Post 1500, what countries can have German as the main language outside of Europe?

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
Yiddish is not really a dialect IMO, it´s not spoken really in a specific zone and is standardized I think, but using the Jewish the community to have a oversea German speaking region is stupid, there are tens if not hundreds of better ways to do it.

There's not really such a thing as languages and dialects, what we can say is that Yiddish is closer to Standard German than some other things that get called German dialects. In terms of "better" ways to get German speaking areas, I can think of at least four different historical plans involving Yiddish which could have led to it, one of which was actually partially implemented, alongside one which is one of the most memorable AH stories in literature. Don't know how much better you need...
 
Well it could of happened in Hungary with the Habsburgs actually successful in enforcing a single common language across the realm.
 
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Dutch Revolt was second half of 16th century. Importance of United Provinces and unimportance of Northern Holy Roman Empire was a 16th/17th century development... and even so, half the men whom Vergaan Onder Corruptie sailed to Indies were German rather than Dutch.
With a few butterflies, could you have India ruled from Hamburg and speaking German courtesy of Hanseatic East India Company?

Lol, that one is new to me.
 
Well, not a main language, but one example might be the US; the language died out during WW1 as a widely spoken language akin to Spanish. WW2, I imagine, sealed its demise as a major language. Somehow have those be avoided (or heck, have the alliances be different), and German may remain one of the larger languages in the US, akin to Spanish. English would still be the main language, but German would be a lot more important.

There's the obvious answer of the German colonies, of course. All of Mittelafrika may or may not be pushing it, but definitely Southwest Africa, Tanganikya, Togo, Cameroon would be so. German Oceania as a whole could stay German as well.

Earlier than that? You could possibly have a German state in Libya (never discussed, but it and Tunisia are the logical choices for a colonizing Austrian empire in the Mediterranean (or a united HRE/Germany that still has Trieste). Another example might be a German colony/protectorate of Lebanon/Syria/the Levant. Especially a united HRE that maintains its claims to the Kingdom of Jerusalem that expands an outpost when the local powers wane...

The Austrian Ostend Company was very successful in India, but was shut down at the behest of the British. Perhaps if it continues operation and keeps its area of operation small, the states in which it operates would have (Austrian) German as an official language.

Austria-Hungary at one point owned the lease for North Borneo; they bought it from the American Hong Kong trading company after the American colony failed. This was eventually sold to the British as well. Have it stay with Austria-Hungary for a while, past WW1, and it might take German as one of its languages.
 
Michael Flynn's 1987 novella "The Forest of Time" has a 13-colonies-did-not-unite scenario, and in the present-time of the story, Pennsylvania is an independent German-speaking country. So something like this?
 
I've got about five ideas...

Namibia has a not-insignificant German-speaking community. Maybe with more extensive acculturation and public education as well as increased immigration, it could be a solidly German-speaking country. Considering its low population density, I'd say this is actually not too far off. There are only about 2 million people there today, so there could not have been many people during the colonial period in the 19th century. Equatorial Guinea, for example, with a population of 700,000, is about 70% Spanish-speaking (this includes second-language speakers, however.) So it's not impossible for a continental African country with a small population to adopt a European language, especially since the ethnic diversity found within the colonial borders necessitates a lingua franca, which most modern African countries have. Another advantage is that there was no post-independence expulsion of Europeans in OTL. The only thing is, what would be the motivation for increasing education and immigration? They got a lot done OTL considering they only held it for about 30 years.

Another candidate is an independent Zanzibar, which Germany had its eyes on before Britain snatched it up. It is small enough for German immigrants to establish a German-speaking community on the islands. This is probably less likely than Namibia, though.

A few failed American colonies were attempted by German speakers pre-unification. Augsburg established a colony on the Caribbean coast of what is now Venezuela, St. Thomas was once controlled by Brandenburg and Courland had some settlements in Trinidad & Tobago. Of these, I think only St. Thomas has a snowball's chance in hell, if even that. None of the pre-unification states were really powerful enough to hold these colonies. But if Brandenburg could ward off Denmark long enough to get the language there, it could persist. Denmark never pushed the Danish language, and OTL St. Thomas ended up Anglophone. German or maybe some German Creole could take root.

