WI: Yugogermania

What if during the migration period Dalmatia and Illyria get heavely depopulated (through war for example) and Germanic tribes/gentes (goths,gepids,langobards ...) settle in this area.
The slavs could probably move to Pannonia and seperate Germania and Dalmatia; if they do, how would Dalmatian German evolve? At the lines of the high german dialects of our timeline or would it keep the characteristica of the pre-consonant switch germanic language?
Would the switch accure at all and depending on if and where could it spread over the slavic gap to Germania/Dalmatia?
 
It was and they did.

As far as what would a germanic language evoliving on the adriatic look like it would have quite a few first latin than greek loan words.

Stopping the slavs settling and asimilating the people encountered in Dalmatia will be hard but some Germanic language could survive on one of the islands.
 
is there any possebility to allow a larger germanic speaking community to exist? with a POD around 400 they would have 150 years before the slavs would arrive, could that be enough time to assimilate the romans and to grow larger in terms of population? the slavs could maybe settle in northern italy instead of dalmatia
 
Well, firstly the high german sound shift didnt even happen with all the west germanic dialects, let alone the other branches. Since the Goths, in particular, were east germanic, theyd be even less likely to adopt that shift than dutch, platt, frisian or english.

One interesting thing to consider is how or whether these dialects would be affected by the Balkan Sprachbund (yes english uses the german word as technical vocabulary). Would the articles be postfixed, ie after nouns, rather than before them, etc. Given that the north germanic, ie scandinavian, languages have developed postfixed articles independently, it seems likely to me.


Edit. Yugogermania is a terrible name, id go with ,balkan gemanic, or something.
Edit2: yugogermania doesnt work well, imo, because it combines a slavic direction with the latin name of a group of peoples.
 
Last edited:
Top