AHC/WI: Non-English world lingua franca

[fluttersky]

In the modern world, there is indisputably one dominant language, English, that is used for most international business. Your challenge is for another language to attain this dominant role, instead of English.

No fixed PoD. Try to be realistic.

Possibilities. Some are quite plausible, others are very unlikely.

1) French as a lingua franca
2) German as a lingua franca
3) Russian as a lingua franca
4) Spanish as a lingua franca
5) Portuguese as a lingua franca
6) Dutch as a lingua franca
7) Italian as a lingua franca
8) Greek as a lingua franca
9) Swedish as a lingua franca
10) Basque as a lingua franca
11) Latin as a lingua franca
12) Esperanto as a lingua franca
13) Arabic as a lingua franca
14) Japanese as a lingua franca
15) Mandarin as a lingua franca
16) Persian as a lingua franca
17) Hindi as a lingua franca
18) Swahili as a lingua franca
19) Turkish as a lingua franca
20) Indonesian as a lingua franca
21) Mongolian as a lingua franca
22) Cherokee as a lingua franca
23) Some other language as a lingua franca.
24) Multiple lingua francas
25) No lingua franca.

How would such a non-English world differ from ours?

 

[wietze]

some of them have been used in that way

french was used as a lingua france for diplomacy
german was used for a while as lingua france for scientific publications

dutch has been a trading lingua france

and latin has been for a long time

 

[ZhugeLiang]

Chinese can be used as a lingua Franca, seeing how it was dominant in East Asia. Sorry, but I don't see Japanese as a lingua Franca. Maybe as the language of the East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, but not the world.

 

[St. Just]

Portuguese is by far the easiest. Even IOTL, it remained an Indian Ocean lingua franca until the 19th century -- Clive used it to communicate in India.

A Luso-wank TL, in which Indian Ocean and Atlantic trade are all dominated by Portuguese traders in spices and slaves, could easily produce a Portuguese lingua franca.

 

[gochisox]

The fact that it is called lingua franca in the first place says that its very easy for another language to become most popular. French shockingly seems most likely, have them win a couple of the Wars against Britain and be stronger in driving there citizens to colonize and you could easily make the lingua franca franca

 

[catconqueror]

The greek one is easy. Just look at most of the Byzantine tl.

 

[Intransigent Southerner]

Even IOTL, it remained an Indian Ocean lingua franca until the 19th century -- Clive used it to communicate in India.

Lingua franca does not mean "language that is spoken by some traders and foreigners" nor does it mean "European language that Europeans use to speak with foreigners." Portuguese was never a true lingua franca in the Indian Ocean.

 

[mlp]

Dutch and Spanish as competing lingua francas in TTL 2015 would be interesting . They just need to play their colony games right.

 

[Intransigent Southerner]

Chinese can be used as a lingua Franca, seeing how it was dominant in East Asia.

Yes, but Chinese is different from Mandarin.

 

[leopard9]

French seems to be the most likely. All France would have to do is have a few more colonies AND SEND FRENCH PEOPLE TO THEM DAMMIT. A more successful Latin America could result in Spanish being a lingua franca for the Americas.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

Basque lingua franca:

During the chaos surrounding the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the Basques take the opportunity to gradually expand across the rugged land of northern Spain, in OTL's Galicia and Asturias. Despite occasionally being forced to pay tribute to and acknowledge the suzerainty of Spain's new Visigothic rulers, they remain more-or-less autonomous, and over the next few centuries the region gradually becomes Basque-speaking. Then the Muslims invade Spain and overthrow the Visigoths; as IOTL, only the north of the peninsula holds out, and over the coming centuries gradually pushes down south, retaking the country for Christendom. As the Christian monarchs ITTL use Basque as their main tongue, this becomes a prestige language, and subjects in the reconquered parts of Spain gradually come to adopt it themselves, albeit introducing many features from their own Spanish Romance. As the Reconquista winds to a close, the rulers of Spain start looking further afield for trading opportunities, until in 1492 an exploratory mission sent west to look for a route to China discovers a hitherto-unknown new continent. The Kings of Spain are quick to establish their rule across the ocean, and the resulting empire becomes so important that the Basque language it uses in its administration becomes the common tongue of international trade and diplomacy.

 

[Abdominalz]

If the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain hadn't happened, some form of Welsh would the global lingua Franca.

 

[Intransigent Southerner]

If the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain hadn't happened, some form of Welsh would the global lingua Franca.