Perhaps the Soviets could carve up a German state in Central Asia? EDIT: I'm calling this idea Deutschstan.

Lastly, a German immigrant community in the Americas might lead to significant demographic change. If more of the diaspora was for some reason concentrated in one place, say, Costa Rica, Argentina or Uruguay, then a bilingual country could maybe spring up. Why? I don't know. Maybe something is keeping Germans out of the U.S.? About 50 million modern Americans are of German or partial German descent. Think Italian-level immigration to Argentina from the Germans. The Italian language never really took hold in Argentina because of the ease of learning Spanish and the diversity of dialects of the Italian immigrants. I don't know enough about the German diaspora to determine if there was more homogeneity in the dialects of the German immigrants, but I know that, since it's a Latin language, Spanish would not be as easy to learn for Germans as Italians. I bring up Costa Rica because, despite its tropical climate, it actually has a German minority and its geographically and demographically small enough for a large number of Germans to make an impact. This too is not very easy, but not completely out of the realm of possibility.
 
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To be honest, I don´t know if Yiddish is intelligible with standard German.

Yes, it is, to a fair extent. Yiddish does have a large admixture of Hebrew words, for obvious reasons. It is also not monolithic. Yiddish in general has a fair amnount of slavic borrowings, and in the dialects originating further east this gets pretty heavy.
 

Wallet

Banned
Israel. For what ever reason the British adopt a more Zionist policy and have better relations with Germany.

Hitler expels the entire Jewish population of Germany into the British Mandate of Palestine. Eventually, most of the Jews in Europe would be sent to the mandate once the war starts. Although polish, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian would be spoken, German speakers would be the largest group so it becomes the official language of government and taught in schools.

Or have Pennsylvania be settled almost exclusively by Germans. They would be like Louisiana, with both English and German as official state languages and most of the population learn German as their first language.

Or have most of the German immigrants in the us move to Wisconsion. No WW1 so no attempts to remove the German customs
 
Well, not a main language, but one example might be the US; the language died out during WW1 as a widely spoken language akin to Spanish. WW2, I imagine, sealed its demise as a major language. Somehow have those be avoided (or heck, have the alliances be different), and German may remain one of the larger languages in the US, akin to Spanish. English would still be the main language, but German would be a lot more important.

The main problem with that is that the Spanish-speaking community in the US is having huge amounts of influx of new speakers, most who speak exclusively in Spanish, but it's very hard to see a TL where the German-speaking community is seeing similar influx, or even a smaller one like the Tagalog or Chinese-speaking communities. So they'd be mainly older people who would speak it, like the Italian and Polish speaking communities in the US. Possibly also looking a bit like the French-speaking community in the US, which is mainly rural and made up of French-Canadians and Cajuns. So at least 3 million people who speak German as their main language is very doable. Not including communities like the Amish or certain Mennonite groups, which incidentally a stronger German language in the US would prevent some of them from switching to English.
 
The main problem with that is that the Spanish-speaking community in the US is having huge amounts of influx of new speakers, most who speak exclusively in Spanish, but it's very hard to see a TL where the German-speaking community is seeing similar influx, or even a smaller one like the Tagalog or Chinese-speaking communities. So they'd be mainly older people who would speak it, like the Italian and Polish speaking communities in the US. Possibly also looking a bit like the French-speaking community in the US, which is mainly rural and made up of French-Canadians and Cajuns. So at least 3 million people who speak German as their main language is very doable. Not including communities like the Amish or certain Mennonite groups, which incidentally a stronger German language in the US would prevent some of them from switching to English.

Well, that is OTL; although, it wouldn't be hard to shrink the immigrant influx just going back the last 40 years (in regards to Spanish), although, yes, the eventual immigration will favor Spanish and will keep it as the number two language for some time to come.

