritarian, most of Europe unites to fight Russian fascists in the Autumn War) it was a EuroFed project so multi-lingual with French and German dominating (with German somewhat more prevalent). It had better, and earlier, support for different languages and character sets (no MODE CON CODEPAGE PREP=nnn).
 
Given that French was a highly prestigious language,had a large number of colonies and was used as a diplomatic language for a long time until the mid-twentieth century,I would suggest French as the lingua franca,especially since this is in the post-1900 forum.
 
Impossible to answer due to the butterflies involved in English not becoming the trade language, but I'd suspect it'd most likely be the other "big language" of world trade: French.
 
French had a certain amount of prestige associated with it as it was learned by elites in many countries. In countries where French that were not colonies often issued stamps or stamp covers in the local language and French as the second language until the post-World War II period.
 
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Ás said you need it to be the dominat language of science and commerce. If a POD is not too early, I assume that German fills the bill with Germany winning the Great War and then establishes economic deomiation of Europe (and - later - the whole world). Germany might also be domineering in sciences, so the Computer(=Rechner)/"Netz" is invented in Germany.
 
How about that ancient German dialect: Yiddish?
WI Jewish bankers and jewellers and traders developed their own semi-secret language to send text messages - initially by mail - eventually over telephone lines?
Mind you, Yiddish code could not remain secret for very long because any student of old-German could quickly grasp the basics of Yiddish and by next week criminal gangs would start reading gem delivery schedules, etc.
Perhaps Yiddish traders would need to preserve secrecy by including obscure references to ancient Talmudic scholars?????? Some Talmudic writting are really obscure and require extensive "reading between the lines" to decipher.
Yiddish communicators (e.g. bankers) had the option of working like telegrapher send instant text-messages for Gentiles.
 
IMO you have to go back pre-1900s to come up with a clear winner, and then make some other language as widely-spoken as English (ie, the founding country has a big Empire, with at least one colony on at least every continent). Post-Nappy, I don't think either French or Spanish had the capability, so you might be looking at pre-1800 even.
 
Can't answer without a specific scenario to divert away English dominance. As Panhomo said, putting this poll in post-1900 constrains everything considerably. I should re-read his scenario for detail but before I started skimming it seemed plausible enough--the Central Powers could win WWI if the USA enters too late, or not at all. A victorious Germany would indeed be a prime candidate to lead the world technologically. Only the USA would be likely to rival it, but if either the USA sat out the Great War completely (best scenario for a CP win IMHO) or entered too late, the postwar USA is likelier to either remain isolationist or retreat into isolationism, which crimps the ability of the US economy to dominate despite its 500 pound gorilla weight in terms of gross production or market size. Being the chief financier of the winning side was pretty important OTL, despite the isolationism of the '20s. Being either on the losing side with Entente debts being hard to collect or repudiated completely, or a neutral that again gets burned on debts (CP securities are good, but USA is unlikely to loan nearly as much to that side even if scrupulously neutral--Entente weasels out due to losing) US influence is strictly limited to soft power plus market power. We could of course keep maintaining a navy "second to none" (all the easier if Britain has to scuttle much of RN due either to treaty obligations or simply because the Empire can't afford as much, especially if Germany limits her naval ambitions) but we'd have limited bases and hence projection. No one would take attacking the USA lightly due to USN power, but few (other than third world type nations in Latin America and maybe east Asia) would fear American intervention either.

For a German-wank that maximizes German gains from the war, one has to assume remarkably statesmanlike leadership in Germany. This is low probability, but not ASB. Perhaps detailed circumstances of victory check the triumphalism of the Kaiser and the bull-headed aristocracy generally, shifting German leadership over to representatives of the industrial cartels, the middle classes represented by the liberal parties and Catholic Center, and Social Democrats representing the working classes. The leadership is conciliatory (after driving hard but bearable peace terms, perhaps in a reverse Locarno waiving some of the burdens on the losing Entente).

Under those circumstances, Europe need not ever have any more big wars. Assuming the USSR forms, containment is relatively easy assuming it develops roughly along OTL lines; the leadership is likely to be cautious and unless genuine revolutionary conditions develop in western Europe, deterred from grand adventurism by the potential power of the Western capitalist leading nations, especially Germany. I'd expect German policy to alternate between cold hostility and the occasional detente under strong SD governments. The upshot would be that Germany would have to arm pretty heavily to deter a potential Soviet attack, and the Soviets would arm heavily to deter capitalist invasion and a repeat of the Civil War, and also because ideology says they should stand ready to assist fraternal revolutions, but in fact they'd never attack each other. France and Britain could ill afford to match German levels of armament Germany can afford, but will try--but not dare contemplate starting a second war to settle the score of the last one. Gradually tensions in Europe relax as the status quo goes on generation after generation. War would be in the colonial sphere, and increasingly a matter of disgruntled colonized peoples rebelling.

