WI: Britain in the 19th century tries to revive old english.

One thing I like about Israel (without discussing their state legitimacy here please) is that they took Hebrew, a language that was at the point spoken either by a handfew of historians and teachers and brought it back to life and now it is the official language of a country.

I once made a thread about a surviving anglo saxon England, and what if they could be considered Germanic had the Norman invasion failed, however as Abdominalz showed, this is not quite necessary:

I personally don't think we need a POD as far back as 1066 to achieve this. All what we need is an England which during the age of nationalism espouses a staunchly 'Anglo-Saxon' nationalist variety that solidly looks back to Anglo-Saxon England pre-1066. This ATL nationalism would be largely based on OTL thought, such as that of the 'Norman Yoke' and the Whiggish interpretation of history, which stated that Anglo-Saxon England was a kind of Garden-of-Eden liberal constitutional monarchy in which the Witangemot was England's first parliament, and that the Normans destroyed all that by imposing a foreign autocracy.

So what we need is an ATL English nationalism that emerges, say, in the long eighteenth century after the revolution of 1688 that is a reaction against French-backed Catholicism and Absolute Monarchy and could see Dutch support for that revolution and William of Orange as a sign of pan-Germanic (and Protestant) solidarity. This Anglo-Saxon revival, for it to permanently confirm England's place in the 'Germanic Club' would have to last continuously during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. In addition to changing/ requiring a change of England's self image, literature and politics, I imagine that the following changes would be noticeable:
  • The mass re-adoption of Anglo-Saxon first names in England during such a period: Names such as William, Henry and George go into decline and normal English names become names like: Athelstan, Edgar, Elfgar for boys and Godgifu, Elfgifu for girls. Scandinavian names (very popular just before 1066) could also become the English norm, such as Sveyn and Bjorn, which would further 're-scandinavianise' England.
  • Indigenous English roots being used for new words that enter the language rather than importing Greek and Latin for say, modern concepts and technologies.
  • The use of Anglo-Saxon words for newly created political institutions - so that when, for example, the American Revolutionaries were creating their constitution, instead of using the word Senate, they use the Anglo-Saxon word 'Witan' to refer to their upper house. Likewise when County Councils are created in England in 1889, have them be called 'Shire Moots' instead.

Let's say that we got this Wilhelm of Orange point of divergence, they see him as a example of pan germanic and protestant unity, and about 120 years later on the 19th century the british government decides to bring back old english to live (only in England and some minor overseas territories like the Falklands, of course). Could it work, or with the 19th century school doctrines this would be impossible?

Edit if you want to have a idea of how different it sounds, you can find here a popular disney song in old english:
 
I don't think it is realistic. Hebrew was the holy language of the Jewish people and they needed a common language when they came, from many different countries, to Palestine, so they adopted it.

There just is not enough reason for the English people to adopt a change like this. Such a decision would be driven by the aristocratic classes of course (the common people are more interested in surviving day to day than linguistic purity), but in the English language the traditional rule is that the French/Latin terms are associated with high society and the Anglo-Saxon terms with the lower classes. French is also the dominant aristocratic language across Europe in this era. English aristocrats are probably going to find more in common with their counterparts on the continent than with working class Englishmen.
 
I don't think it is realistic. Hebrew was the holy language of the Jewish people and they needed a common language when they came, from many different countries, to Palestine, so they adopted it.

There just is not enough reason for the English people to adopt a change like this. Such a decision would be driven by the aristocratic classes of course (the common people are more interested in surviving day to day than linguistic purity), but in the English language the traditional rule is that the French/Latin terms are associated with high society and the Anglo-Saxon terms with the lower classes. French is also the dominant aristocratic language across Europe in this era. English aristocrats are probably going to find more in common with their counterparts on the continent than with working class Englishmen.

While Old English ain't coming back like before, changing the bolded part (at least insofar as Britain's concerned) makes something like Anglish a more feasible proposition. Say, if Napoleon's Continental System thrives and leaves the British economically and politically marginalized. Cue an anti-French general social direction from the nobility down in conjunction with Walter Scott-flavored romantic nationalism looking back to pre-1066, and I think we'd get somewhere.
 
Reviving Old English and revival of Hebrew are totally different things. Hebrew has already used as liturgical languages 2000 years and Old English hadn't anymore any usage. Furthermore Jews came to Israel from many countries and spoke several different languages so they needed same language so they could create their own nation. Such need haven't with Old English. And it might be bit difficult get people to speak parctically very different language.
 
While Old English ain't coming back like before, changing the bolded part (at least insofar as Britain's concerned) makes something like Anglish a more feasible proposition. Say, if Napoleon's Continental System thrives and leaves the British economically and politically marginalized. Cue an anti-French general social direction from the nobility down in conjunction with Walter Scott-flavored romantic nationalism looking back to pre-1066, and I think we'd get somewhere.