However, my logic is that to keep the Midwest with a high percentage of German speakers, WW1 must be averted or changed so that the US doesn't not fight both German powers (Austria and Germany, the latter being far more important). If that is the case, and this continues with an aversion of any alternate WW2 or similar war, then Germany will be larger and will likely be seen as a major foreign language to learn as well. Considering their enormous industry and the number of advances this large Germany would make in a variety of fields, it would become one of the most important languages of business, research, and commerce. So, not only do you have a larger built-in population of Germans, but you have a larger non-German speaking population taking it as a second language, which would prevent the Midwestern German dialect from dying out as much.
 
Can you make something out of Klein-Venedig? Can the Habsburg emperors settle Germans in a specific place in the New World? That's the obvious place to put a German colony. The historic German diaspora in Eastern Europe, particularly the Russian one, seems like it's evident the Germans would go almost anywhere at that time.

If I were the Holy Roman Emperor also in control of the Spanish Empire, I'd settle them in either Argentina or New Mexico, at the fringes of the empire. I think there, they'd keep to their native language but also develop an independent streak where once the empire declines, they'd become an independent country. Put it under control of the Austrians to make sure it stays German.

Before 1500 there's many more possibilities, but post-1500, it all depends how the Germans can latch onto the Spanish Empire.

The big complication for a Holy Roman Empire/Austrian colonization scheme is the Treaty of Tordesillas, and follow-on adjustments between Spain and Portugal. Although OTL the Protestant powers and France ignored it, I'd think the Hapsburgs would have been in a different position, and diplomatic ties both with the Iberian kingdoms and the Papacy would cause them to respect it. Thus Klein-Venedig was in fact a concession of the Spanish crown in compensation for debts. Any Austrian or HRE venture would have to be on similar terms.

Klein-Venedig itself suffered badly from German vulnerabilities to tropical diseases. During the scramble for American colonies, the big prize was obtaining control of tropical plantation territories, notably for sugar cultivation. Venezuela qualifies on that front but the venture did badly for the Germans. I don't know if one reason islands in the Caribbean turned to the major focus because of the disease situation.

It occurs to me that one quid pro quo that might have benefited Spain enough to risk alienating control of Western Hemisphere territories (if the colonizing nation, that I will assume to be Austria via Adriatic ports) wound up diplomatically at odds with Spain later, would be to develop a buffer against North American colonies. Another site where they could use a buffer is the stretch of South American shore between Venezuela and Brazil known as "the Guianas" that OTL was penetrated by the Dutch, the English and the French. However I don't see why these would be any different than Venezuela from the German point of view.

Suppose the Spanish agreed to back an Austrian effort to get a Caribbean sugar island, which would be the profit-making part of the deal for Austria, in return for a commitment by Austria to settle and garrison lands north of Florida against incursions by either the British or the French. Thus, two colonies, one to make profits, the other to buffer Spanish America and thus Spanish Caribbean holdings, including the Austrian island, against hostile powers. A secondary function of an Austrian colony on the North American mainland would be to supplement any tropical goods that could be grown on the shores with more conventional crops to feed the Spanish and Austrian sugar plantations. This is a major function the English colonies in North America later filled not only for English plantation islands but also later, due to English aggression leading to Spanish acquiescence, Spanish and other plantation islands as well. Plantation islands would concentrate on cash crops and import the food for their slaves. I don't know if anyone would have anticipated that setup in the 16th and 17th century which looks like the window for this arrangement to me.

