AH Challenge: English mother-tongue of continental European population.

eschaton

The recent posting of a map of the Netherlands with anglified names had me thinking...

Is there any non ASB way you could have ended up with a continental European nation becoming English-speaking? We're talking about something substantial here - not just Calais, and not just the upper classes in a Plantagenet France.

Some ground rules.

1. POD must be after 1066. Basically, *English must be descended from something similar to OTL Middle English, or more recent varieties, so it would be vaguely intelligible to someone from TTL. No Anglo-Saxonish tongue uniting Britain and Scandinavia!

2. There can be dialectal differences, and the vernaculars can be highly divergent, but the standard form must be mutually intelligible with English English.

3. It must be the mother tongue of at least a million people.

4. It must be the majority mother tongue in certain areas.

So, any ideas?
 

Philip

Donor
Probably clichéd, but have a different end to the Hundred Years' War. England gains/holds Brittany and Normandy. You will probably need to have France broken to prevent reconquest -- perhaps Henry I of Navarre gets Gascony in exchange for his northern possessions and Burgundy survives as an independent kingdom.

Wait a few hundred years. The countryside will probably not be speaking English, but an English speaking majority in the cities is not out of the question.
 

Falastur

I'm not really sure that this is feasible. You could easily have TLs where England controls large chunks of European land. Those TLs would follow that those populations would use lots of English loan words and would develop differently to their neighbouring tongues. Perhaps even elements of English grammar could start to be used in place of the original. But for a full switch to English? I'm not convinced, not without some period in the TL where for a reason that doesn't entirely make sense to me, the English monarch decides that his continental lands need to switch languages and essentially bans the use of other languages - which would anyway cause so much disruption it might backfire and make the continental territories rebel away.

Generally speaking, for languages to spread across borders requires two things:

A - a period of linguistic isolation from other influences - shifting borders, wars, trade, and so on all damage this isolation. This implies and includes the need for the "motherland"/mother tongue to be the sole and dominating influence on the territory to be converted to another language.

B - either a land border for the language to slowly sift over with the extremely frequent exchanges of conversation between both sides (naval merchants just aren't numerous enough to spread their language thoroughly) OR a mass migration from the motherland which a POD after 1066 isn't likely to see in conjunction with point A.

You can do it in small populations in places such as Gibraltar or Calais, but for England to try this on the continent on a scale of at least one million English speakers would essentially require a TL where for some reason the Kings of England decide to sacrifice all other national ambitions purely to seed part of Europe with English...and it's not really that feasible. It's only really likely to happen on islands and in small pockets where the population has been planted by ethnic English people.
 

Tyr

'England' winning the 100 years war is more likely to result in England speaking French than vice-versa.

The only way that really comes to mind for this to happen to me is to have Frisia closely tied in with English and English speaking. To have a people completely flip from French to English is far fetched but for one which is already close enough to English to become ever more like it...not to ofar fetched.
 

artha

How about a British-Dutch union, I know it's been said before, but if the Glorious Revolution results in a lasting union. If English becomes some sort of high regarded lanuage, perhapse a kind of nationalism. Making the entire Netherlands english-speaking will be very hard, not to say ASB. However you could end up with some OTL Belgium.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Anything more substantial than the British Dutch union and you're faced with the basic problem that England is in a position to be the marginal partner, especially before Great Britain is founded.
 
Errnge

Errnge

I actually think that an English victory in the 100 years war would fit the bill. However, English itself would be hugely altered, a lot more French influence, maybe even some Breton thrown in. But I think the Germanic syntax would remain.

If England turns protestant like OTL (however, its less likely), they might try to repress the speaking of French in a similar fashion to how they repressed the speaking of Gaelic in Ireland. It probably wouldnt be as affective because the frenchies would still trickle through the boarder either way. And the area of English domain doesn't need to be all as large as the English claimed during the 100 years war. Brittany, Normandy, and Calais would suffice.

If then the English did make a union with the Dutch (don't know how likely that is with this POD), you might end up with English not being seen as an insular language, though it started that way, but instead as a language spoken on all sides of the English channel.

Needless to say, though, the English we speak today would never evolve. We'd be hearing a completely different animal.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
The problem are that this have so late a POD. We would need to see a area depopulated and English settler moved in. My best bet would be some union with a Protestant state, which conquer a thinly populated Catholic area, where the population are mostly expelled and Protestant settlers are moved in and because the English make up the majority of the new settlers, English become the local language. Brandenburg-Prussia would be the obvious choice, especially if the union could be pushed through in the 17th century and maybe the West Prussia was captured in the same periode, while Brandenburg was still being repopulated from the loses in the 30YW. The problem are creating such a early union especially because the best oppotunity for gaining Royal Prussia would be in the Second Northern Wars (1655-1660).
 

Valdemar II

Banned
A good choice could be to marry Charles I daugther Mary to the Great Elector and arrange some accidents for Charles I sons, and have Charles I die early. Maybe letting him fall of the horse English Civil War and let them accept Mary and Frederick William I of Brandenburg as a compromise candidate.

While having little power in England, Frederick William I use England to get settlers to his depopulated continental possesions, creating a tradition for moving to continental Europe

In the Second Northern War Brandeburg succed in gaining Royal Prussia and Ermland. The local population are offered to convert to Protestantism or being deported, almost half choose to leave. Foreign settlers are brought in to larger extent these come from England. Much of Royal Prussia end up English speaking and with tradition of using English bibles and as church language English are kept alive.

