WI English retains more of OE?

I'm fascinated by Old English, particularly how it retains a lot of the older Germanic tongue. So I guess the POD is how to have something like modern English retain a lot of Old English's features, including the case system we lost, and runic writing systems. I have no idea how retaining those features might be possible, but I would like to know if it is.
 
Retaining a futhark instead of a latin-derived alphabet would probably depend on remaining pagan, IMO. As far as I'm aware, the latin alphabet was introduced alongside Christianity, being taught to churchmen so they could read the Bible. Though having said that, non-Catholic forms of Christianity seem to have be 'happy' with local scripts and Bibles in local languages - Cyrillic being a good example. So remaining pagan wouldn't necessarily be a must.
 
It is hard to see how Runic writing could be retained in a Catholic setting with such strong Latin traditions. Some letter forms (the eth and thorn, and maybe specific letters for the sh and y sounds and diphthongs) could survive, though, because they don't represent well in Latin script.

Cases and conjugations are another thing, you hae a good chance of those surviving if the language is fixed into writing early enough. An unbroken Anglo-Saxon literary tradition would be a great contribution to that. I don't think the whole system will survive (the trajectory towards simplification is already evident in the earliest written texts) - the dual is likely to go, and so may the dative - but at least you could save six personal endings, an accusative and genitive in singular and plural, and grammatical gender.
 
It is hard to see how Runic writing could be retained in a Catholic setting with such strong Latin traditions. Some letter forms (the eth and thorn, and maybe specific letters for the sh and y sounds and diphthongs) could survive, though, because they don't represent well in Latin script.

Cases and conjugations are another thing, you hae a good chance of those surviving if the language is fixed into writing early enough. An unbroken Anglo-Saxon literary tradition would be a great contribution to that. I don't think the whole system will survive (the trajectory towards simplification is already evident in the earliest written texts) - the dual is likely to go, and so may the dative - but at least you could save six personal endings, an accusative and genitive in singular and plural, and grammatical gender.

Wasn't the runic writing system also lost in the Christianization of Scandinavia? I don't think that a mostly illiterate society would be able to maintain its writing system in the face of the conversion to Roman Christianity. The Church was the only literate part of the society, and it only operates in Latin.

Maybe an alternative literary tradition, like some kind of analogue to the Cult of Courtly Love, only several hundred years earlier and literate? Anglo-Saxon bards who wrote down stories and provide an alternative center for literacy for the nobility? I don't see this as at all plausible though.
 
Wasn't the runic writing system also lost in the Christianization of Scandinavia? I don't think that a mostly illiterate society would be able to maintain its writing system in the face of the conversion to Roman Christianity. The Church was the only literate part of the society, and it only operates in Latin.

The runic writing system was lost during the Christianization.

As to whether it was an illiterate society, well everybody thought so until the unbogging of birchbark letters in Novgorod!
It may just have been lost and no one in the christian time wanting to make a notice thereof.
 
Retaining a futhark instead of a latin-derived alphabet would probably depend on remaining pagan, IMO. As far as I'm aware, the latin alphabet was introduced alongside Christianity, being taught to churchmen so they could read the Bible. Though having said that, non-Catholic forms of Christianity seem to have be 'happy' with local scripts and Bibles in local languages - Cyrillic being a good example. So remaining pagan wouldn't necessarily be a must.

According to Wiki, the runic alphabet only began to fade out in the 9th century, well after Christianity was introduced. So the POD probably could happen after the Christianization. Maybe the Latin alphabet somehow remains unpopular?

Perhaps something to do with the Vikings would work... maybe larger and more extensive invasions?
 
According to Wiki, the runic alphabet only began to fade out in the 9th century, well after Christianity was introduced. So the POD probably could happen after the Christianization. Maybe the Latin alphabet somehow remains unpopular?

Perhaps something to do with the Vikings would work... maybe larger and more extensive invasions?

You could always go with that old standby for those who want to preserve various parts of pre-Christian Norse Culture, VINLAND!

"Well, those weak-willed 'Norse' back in Europe converted to Latin, but we in Vinland decided that making sure we were physically and geographically disconnected from the Mother-Country was not enough. We decided to keep the runic alphabet and make sure that we were culturally disconnected too."
-King of Vinland, Latin translation of now-lost runic proclamation (one of the last made) prior to being "reconnected" via European invasion

I might be going over the edge.
 
The POD would be:

England should retain into Celtic Christianity or Paganism.

England should isolate from continental Europe.