Right. And middle english? Middle english is more recognizable and by the time of the Napoleonic wars i 1804, it fell out of fashion for "just" 300 years.
 
Right. And middle english? Middle english is more recognizable and by the time of the Napoleonic wars i 1804, it fell out of fashion for "just" 300 years.

A lot of OE vocabulary and grammar lasted into MidEng, not falling out of use until the 16th century; while a lot of changes to English are attributed to the Normans, all they really did was introduce classist-charged loanwords and influence spelling, English grammatical evolution was mostly organic. As such, the grammar part is probably long and gone since languages tend to simplify over time anyway, but a lot of older terms could be revived the same way Ny Norsk did versus Bokmal in Norway (replacing Danish terms with native ones).

It would also achieve making American and British English divergent enough to be seen as different languages, should that be a desired outcome.
 
A lot of OE vocabulary and grammar lasted into MidEng, not falling out of use until the 16th century; while a lot of changes to English are attributed to the Normans, all they really did was introduce classist-charged loanwords and influence spelling, English grammatical evolution was mostly organic. As such, the grammar part is probably long and gone since languages tend to simplify over time anyway, but a lot of older terms could be revived the same way Ny Norsk did versus Bokmal in Norway (replacing Danish terms with native ones).

I would disagree, these changes went beyond normal evolution. Anglo-Saxon had three noun genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) and a case system, which are still present in German to this day. But English lost all of that. Whether that is specifically due to Norman influence is uncertain though, as French at this time also had cases, and still has (two) genders.
 
I would disagree, these changes went beyond normal evolution. Anglo-Saxon had three noun genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) and a case system, which are still present in German to this day. But English lost all of that. Whether that is specifically due to Norman influence is uncertain though, as French at this time also had cases, and still has (two) genders.

No, it isn't uncertain. We have a multitude of early Middle English writings (Caedmon's Hymn, Ormulum, Layamon Brut, etc) that demonstrate a similar loss of case and grammatical gender exemplified by Low Franconian/Dutch, Afrikaans, Frisian, Continental Scandinavian, and certain Low Saxon dialects. German and Icelandic are the odd men out in that regard.

Furthermore, there's no grammatical similarity in English to French beyond trends mirrored in other languages (e.g. the English genitive case survives as a possessive, in West Frisian one generally uses word order for a possessive construction). English loss of grammatical gender outside of pronouns is weird, but French influence wouldn't have led to that at all, given high Gallo-Romance dependency on gender for intelligibility. Whereas in Scandinavian and Istvaeonic languages, those features have shrunken or disappeared entirely as well over a similar timeframe as English, so it seems a consistent internal trend. Again, German and Icelandic are the only real exceptions.
 
No, it isn't uncertain. We have a multitude of early Middle English writings (Caedmon's Hymn, Ormulum, Layamon Brut, etc) that demonstrate a similar loss of case and grammatical gender exemplified by Low Franconian/Dutch, Afrikaans, Frisian, Continental Scandinavian, and certain Low Saxon dialects. German and Icelandic are the odd men out in that regard.

Furthermore, there's no grammatical similarity in English to French beyond trends mirrored in other languages (e.g. the English genitive case survives as a possessive, in West Frisian one generally uses word order for a possessive construction). English loss of grammatical gender outside of pronouns is weird, but French influence wouldn't have led to that at all, given high Gallo-Romance dependency on gender for intelligibility. Whereas in Scandinavian and Istvaeonic languages, those features have shrunken or disappeared entirely as well over a similar timeframe as English, so it seems a consistent internal trend. Again, German and Icelandic are the only real exceptions.

I am not saying that English grammar became more like that of French, just that it changed a lot during the Norman period - more than other languages did. The loss of all grammatical gender is very unusual for a European language. I believe Afrikaans is the only language among the ones you mentioned that has no gender, and its origins are not very clear (some argue that it is a creole, or descended from one).
 
I am not saying that English grammar became more like that of French, just that it changed a lot during the Norman period - more than other languages did. The loss of all grammatical gender is very unusual for a European language. I believe Afrikaans is the only language among the ones you mentioned that has no gender, and its origins are not very clear (some argue that it is a creole, or descended from one).

Well, being exposed back to back to Norse and French invaders makes for an interesting linguistic tapestry, one that Germany and the Netherlands really haven't experienced.

I don't consider Afrikaans a creole, it lacks any definitive grammatical, morphological or vocabulary influences from another language. Pretty much all creoles develop first from a pidgin dialect, which then evolves rules, conventions, and set practices (e.g. evolution of Haitian Kreyol from a Franco-Akan/Fon interlingua). At most, Afrikaans is a Cape Dutch-derived hybrid language, which isn't the same as a creole language (the former pre-exists and takes on more and more outside influence, the latter is "built from the ground up" by combining features from two or more languages on the way). English is a West Germanic hybrid language that absorbed an abnormally high degree of North Germanic and Gallo-Romance elements along the way.
 
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