So-the USA can probably maintain a standard of living per capita equal to that of Germany, but otherwise would have far less influence. In addition to economic and military hegemony, Germany as noted by posters above already entered the 20th century with a strong per capita lead in advanced science and technology. There is little reason to expect any other power to do more than follow close behind. A Germany that is essentially at peace except for colonial situations (I was skimming Panhomo's post at this point and I think he got too rosy regarding the Germans being revered as "nice" colonialists--they weren't worse than their rivals, and in some cases a little better, but not a whole lot--and who knows what arrogance might result from victory in Europe) can intensively develop Eastern Europe in its sphere, perhaps evolve very mutually beneficial relations with the USSR (perhaps making for a bit of a Soviet wank too--with no territorial expansion but increasing influence due to leading the Third International which might be very important in former colonies) and very likely have very good trading and mutual licensing deals and cross-investment with the USA. The Germans will have a more organized public sector, larger military, social services, government support of high tech investment that the USA will mostly lack, and therefore lead in cutting edge technology.

Such as of course microcomputers, sometime between 1950 and 1975. Internet would evolve from German government-based internal communications systems. Since neither economics nor political ideology will drive German and central and Eastern European academics who historically flocked to German-language universities in Germany and Austria-Hungary out of Europe into Britain and the USA, the language of chemistry, physics and computational sciences would be German by default, offset only by a tendency to use Latin and Greek roots. American, British, and even French scientists will learn German to stay current in the field, even if German-language nations only contribute half or less of all papers--German will be the common language among them.

Now if there is a Soviet wank of sorts--such as here, German trade policy with them dissolving some of their paranoia about being attacked, enriching the Union, and perhaps opening the door to reforms that enable the Soviets to become more efficient and flexible while remaining true to essential socialist goals--the USSR might pull ahead and be leading the way by the 1950s-1970s . In that scenario, it is possible that it might be Soviets who pioneer extensive use of dispersed computers (for ideological reasons, perhaps not microcomputers but timeshare big systems maybe, but networked early on). Thus it might be Russians more than Germans who put their stamp on the basic structure and much of the nomenclature of telecommunicating computational systems.

However in that case, in a TL where Germany did lead the 20th century on the whole until the Soviets pulled ahead, I'd expect most of the world would translate from Russian rather than adopt it, and in default of local language translations, they might adopt the German translation instead. Russian, with its Cyrillic alphabet, seems unlikely to directly dominate the way English or German could. (It would be different if I were talking about a USSR that could and would militarily conquer the world, but I'm not--I'm assuming OTL 1938 boundaries for the Soviet Union here, and no satellites (other than Mongolia anyway, maybe part or all of Korea and/or Manchuria, stuff like that--nothing in Europe or overseas--revolutionary colonies might loosely affiliate, local strongmen playing off the Western powers and the Communist International against each other).)

Note that the limitation to German comes pretty much entirely from the site rules about forums. If you'd put this in pre-1900 the possibilities are wide open.
 
Looking at the poll results--consensus be damned; I don't see any possible way French could be it with a post-1900 POD.

With a post-1800 POD, sure! Post-1870 could work too. Not Post-1900. By then France had slipped to such a degree that even if every French colony in the world retained French as the common language and it even became the mother tongue of all those peoples--Algerians, Indochinese, etc...the only way French will achieve the kind of dominance of technological language to fit the poll question after 1900 would be if something really drastic and terrible happened to ruin both the entire British Empire and the USA, make both centers of English including the far-flung colonies fall considerably in the world, somehow leaving France as the survivor. Technically someone might come up with a scenario but it would be tremendously improbable. Going with the configuration of power as it was by 1900, in any probable scenario France's fortunes rise or fall along with the English-speaking powers, and they already have dominance of world trade and influence.

Note we are not talking about whether French might remain an important language or not. It surely would, due to its strong cultural cachet from the previous century. The question is, would French dominate the scientific and engineering spheres so strongly that English and German speakers, as well as all the diverse other peoples of the world, learn a largely French-based vocabulary for computational and especially computer-interconnection protocols. I don't see how France pulls ahead to dominate that sphere. Make important contributions, sure, just as English has adopted some French terminology for aircraft. Dominate it? No. An 1870 POD to keep the Second Empire strong and shift it to some sort of Saint-Simonian high tech Utopia (pulling ahead of Germany and the English-speaking powers by will in the form of institutional self-investment) might do it--heck, maybe the early 3rd Republic could veer in that direction, a sort of Jules Verne France, as late as the 1880s. A successful and stable Napoleonic Empire dominated Europe could establish French as the language of all savantry even if the Empire later breaks up and France herself remains a second-rate power ever after that. But by 1900, France's success was as a participant in an English-dominated coalition of world capitalism. After 1900 I can't see how the French language could dominate technology the way German might have without Hitler, or English does today via American deep pockets for development in combination with American domination of the global marketing system throughout the Cold War.