It makes little sense to Spain to simply give the Austrians one of their own islands, nor to provide all the effort needed to try to take another one to hand over to Austria. Austria would be called upon to develop a naval contingent to send overseas to assist and presumably do the heavy lifting of taking their sugar island, and at the same time land a colony in southern North America. Depending on just when they do this, they might try to set the line up as far north as the southern border of Virginia. Heck if they do it early enough, Austria might be conceded, as far as Spain is concerned, the entire American seaboard from the Florida Keys to the north pole! Before 1609 they would encounter no rival settlement until they reached up to the Saint Lawrence river mouth and Newfoundland beyond. (Don't know the status of Denmark's claim on Greenland at this point, but presumably the Danes claimed it on the grounds of the ancient connection to Iceland). Trying to interdict the entire North American coast is probably far beyond any capability the Austrian crown would want to invest in. Also I am not sure just when Austrian Hapsburgs got control of Hungary; the Adriatic was under the Crown of St. Stephen so if we go too early it is more of a question of a Hungarian colony than an Austrian one! That is a negligible possibility so the early time window on this opens when Austria gets effective control of St. Stephen's lands, while the late closure would be when the British manage to get effective settlement going in Georgia. By the name Georgia was clearly an 18th century venture, so basically the Austrians have to move sometime before 1700, unless the Spanish are willing to concede Florida or a part of it to the Austrians. The win in any of this for Spain is getting as advanced a buffer as possible in friendly hands at as little cost to them as possible; conceding Florida after the fort of St. Augustine was built seems pretty stupid to me, so the goal would be Georgia and points north.

Charleston, I gather, was a fairly defensible site. Does it seem reasonable the Germans would push any father north than OTL South Carolina? From the name, I'd think that the Carolinas were settled in Charles II's reign, after the Restoration; could one of them have been a going concern already before the end of Charles I'st reign with his execution? Might not the Commonwealth have renamed it in that case?

1610 to the Restoration then strikes me as the window of opportunity for either Spain or an ally of Spain's to have settled south of Virginia with Spain having the motive of containing English settlement, while evidently lacking the resources or will to make a big effort to do it themselves. After the Restoration Charles II would have had both resources and will to push south, perhaps offset by his Catholic ties that might have caused him to seek detente with Spain as much as possible. Nevertheless, English settlement clearly went forward in the Restoration and advanced southward, so this would be a dangerous time for the Austrians to have a vulnerable new colony.

Perhaps Charles II, or James II before he is overthrown, make a treaty with Spain agreeing on a third party buffer state? Odds are that would be as far south as possible, putting it in OTL Georgia, presumably starting at Savannah. I don't think this is likely; if the Austrians are going to do their part they have to grab territory while it is considered Terra Nullis by European powers (or in the gift of the Spanish king who however is unwilling to just take it for himself, in the case of powers like Austria who respect Tordesillas. So again, if the Germans are going to do their part, they will be encouraged to be aggressive in going as far north as they think they can hold, but bearing in mind they need to garrison the whole coast they claim in order to hold it against English aggression, they might limit themselves..

The Austrian crown having a claim on this colony and retaining it still does not guarantee it becomes German-speaking. It is a question of how many Austrian German-speaking subjects would be available and willing to emigrate. In view of Austrian ties such as fighting on a broad front against the Ottomans, I don't know that Vienna has many to spare for this side venture. However again the premise is that Spain does not judge sending Spaniards to do it is a good idea, on the evidence that they did not do it OTL. Of course, if relatively small numbers of Austrian fighting forces and administrators have taken the risk out of settling in Georgia or to some border farther north, it might then become more attractive to Spanish and Spanish colonials and thus the colony winds up speaking mainly Spanish even if the government is German. We don't want that scenario, so we have to suppose that enough Austrians--German speaking Austrians predominating, though some weight can be added with Magyars or Slavic subject peoples as long as their descendants can be expected to assimilate to speaking German. In real life by the way I don't think the Austrians will worry too much about what language predominates in their colony as long as they can hold it and thus keep their side of the deal with Spain that gets them a sugar island too. So if we want German to prevail here, that is an unintended outcome of the demographics of who the Hapsburg king finds most convenient to send.