By modern day Royal Prussia and Ermland have a population of 4 millions, of whom 2,7 are English speakers, the dialect have heavily borrowed from German both in pronouncement, syntax and vocabulary, but the grammatic and most of the vocabulary are still clearly English, through somewhat old fashion. The English speakers are called Änglanders, religeous they're mostly Methodist, through with significant minorities of Babtists and Quarkers, Anglicans are mostly non-existant.
 
iori

iori

To really do this you need to look at some linguistic stuff;

IOTL people have learned languages that are'nt their own (and gone on to raise their children in the new language) for many reasons, though in the end most of the time its been to make their lives better or for economic reasons.

So if you have an area where it becomes more useful economically to speak english than your native language, and the situation stays that way for a century or so after a few generations either the population will speak English as their primary language or be bilingual.

Another way is to force it, which is'n as difficult as some might think, America did it with the Native Americans and France (in a less brutal fashion) did it with the Metropole by passing laws making French the only acceptable language and punishing those who did'nt do so.

It's certainly doable, however their is an upper limit.
 
Last edited:

Velasco

When Mary (Bloody Mary) married Philip II of Spain, it was agreed that their heir would inherit not only England but also the Netherlands (Flanders, Brabant, etc).

Before and after this same time, the Tudors were enforcing their hold on Ireland and eventually banned the use of the Irish language in legal documents and by the Anglo- nobility. So its possible that, for ? reasons, a similar strategy might be adopted after a prolonged union of England-Burgundy, where the English speaking monarch imposes English as the sole legal language, spreading its use not only amongst the nobility who seek his favour and reside in the magnificence of his court, but also amongst the bourgeousie/merchants, ecclesiastical institutions, universities, etc., and eventually down to the common people. Still, you'd probably end up with a largely bilingual population in large parts of the realm, not entirely impossible (see: Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, Scotland).
 

Rakhasa

Velasco said:
When Mary (Bloody Mary) married Philip II of Spain, it was agreed that their heir would inherit not only England but also the Netherlands (Flanders, Brabant, etc).

Before and after this same time, the Tudors were enforcing their hold on Ireland and eventually banned the use of the Irish language in legal documents and by the Anglo- nobility. So its possible that, for ? reasons, a similar strategy might be adopted after a prolonged union of England-Burgundy, where the English speaking monarch imposes English as the sole legal language, spreading its use not only amongst the nobility who seek his favour and reside in the magnificence of his court, but also amongst the bourgeousie/merchants, ecclesiastical institutions, universities, etc., and eventually down to the common people. Still, you'd probably end up with a largely bilingual population in large parts of the realm, not entirely impossible (see: Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, Scotland).
Click to expand...

The Netherlands fought a bloody, century long war, to keep their identity, against the most powerful army of the time -and won. Seventeen century England cannot proyect that streght -which was not sufficient- so imposing their own culture and language by Royal Decree seems quite difficult, even if they are not catholics.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Errnge said:
I actually think that an English victory in the 100 years war would fit the bill. However, English itself would be hugely altered, a lot more French influence, maybe even some Breton thrown in. But I think the Germanic syntax would remain.

If England turns protestant like OTL (however, its less likely), they might try to repress the speaking of French in a similar fashion to how they repressed the speaking of Gaelic in Ireland. It probably wouldnt be as affective because the frenchies would still trickle through the boarder either way. And the area of English domain doesn't need to be all as large as the English claimed during the 100 years war. Brittany, Normandy, and Calais would suffice.

If then the English did make a union with the Dutch (don't know how likely that is with this POD), you might end up with English not being seen as an insular language, though it started that way, but instead as a language spoken on all sides of the English channel.

Needless to say, though, the English we speak today would never evolve. We'd be hearing a completely different animal.
Click to expand...

There would be no "english" victory. There would merely be a french Plantagenet dynasty. It's exactly the kind of situation I mean when I say English would be faced with a marginal situation; France had 7 times the population of England and was significantly wealthier.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Velasco said:
When Mary (Bloody Mary) married Philip II of Spain, it was agreed that their heir would inherit not only England but also the Netherlands (Flanders, Brabant, etc).

Before and after this same time, the Tudors were enforcing their hold on Ireland and eventually banned the use of the Irish language in legal documents and by the Anglo- nobility. So its possible that, for ? reasons, a similar strategy might be adopted after a prolonged union of England-Burgundy, where the English speaking monarch imposes English as the sole legal language, spreading its use not only amongst the nobility who seek his favour and reside in the magnificence of his court, but also amongst the bourgeousie/merchants, ecclesiastical institutions, universities, etc., and eventually down to the common people. Still, you'd probably end up with a largely bilingual population in large parts of the realm, not entirely impossible (see: Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, Scotland).
Click to expand...

Ireland was poor rural uneducated island on the edge of the known world, the Netherlands was more or less for Europe what North Easten USA are for USA, it was a intellectual, mechantile and technological centre. We also have the fact that in Flandern and Brabant French did have that position, the linguistic border barely moved.
In Germany Latin had more or less the position you describe, to my knowledge Latin didn't replace Latin.
 

eschaton

This is the admittedly ASB, but somewhat interesting map of the Netherlands which spawned this thread.

attachment.php
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top