On the evolution of romance languages and modern nationstates

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
so for hispania wed need to either avoid the arab conquest, or have the reconquest undertaken by one state. if moorish spain was left intact, would that create a hard language border?

I don't like the word reconquista, because the pre-Moorish population of northern Spain had never been in charge of the conquered territory. But, in the case of only one state conquering Iberia, it is likely to be *Leon or *Asturias, you would get a hard language border with a chain of dialects on the southern side of the Pyrenees. There would be *Navarro/Aragonese with its Basque influence inland and *Catalan on the coast, but as OTL, there would be no clear dividing line between the two. However, as in OTL, after a few hundred years you would get a narrow transitional zone between *Montanes and *Leones, assuming there was some factor protecting the mountain varieties from disappearing.

Moorish Spain left in tact seems to have been heading towards Arabisation. Linguistic evidence is difficult, but southern Valencian Moors were still Arabic-speaking in 1500, and I've seen no evidence of a Latin population in Granada.
 
There have been really cool answers given here.
So maybe it's counter-productive of me to turn back to the OP and nitpick about it, but there's one thing I simply can't help but remark when I hear questions like this:
Mutual intelligibility is a fluid thing, too.
You've rightly taken into account the (mostly) fluid landscape of linguistic varieties which existed for many centuries - now, a similar thing can be said about time and individuals, too:
It's hard and maybe nonsensical to pinpoint a moment in time at which mutual intelligibility was lost, for two reasons
a) on the one hand because this development took centuries, too, with a grey zone of "difficult / questionable mutual intelligibility" in between (I would argue Dutch and German are in such a state right now; they're not completely mutually intelligible anymore, but with good linguistic competency / sensitivity and a bit of an effort on both parts, some Dutch and some Germans could communicate with each other even when both stick to their own languages (which is unrealistic because they'd much rather speak the lingua franca, English, then, or borrow / learn a few items from one another)), which leads us to
b) mutual intelligibilty is not something two languages absolutely possess: it always takes a bit of an effort and experience on the part of the listening individual (at least), and some individuals are able to do that much better than others, so they can bridge much wider linguistic gaps than others, who may struggle to understand even the neighboring village's dialect.

That answer ties back to the cool ideas about Latin here. The key to bringing about a situation where Latin (or any other Romance lingua franca) is widely used, maybe as official language, and a continuing coexistence of countless romance varieties is an education which stresses the learning of multiple languages for a wider populace, not just a small elite, like we do today with English as a Foreign Language.
 
i wish to avoid the developement of grey zones, or to mininimize thier potency. Also a nationalism or alternative to nationalism that doesnt demand a people uniformly speak one tongue, where nationhood is built on identities that dont split preexisting communities would be grand.
 
i wish to avoid the developement of grey zones, or to mininimize thier potency. Also a nationalism or alternative to nationalism that doesnt demand a people uniformly speak one tongue, where nationhood is built on identities that dont split preexisting communities would be grand.
Maybe a Hapsburg Empire that responded to the nationalist rebellions of 1848 by deliberately forging a multiethnic identity with Latin as its lingua franca (stolen from the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth)? It ties the state's identity with the glorious (mythologized) past, and is equally no one's native language. It does run the risk of being perceived as favouring Catholics over other religious groups, though.
 
India developed the way it does because Western Style nationalism made it that way; Ming making Europe turn that way would have to somehow install Western style colonial rule that then enforced this nationalism to create a India in Europe.
Not necessarily. Modern-day Chinese civic nationalism developed in reaction to foreign imperialism, even though for the most part China was never formally colonized. After several decades of this Chinese trading company blasting its way across Europe and crippling its nascent industries, the pre-existing kings and dukes of Europe would be totally discredited. A pan-European nationalism emerges, but what type of state this should be (monarchy/republic, capitalist/socialist, federal/unitary, free-trading/protectionist, secular/confessional, etc) becomes the subject of war for decades.

Also, throw in similar existential crises gripping the Islamic and Orthodox lands, and you have a very fascinating TL.
 
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