Then they have to hold out, for a century or more, to put down deep German-speaking roots on this coast. I would think that if Germans, or for that matter any other ethnicity indigenous to AH, are settled in, oh let's call it Neuosterreich, or perhaps they could be clever and call it Vesterreich, or Vestmark perhaps--let's go with that--they'd be motivated to push on inland to the Appalachian mountains because the climate there would be much closer to what they are familiar with. Against that, the profitable plantation land would be on the coast, almost certainly involving importing lots of African slaves, and it would take a while to have the punch to get to the mountains, so the children born there, and even people from Europe who have lived decades there, would adapt to the semitropical climate; if the mountains are in fact reached (and perhaps gold is found there) and emigration from Austrian lands keeps up, perhaps it would be these later immigrants who move up there. To be sure, the better land for cultivation, even if not of plantation cash crops, then for more traditional food exports, would be in the warm lowlands.

I am far too ignorant of European politics in this period, especially in the Catholic south, and confused by dynastic soap opera, to game out the relationship between the Spanish Crown and Austrian to figure if the political windows in Europe might coincide with the situation on the ground in the scramble for profitable islands and control of the American coast. What are the odds that sooner or later, Spain and Austria are at odds, or that some other power will simply muscle in and steal the sugar island from Austria? This is why I have been concentrating on the continental part of the deal; I figure Austria must lose the island fairly soon. The question then would be, would the continental holding seem worthwhile enough in itself for Austria to go on making the effort to claim it, rather than trade it off to some power more committed to Atlantic naval power and American colonization, such as France, or simply deed it back to Spanish control? If they do this, presumably the German-speaking population will get marginalized, tend to switch over to the new dominant language, be swamped with immigrants from that power's territory, or otherwise cease to be German-speakers. Maybe not; neither France nor Spain liked to flood their lands with lots of emigrants from the home countries; if France had done that in New France or Louisiana they might never have lost them to the British. Spain had a whole lot of territory to cover. Either might be content to install a government and adequate numbers of troops and let the population speak all the German they wanted to; it worked for France in Alsace after all, and what would matter most to the Spanish is that they are good Catholics.

But I think the best bet for keeping the territory German speaking would be if Austria retained control herself, as she might if the territory turned out to be profitable on its own. Bearing in mind the need for food imports in the sugar islands, and the valuable naval stores that American colonies could produce which either the Austrian Navy might benefit from (though I'd think forests in the Adriatic coast region might be good enough for them) or anyway could sell profitably to interested customers--say the French if not the English, or perhaps selling to the British is part of how the peace is kept on the border with English colonies) I would think it would run in the black, although it might not yield tremendous profits. Still enough to pay for itself, and Vestmark assets might prove useful in the European context.

My suspicion is that actually, Austria is not strongly motivated to hold on to it even if it is doing well economically. Her obsessions are in Europe, and unless the revenues coming in are tremendous (in which case the more established Atlantic powers like Britain and France would be circling like vultures) the assets it offers, while nice, are slim, and perhaps the effort of governing it and even the drain of manpower to the west would be resented. The likeliest thing seems to be that after a while, even if the sugar island is still in hand, the Austrians would either sell the territory outright, or pawn it for some loan and relinquish it to the creditor.

It really matters what relations Austria has with Britain. If the British get it, either because their relations with Austria are bad and they attack it in force to discomfit the Austrian emperor, or are very good and the Emperor sells it to them, while the German-speaking population might not suffer badly (except for being Catholic, but after all Maryland was supposed to be an English Catholic colony too, so the British system could accommodate a bunch of Catholic subjects) they could expect to be swamped by English-speakers, and their descendants would probably switch over to that language. If we want to keep it German speaking we'd better deter the British somehow--by folding it back into Spain, having France get it--almost certainly not the Dutch or a Scandinavian country; those are particularly set against the Catholic Germans.

Best shot then is that Austria hangs on through thick and thin. Next-best, Spain or France inherits it.