Despite the fact that neither of those are needed, really? :confused:

The papacy allowed the Christians in Iberia to use Arabic in their liturgy and bibles, a practice which in some areas survives today...

So just have a pope sanction the continued use of the runes instead of Latin. I don't see why that couldn't work, if whatever progress Latin had made in the 9th century was eventually lost in favor of runes.
 

JJohnson

Banned
If this were the case, you'd see an English somewhat like this:

Ich, þou, he/schie/it, we, ye, þey;

ich make
þou makst
he makþ
we makeþ

subjunctive: ic/we make
past: makte, maktest, makten
participles: makend, gemakt

ich am
þou art
he is
we sind

Finden:
ich finde, þou findest, he findeþ; ich fand, ich habe ifunden

if we sind soþleich free Menn, þenn we cunneþ seen, hu lange ure diersten Freedomes beleifeþ.

Something like that, I'd think. There'd be two numbers, three cases (nom, gen, object), and maybe three genders. The weakening of the final -m in the dative would have merged the dative/accusative cases for masculine/neuter nouns, and the similarities in case endings for feminine would have reduced those to a simple -e in the singular, and -en in the plural.

Masculine:
Staan, Staans, Staan; Staanes, Staanes, Stanen (dat. pl)
Feminine:
Teid, Teid, Teid; Teide, Teiden, Teide
Neuter
Lamb, Lambes, Lamb; Lamber, Lamber, Lambern

The:
M: þe, þes, þen, þen
F: þe, þer, þer, þe
N: þat, þes, þen, þat;
PL: þe, þer, þen, þe

What do you think?

James
 
Wouldn't the easiest way to avoid the change be preventing the Norman invasion (or have it fail)? No invasion = no Romanization of the locals.
 
If this were the case, you'd see an English somewhat like this:

Ich, þou, he/schie/it, we, ye, þey;...

Are you using a German ch (more accurately ich-Laut) or an English ch/tch?

Seeing as 'ich' in German acquired the ich-Laut as a result of the High German consonant shift, I can't see it having any effect in English. Dutch and Plattdeutsch retain a /k/ sound, and I imagine English would either retain a /k/ or drop all pretense of a consonant, after which the Great Vowel Shift would still 'diphthongise' the word and result in the OTL pronunciation.

On a related note, would English spelling be any more flexible if we'd retained more of the Germanic heritage?
 
Wouldn't the easiest way to avoid the change be preventing the Norman invasion (or have it fail)? No invasion = no Romanization of the locals.

Have you read any of the posts before yours? The runic writing was long gone by then. :rolleyes:

And it wasn't Romanization. The Normans imposed their dialect of French.
 
Have you read any of the posts before yours? The runic writing was long gone by then. :rolleyes:

And it wasn't Romanization. The Normans imposed their dialect of French.

Actually, French and Latin. Prior to the Norman invasion Anglo-Saxon English actually had a strong literary tradition, at least relative to other native languages in Europe. In fact, in the time of King Alfred it was unique in the fact that it was a written language, whereas most of 'civilized' Europe at the time wrote in Latin.

It was the Norman invasion which forced written English underground and out of sight, only to re-emerge in early modern England.
 
Actually, French and Latin. Prior to the Norman invasion Anglo-Saxon English actually had a strong literary tradition, at least relative to other native languages in Europe. In fact, in the time of King Alfred it was unique in the fact that it was a written language, whereas most of 'civilized' Europe at the time wrote in Latin.

It was the Norman invasion which forced written English underground and out of sight, only to re-emerge in early modern England.

But Romanization means either to impose Roman culture or a system of transliterating foreign alphabets. I think the poster in question was talking about the former. The Normans were not imposing Roman culture, so it was not Romanization.
 

JJohnson

Banned
I would partially agree; had the Norman invasion not occurred, then the core vocabulary would remain more strongly Germanic, like modern German. However, in late OE, the case system was already breaking down. The dative had weakened to -an/-on, the subjunctive plural and past plural of verbs was -an/-un/-en, indicating a confusion of how to write the sounds. In OE, there is already a strong preference for prepositions to favor the dative case, and in the first and second persons, it was already a unified case. I'd tend to take that development along the same lines German took, where the original:
großum (dat pl) becomes großen (dat pl)
 
Another far less effective, but more realistic (I suppose) option would be if adoption of Norman terms was incredibly unpopular. "Beef" would still be "cow," "pork" would remain "pig," etc. This would be on a smaller scale than what you guys are proposing, though.
 
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