Nope. Too many butterflies to assume that

 

[Napoleonrules]

Lingua franca does not mean "language that is spoken by some traders and foreigners" nor does it mean "European language that Europeans use to speak with foreigners." Portuguese was never a true lingua franca in the Indian Ocean.

This above deserves mentioning again. Lingua franca status for English is demonstrated by the fact that English is used as the official language for OPEC business despite none of the members having English as their official language and that they meet in a German-speaking city. You have to have your alternative meet similar requirements of "two peoples who have different languages, use this third language to talk to each other even when in a fourth nation"

 

[zoomar]

Unless you butterfly away the rise of western Europe to its position of global technological, economic, and scientific prominence by the mid 1800's, it is almost impossible to imagine any true "lingua franca" not being at least based on a western European language that uses the Latin alphabet.

Latin itself would be a good bet since it was the commonly learned language of scholarship and science throughout the west into the mid-late 19th century.

Without significantly earlier PoDs, there is simply no way Chinese (or any language that used the scripts developed from written Chinese) would become globally dominant. The same could probably be said of Arabic, although I think this is marginally more likely, especially if Islam continued its expansion into the 18th and 19th century. Greek or a Cyrillic-based language is also unlikely. Since the PoD presumes that English does not become a lingua franca, presumably something will have happened to forestall or eliminate the rise of the British Empire.

The other possibility is a created language like Esperanto. The widespread adoption of "real" languages like Latin, French, and English as lingua franca reduced Esperanto to a novelty, but if no one "European" nation became dominant (as Britain and later the USA did) a created language that could be relatively easily learned and used by anyone familiar with an Indo-European language might have actually succeeded.

 

[ZhugeLiang]

Without significantly earlier PoDs, there is simply no way Chinese (or any language that used the scripts developed from written Chinese) would become globally dominant. The same could probably be said of Arabic, although I think this is marginally more likely, especially if Islam continued its expansion into the 18th and 19th century. Greek or a Cyrillic-based language is also unlikely. Since the PoD presumes that English does not become a lingua franca, presumably something will have happened to forestall or eliminate the rise of the British Empire.

There's no fixed POD, so there's nothing like "too early". This is pre-1900, remember. Besides, Chinese could easily become the lingua franca of Asia just by making society less antagonistic to trade. The Song had discovered the Bessemer Process and a bunch of other industry, too, and could easily produce all the goods to make them dominant in trading. A POD like 1100's-1200's could easily do.

If that's too early for the OP, we can look to an industrialized China (1800's), which would naturally dominate the East Asia region, economically, militarily, and culturally. With control over this area's resources, they're able to form the biggest power bloc (in terms of population).

Besides, why can't Chinese script become dominant? Why not Arabic? You're not explaining.

See, the thing is that a Chinese 'Industrial Revolution' could occur, but they'd struggle to keep it going in the face of huge peasant migrations lowering job prices. The tech could easily go to the Middle East just like gunpowder and make the Arabs and Persians filthy rich and dominant.

Yes, but Chinese is different from Mandarin.

Eh, Mandarin is a Chinese dialect. When the OP mentioned Mandarin, I think he might be referring to Chinese.

 

[Intransigent Southerner]

Eh, Mandarin is a Chinese dialect. When the OP mentioned Mandarin, I think he might be referring to Chinese.

I don't know, I think most people in the West differentiate between at least two Sinitic languages that are part of the Chinese umbrella, the two being Mandarin and Cantonese (although a lot of people think there are only these two).

 

[Tom Colton]

Nah, those are all too mainstream. I instead choose...





...Danish.

 

[Abdominalz]

Welsh/Brythonic: Have the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain simply not happen, or have the Anglo-Saxons create a Kingdom(s) in Britain but go native like the Franks in France.

Russian and English: Have Kerensky manage to defeat the Bolsheviks, sign his own treaty of Brest-Litovsk and call elections. The new Russian Republic manages to recover from the war, continue to industrialize and be a successful multi-ethnic democracy with equal rights and autonomy for the non-Russian minorities. Decolonisation of the Caucasus and Central Asia may occur later similar to in Africa. Either way, Russia manages to become a stable, democratic and industrialized superpower with its own TNCs, its own equivalent of Holywood. Russia's economic and cultural influence is strongest in Eastern Europe and in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Mongolia (depending on whether the latter countries become independent) and Russian becomes the lingua Franca in all those areas. Elsewhere, Russian and English together compete for the honor.

 

[My Username is Inigo Montoya]

Nope. Too many butterflies to assume that

Yes, we cannot assume it, but nonetheless Great Britain is quite likely to host at least one world power at some point in history. Its geography and natural resources favour it.