With a territory ranging from about half of OTL Georgia to perhaps Georgia plus bits of Alabama and lots or all of South Carolina and maybe some of North Carolina too manages to survive without coming under British rule, then perhaps the British north American colonists will never rebel and secede, having a potentially threatening enemy on their flank. If Austria retains control directly, I don't think it would seem like much of a threat, but if Austria is allied to a power that is, or the territory passes to one of them, it would become a most alarming one. Best case scenario is that Austria and Britain in this period are in mildly decent relations, neither too close to one another (highly unlikely anyway) nor very hostile. Then Vestmark can serve as a buffer state the way it was conceived to originally, with Florida sheltered behind it and thus Cuba as well.

OTL the British did manage to conquer Florida. That can't happen here, or surely the Austrians would be called on to hep defend it and hence probably get conquered in turn.

Hmm though--that happened pretty late in the 18th century. Suppose it does here, and Vestmark along with Florida are suddenly British colonies and the American British colonists to the north are having the same seditious reactions to British clamp-downs they did OTL. Perhaps as the Revolutionary crisis develops, Vestmarkers find themselves in sympathy with the Rebels, and joins the Patriot cause. The Americans win the war as OTL, with Vestmark a party to the Continental Congress.

Now the same dilemmas critics of a possible American incorporation of Quebec raise apply here. Like Quebec, Vestmark speaks a different language than English. Like Quebec, the Vestmarkers are loyal Catholics. Perhaps this means that like Quebec, Vestmark does not join the revolution but remains under British control along with Florida. This bodes ill for the Americans of course, but say they win anyway. The southern border is farther north, since Vestmark will not join the USA, but perhaps as with the settlement of the ARW OTL, the two southern colonies are given back to their parent powers, Austria and Spain. Austria, having lost her one major asset overseas, might not be an a position to take Vestmark back, having lost or disbanded her naval and colonial infrastructure and perhaps unwilling to get distracted that way again. In that case Spain would get both. However if Austria can be encouraged to step back and resume command of Vestmark, this would be preferred by the Americans I think. OTL letting Spain have Florida got a very threatening British presence out in favor of a weak and hence less threatening power on the southern border. By that logic Austria on the southern border is better still for the Americans!

Vice versa supposing Vestmark does join the Revolution and the Revolution wins. As OTL we can expect Florida to go back to Spain, but will Vestmark become one of the states of the new American union (initially under the Articles of Confederation) or will the Vestmarkers and Americans agree that a Catholic German-speaking country should not be in union with a Protestant English speaking federation? The issue is more complicated because under the Articles, the states retained great sovereign powers, so such a federation might seem OK, but the 1787 Constitution proposed a much tighter union, and then the matters of religion and language might come to a head. In principle I support the idea that these would not seem like important barriers compared to the advantages of union and so Vestmark should ratify the Constitution and be allowed to do so. But for the premise of this thread, that they keep on speaking German, I think separation at that point, if not before, would have to prevail. The 1787 Constitution then goes forward, but without whatever territory Vestmark covers. The separation is amicable and the Constitution, and Vestmark's new independent state's own fundamental laws, would probably include articles of alliance, a treaty built-in. The USA will aid Vestmark if it is attacked, and Vestmark will never war against the USA nor give comfort to any power at war with the USA, and will assist the USA if someone attacks or invades it. Cordial economic relations might also be matters of founding treaties and encouraged. But Vestmark, being a nation apart from the former British colonies, is a separate sovereign state. As such it continues to be governed in German and German remains the dominant language.

Thus I find two time tracks at least where Vestmark might have a shot at surviving as a German-majority language land all the way to the 21st century. I eliminate the possibility of no breakup with Britain because if that happens Vestmark will assimilate into the English-speaking majority. I have lost track of the possibility Vestmark never gets conquered by Britain since it seems like a long shot--but third and other tracks can be traced there.

I am left with two, based on whether a temporarily British-ruled Vestmark, conquered along with Florida, joins the American Revolution or not. If it does, I figure it winds up independent but in alliance with the USA; if not, that it is raffled off again either to Spain or Austria.