After 1900, Russian (which gets no votes, but would get my second vote, or perhaps third after "no single language") seems much more likely to dominate tech language than French. Not very likely, requires a major Soviet-wank of some kind, but more likely than France achieving something analogous. It is one thing to rule lots of nations. It is another to have a cutting edge scientific-technical establishment. There is no question that France is one of the great leading nations in science and technology, but the time has passed in which it could become the great leading nation.

I'd sooner go with Esperanto, especially because the Bolsheviks actually toyed with the idea of adopting a version of that con-lang as the official tongue of the USSR, written in a Latin alphabet. The kind of USSR that could follow through with a plan like that would either be insane on North Korean scales and disintegrate pretty soon, or be on the sort of firm ground needed to accomplish the sort of internal tech-wank that the Bolsheviks sought, thereby leading the way--and with a Latin-alphabet language designed to be relatively easy for lots of European-language speaking peoples to learn being the language of operating system and manuals, they'd be able to transmit the language as well as the machinery to the capitalist world. Again it requires a rather unlikely Soviet wank but that was after all their goal--and cybernetics is exactly the kind of science a Bolshevik regime successful on their own terms would precociously develop, for its utility in running a planned economy.
 
Hmmm, since this is the "After 1900" forum... too late for any other language. Once you have an India under the Raj along with economic powerhouses of USA, and the combined economic power of the Dominions, English is going to be dominate after 1900. For a lingua franca you must satisfy the following single requirement- be the language that two participants use to communicate to each other that is not a language used by either participant or of the location they meet in. The best example of English dominance in OTL demonstrates that requirement- OPEC has 14 nations, using their official languages you have 7 Arabic, 2 Spanish, 1 Kurdish, 1 Berber, 1 French, 1 Persian, 1 Portuguese, 1 Indonesian, and 1 English (Iraq and Algeria have two official languages making the total 16), OPEC meets in Vienna, Austria a German speaking city, yet despite a multitude of those nations not having the best relationship with the USA the official language of business at OPEC is English. The USA is not the reason the English language is dominant and any POD after 1900 to keep down the USA won't do too much to English, unless some sort of unlikely wank as mentioned above with German.

In reality, after 1900 is not possible. Before 1900 French is has the greatest probability, though of course anyone can write a TL that takes that much less than 1% chance for Chinese, Spanish, whatever you want, but that doesn't change the fact that it was a .0001% probability and if history were to be on a loop it would be less than 1 out a million times of running that TL could possibly occur. So, let's be honest it isn't an easy single POD, it's one of those multiple PODS across many locations and times to create the desired effect (I prefer the opposite, make one POD and let history take its course to whatever conclusion instead of "cheating" and trying to get where you want to end up by any means, I see that as more scientific).
 
Before WWII, a LOT of science was done in German. In parts of Biology and Chemistry, you really had to read the language fluently if you wanted to contribute anything in the field.
After WWII, there were a couple of fields of math where Russian was a major publication language.

And German philosophers are infamous...

I could easily see a world in which English is far less dominant internationally - where e.g. German is used as the primary lingua franca in several technical fields and in much of Europe; while French is used, firstly in its vast Empire, and secondly in certain fields.
Such an ATL might well have to avoid WWI or possibly have the Central Powers win.

As others have pointed out, with the rising power of the US following in the footsteps of the British Empire, it's hard to REPLACE English with a post1900 PoD. To supplement it, make it primus inter pares if you will, should be possible.
 
You know, I've thought of a way for French to come out ahead after all!

Have a successful Bolshevik Revolution in France so that it is settled by 1925 or so that France is Red and the inevitable civil wars and counterrevolutionary foreign attacks have ended. Having partially succeeded at his agenda item of triggering proletarian revolution in the West, Lenin defers much control of the Third International to the more advanced French comrades, and the International adopts French as its official language--bowing not only to the current French regime but the revered history of France as leading revolutionary people going back to 1789. In the USSR (and France might formally become one of the SSRs of the Union) French skilled workers and technologists migrate to help train and otherwise assist developing Soviet industry, and France has access (via international waters shipping) to Soviet raw materials. Despite civil war losses France surges ahead technologically, taking the USSR up with it, and the wider Soviet bloc takes the lead in terms of advanced technology. Maybe there are further revolutionary wars subjugating more of Europe to the Red regime, and maybe not--either way a USSR enriched with French capital does better by far than OTL, and is leading the way by the time modern cybernetics is invented, and used extensively within the Union system including France. By then, French is widely understood in the Russian part of the Union (while French as spoken in Communist France is heavily Russified, due to extensive interactions between French and eastern Soviet peoples) and serves alongside Russian, technically taking precedence. The Soviet Union's official foreign relations are conducted largely in French, as are its publications for foreign consumption.

France needs some strong foreign ally or other to be in a dominant position; the high status of French in the history of the Socialist Internationales, as well as the higher level of technical development of France that makes her the intellectual leader of the Soviet Union here, leverages the French language to leading position despite the massive dependency on former Russian Empire people and territory and resources.
 
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