tom said:
Basileus:
GREAT thread!
Could you maybe mention how these languages compare to OTL equivalents?
Would speakers from OTL and the ATL be able to understand each other?
I'm very happy someone likes the idea
It's all part of my monster timeline, which is a work in the fashion of Penelope's web.
I have already made extensive comparison between the "alternate" languages and ours, though only for the British Isles, the Iberic Peninsula and Italy.
As a whole, a speaker from this TL should have no particulra problems in adating to this TL. For an English speaker, differences would be minimal, just some Celtic borrowing more and that's all.
French is largely identical to OTL. Spanish is quite different, as i exposed in one of my pots: Asturian would be the closer comparison for a Spaniard from OTL, while Castellano Spanish of this TL would seem a little strange, but somewhat comprehensible, to him; the problem is that vocabularuy and onomastic would be deprived of Arab and Basque influence, b/C of the lack of an Arab invasion (a later, briefer Berber Maurian (Christian) one) and the language not being born in former Basque Cantabria mountains, but in the major cities of Spain. It would be far closer to Italian than it is today; in this TL Spaniards and Italians can speach each in its own mothertongue understanding each other quite well.
Italian is de facto identical to OTL, only its are a is slightly smaller, though absorbing the eastern half of Corsica.
Greek would be interesting. Being based on an ancient tongue not modified by events in this TL, it would be the same language as Katharevousa, the official imperial language close to ancient Greek, but the Dimothikì, the language of the people, would be a mess. One should try to imagine wht the Constantinopolitan dialect would have developed into, keeping in mind the large presence of Armenians, Slavs and Batiturks (West Turks) in the city with their possible influence, and same thing for all the Greek Anatolian dialects (I imagine something like a division between Pontic-Paflagonian, inner Anatolian/Angorene, Nicene/Bythinian, Smirnean/Lydian, Lycian). The are of Greek in Greece proper is much reduced b/c of the MASSIVE Albanian and Morlakian (OTL Valakian) infiltration/immigration from the late 13th century onwards, a steady process who continued till all the 17th century Illyricizing Thessalia and Epirus, while the Greek strongholds of Athen and Thessalonica hampered further expansion and attracted numbers of immigrants.
A spot of Slavic presence remains in southern Peloponnese; they are the Veletians, last heirs of the great wave of Slavs that ovverun the entire Balkan peninsula (which in this TL is not known as Balkan, a Turkish word AFAIK).
The Morlakian I nominated before are like the Valakians of OTL Middle Ages Balkans, i.e. groups of nomadic Neo-Latin speaking shepherds, sorts of "white tzigans" (no Indian-originated Gypsies beyond Persia and Central Asia in this timeline) not liked o much by their neighbours, and scattered irregularly from Istria to Bosnia, with a particular concentration around the city of Vidin on the Danube. They would be the descendants of the Romans emperor Aurelianus brought back when he abandoned Dacia to the Goths around AD 270.
Albanian is somewhat diferent. Never written in Arabic characters like in OTL, it didn't absorb any Turkic word and was instead heavily influenced by both Greek and Italian.
Dalmatia retains its native Neo-Latin speech, Dalmatic, in a diglossy with Serbo-Croatian, which is more affected by Greek influence (maybe it may acquire the article, absent in the Slavic mothertongue, just like Bulgarian did)
Bulgarian would be an intensely Grecized Slavic tongue, even moore than today.
The violet spots on the Back Sea cost between Bulgaria and Moldova are settled by Batiturks deported there by the Byzantines. Local Batiturkic dialects are influenced by both Greek, Old Church Slavonic and Romanian, which on the contrary is almost indistinguishable from OTL
Hungarian is the nightmare we well know and perfectly comprehensible to the crosstime Hungaran traveller. Slovenian has a wider expansion, but it's Germanizing as to technical terms due to longer Austrian domination.
Slovakian and Czech are identical to OTL, as are German, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages. Frisian is well alive and spoken throughout East and West Frisia (both Dutch territory) and the Frisian islands between Denmark eand Germany. Isolated pocket of Slavic languages survive in East Germany; Polabian, along the Elbe (imagine a bilingual Martin Luther which tranlsates the Bible in POlabian too, preserving the language); Vendic, in the coastal region of Mecklemburg; Sorabian, between the Oder and Bohemia. Kashubian has prevented German from expanding beyond the coastal cities in Pomerania. while Prussian resisted the German pressure, though Germanizing massively to a curious mix to whom the linguists gave the name of Baltogermanic.
Lithuanian and Latvian, largely identical to OTL but far more strong, thrive despite the long Russian domination.
Polish is identical to OTL. Byelorussian is more Lithuanized than in OTL, Ukrainian preserves some traces of the Altaic tongues of successive invaders
and shows a clear Greek influence, though it's Russifying at an alarming rate.
Russian is more influenced by a Finnish substrate, and in Russia proper a number of Finnish tongues survive in major or lesser pockets, Ingrian (near St. Petersburg), Vepsic and Ludic (near Novgorod and in the Valdai), Mordvinian and Komi (on the medium-High Volga).
Sami (Lapponian) still dominates the northern scarcely inhabited parts of Scandinavia with a variety of dialects. Samoyed Nenec is spoken by nomadic shepherds on the Arctic shores of Russia.
Tatar is a powerful reality west of the Urals, were it has still some millions speakers.
More south, Oirat Mongolian Kalmykh is spoken south of Astrakhan as OTL.
The Caucasus region is a mess as OTL, BUT in the east there's the solid block of White Turkish (just as nowadays Azerbaijani Turkish).
North Africa is very different from OTL. In Egypt there's a diglossy between Coptic, spoken by the strong Christian minority (30%), and Arab. In Lybia an own version of Arab is influenced by Berber dialects. Tunisia is called Punia in this TL, is Christian and speaks a Neo-Latin language which shows clear traces of Punic (Semitic) and Berber influence, besides being very strongly influenced by Sicilian and Genoese.
Algeria is called Numidia, and speaks a Berber tongue heavily relexified with Latin during the Renaissance.
Morocco (Mauria in this TL) speaks a Berber tongue deeply influenced by this TL's Spanish.
Uff!