We have yet to jump all hurdles to a Vestmark surviving into the 21st Century still speaking German of course! For one thing, there is the matter of Vestmark probably being a slave colony as Georgia and South Carolina were--indeed one with a very large proportion of slaves. In the state-allied-to-USA scenario, the US slave interest would eventually come under the pressures they did in the 19th century. Vestmark would presumably have the same interests. (And for this reason, Vestmark and Spanish Florida might have poor relations, with Vestmarker slaves fleeing to Florida as OTL, perhaps leading to a US-backed conquest of Florida by Vestmark, or Vestmark partitioning Florida between itself and the USA. Then again, Vestmark certainly won't have the clout to beat up on Spain that the USA did, and the American slaveholders would not share the problem of fugitive slaves fleeing south Vestmarkers suffer, so perhaps Vestmark just has to suck it). If the Union is split by a civil war, does Vestmark join the Confederacy? Or anyway ally strongly with it? If it does, its independence is in grave danger if (I'd say, when) the Union wins the war and reconquers the South. Having betrayed the alliance treaty with the Union, the Union would probably resolve to conquer and reconstruct Vestmark too.

On the other track then--Vestmark is put back under Austrian control. Will the Americans conquer it the way Spain was bullied to sell Florida? Well, unlike Spanish Florida, Vestmark is probably a slave colony similar culturally to the American southern states to the north of it. Slaves will find little refuge there, so one motive, beyond sheer greed, to conquer Florida OTL is not at issue here. In turn, if the Americans leave Vestmark alone, Spanish Florida is also buffered from American covetousness. Sheer greed might prevail since Americans might not fear the consequences of violating Austria.And then Florida is on the firing line. However Austria might have allies in Europe that can dissuade the Americans from such aggression.

If Vestmark is made a Spanish colony because the Austrians don't have it in them anymore to run an American colony--then Spain's stricter regulations on slavery would come into play; Vestmark's practice of slavery would be reformed, probably to the annoyance of Vestmarkers and at some cost to them. But on the other hand with slavery legal and common, it won't be a good fugitive slave refuge.

On this time track, American development is majorly butterflied. For one thing there is no access to the Gulf of Mexico at all, Vestmark will get whatever Florida does not. There is no Old Southwest to speak of, only insofar as territories over the Appalachians from Virginia and perhaps the Carolinas go--Kentucky and Tennessee, but not Alabama or Mississippi. Even if there is somehow a Louisiana Purchase of OTL magnitude, the southern States's expansionism is channeled through these mountain states; t is not clear Arkansas or Missouri would wind up being slave states at all. Saying yes they would, still the USA is missing 3 or 4 major slave states, including perhaps the one that started the Civil War. Without their influence, would Texas be settled by Americans and secede from Mexico? Might not the Mexicans prefer to recruit Catholic Vestmarkers to settle Tejas instead? Indeed Vestmark might already be a Spanish colony. Would Mexico itself have ever seceded from Spain? (If there is a Louisiana purchase, probably yes).

Sooner or later, Austria is going to lose control over Vestmark. Will it secede and form its own republic, or perhaps monarchy?

I leave it to others now to navigate Vestmark safely to the 21st century as a German speaking language, presumably no longer a slave society.
 
The whole 1848 mess goes much worse for German, and Germans flee en masse to wherever will take them.
Protestant Calvinists to South Africa; Catholics to Argentina/Cono Sur; Lutherans to ... Upper Canada.

There are enough available colonists to make a large minority (at least) in each place.
Their emphasis on education means that they found schools for their people in the new locations, and, since schooling is in short supply, even people who aren't of German descent go to German schools just to get educated. This makes German more common. Over the years, more and more Germans emigrate from Germany as wars revive every couple of decades, mostly going to places where they have family/friends/co-religionists.

End result, Paraguay, Argentina, Upper Canada and South Africa are all are plurality German speaking - or at least it's used as the usual language of trade, administration and inter-community discussion.
 
Deutsch-Südwestafrika is still a viable option I think. The only problem is that by the time it went into German hands, the huge 19th century emigration wave was winding down. This is hard to reconcile, because the same factors that led to Germany's ability to amass a colonial empire also led to reduced emigration. However, German missionaries had started arriving in 1840, before it was actually a German colony. Perhaps a POD around then with a greater push for missionaries and eventually settlements would give it a greater German-speaking population in South West Africa.

In 1991, when Kazakhstan OTL decared independence, perhaps the German minority (then numbering over 1 million, or 7% of Kazakhstan) could weasel themselves a state. The northern part of Kazakhstan, if sliced up correctly, could have been over half German, especially if some neighboring parts of Russia are included. I don't think it's that far-fetched. If I recall correctly, there was a plan for a Korean state at some point OTL.
 
Israel. For what ever reason the British adopt a more Zionist policy and have better relations with Germany.

Hitler expels the entire Jewish population of Germany into the British Mandate of Palestine. Eventually, most of the Jews in Europe would be sent to the mandate once the war starts. Although polish, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian would be spoken, German speakers would be the largest group so it becomes the official language of government and taught in schools.

By the 1930s, Jewish settlers in Palestine were already using Hebrew as their lingua franca. They wouldn't drop their sacred language just to accommodate an influx of immigrants.
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
By the 1930s, Jewish settlers in Palestine were already using Hebrew as their lingua franca. They wouldn't drop their sacred language just to accommodate an influx of immigrants.

They don't have to, they just need to be swamped by less ideological settlers. There are also earlier POD's that make zionism more Yiddish and less Hebrew that would mean German-speaking Jews arriving to a Yiddish speaking Jewish community in Palestine, which would create a situation where the language was German with a Yiddish substrata, and probably an Arabic superstrata.
 
They don't have to, they just need to be swamped by less ideological settlers. There are also earlier POD's that make zionism more Yiddish and less Hebrew that would mean German-speaking Jews arriving to a Yiddish speaking Jewish community in Palestine, which would create a situation where the language was German with a Yiddish substrata, and probably an Arabic superstrata.

"Swamped by immigrants" ideas are proposed frequently on this message board when people want to see language change, but I can't think of too many times OTL that a country actually changed its national language because of immigration. Immigrants generally accept that they have to adopt the language of their new society.

Now, if you made Yiddish the national language instead of Hebrew, that could work.
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
"Swamped by immigrants" ideas are proposed frequently on this message board when people want to see language change, but I can't think of too many times OTL that a country actually changed its national language because of immigration. Immigrants generally accept that they have to adopt the language of their new society.

Now, if you made Yiddish the national language instead of Hebrew, that could work.

I'd say Palestine would be a pretty good example of being swamped by immigrants and them changing the national language! There have been no examples of immigration from a SINGLE 3rd party country outnumbering the original population in history, unless it was a conquest, then there's loads.

In the case of settler languages, language change by swamping is very common. Hebrew, or in our ATL, Yiddish was not the language of Palestine in the '30s, and could have been swamped by German, given the numbers involved. Welsh in Patagonia, Spanish and French in Louisiana, Gaelic in Canada and Dutch in the US went the same way.
 
I'd say Palestine would be a pretty good example of being swamped by immigrants and them changing the national language!

Having a group of people conquer a territory and displace much of the previous population is quite a bit different than what was proposed above (having lots of German-speaking Jews settle in Palestine).

In the case of settler languages, language change by swamping is very common. Hebrew, or in our ATL, Yiddish was not the language of Palestine in the '30s, and could have been swamped by German, given the numbers involved. Welsh in Patagonia, Spanish and French in Louisiana, Gaelic in Canada and Dutch in the US went the same way.

Those are - on a national scale - minority communities. Their national governments have not changed their languages due to immigration. In fact, in all of these cases those minority languages declined as their communities faced pressure to conform to the national language.
 
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