Random Idea: Alt-History Languages

[Thakowsaizmu]

So here's a question for some of you who might be interested in doing a little mental exercise. A while ago I was working on an alt-history world that I ditched because I was a little too ambitious. It was going to be the backdrop of a bunch of novels that frankly I was never going to write. But one of the things that was going to happen was that at some point the Russian crown was going to adopt Islam and spread it. So what I am curious is, how do you think the Russian language would change? How would it be written in Arabic? What kind of loanwords would pop up? Would the Arabization impact grammar at all?

Also, I posted this in the conlang section because I am more interested in what would happen to the language than I am anything political right now, and what your thoughts are as to how Russian would be written / changed.

[quixoticxenoglot]

Here's Bosnian written in (Perso-)Arabic in real life, if that helps.

[Creyeditor]

They would probably team up with the Osmans, so Turkish and Persian might have an influence to.
They will probably use arabic loans instead of French ones, there will be al-kitab and сарай is likely to change its meaning

[Birdlang]

They would have to invent several new Arabic letters for palatized consonants. I wonder what would happen if they added pharyngeals to Russian. THEN THAT WOULD REALLY BE FUN!!!

[DesEsseintes]

One thing I think would be quite viable and fun would be for the broken plurals of Arabic loanwords to be retained. I think this is quite viable as Russian already has plural patterns with stress shift causing vowel reductions and ablautesque phenomena. Compare озеро ['ɔzʲɪrə]* lake and озёра [ɐzʲɔrə]* lakes.

Also, genitive plurals such as девушек from девушка, яиц from яйцо, etc. should make Russians prime candidates for adopting plural patterns such as kitaab → kutub

*these are prob not accurate - I'm just roughly transcribing what I say

Have a paradigm:

Code: Select all

      S       PL
nom.  китаб   кутуби
acc.  китаб   кутуби
gen.  китаба  кутуб
dat.  китабу  кутубам / китабам
inst. китабом кутубами / китабами
prep. китабе  кутубах / китабах

The second options for dative, instrumental and prepositional plural would be for a system whereby the singular stem is used for all forms but the plural nominative, accusative and genitive, which might be quite fun.

Anyways, just an idea.

[Salmoneus]

Why would they write in an arabic script? Islam doesn't demand that! Dozens of languages in central asia, the caucasus and the balkans are written in cyrillic by muslims. Even Persia took centuries to switch to arabic script, and they're both right next to arab territory and at times directly ruled by arabs. I don't see the Tsars adopting arabic script, at least for general purposes (although I imagine the intelligentsia would learn the language and script, and perhaps loanwords from arabic or persian might even be written in the script in literary texts).

There may have to be adaptations to cyrillic to deal with some arabic consonants?

[Thakowsaizmu]

Why would they write in an arabic script?

The assumption here is that they did. The why is irrelevant. Taken for a given that they did decide to do this, how did they do it?

[cntrational]

It would be cool to have a Song dynasty industrialization timeline, with Chinese influenced European languages.

[zyma]

I'm assuming that the "point of divergence" that separates this althistory situation from the real world is that, when Vladimir the Great of Kievan Rus' was looking for a religion to adopt around 987-988 AD, he chose Islam instead of Orthodox Christianity. If that's the case, why wouldn't Russian be written in the Arabic script?

Glagolitic and Cyrillic were scripts based on Greek and created by Byzantine missionaries so that the Slavs could read the Bible in their own language(s). If the Muslim missionaries succeeded in Russia instead of the Byzantine ones, why would Russian still be written in Cyrillic like it is in the real world?

Before Glagolitic, the Slavic languages were unwritten (unlike Persian), so if Kievan Rus' adopted Islam instead of Orthodox Christianity, I think it's quite likely that Russian would be written in the Arabic script. And all the languages that are written in Cyrillic in the real world because of Russian influence/imperialism would likely be written in the Arabic script instead in this world.

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Russian would certainly gain lots of Arabic loanwords, and I'm sure that at least some of these could retain irregular forms and such (as DesEsseintes suggested). However, I don't see the phonology of Russian changing all that much between circa 1000 AD and the modern day. I could see the spelling of pharyngeal/pharyngealized/other non-Russian consonants being retained in some loanwords, though, and maybe these consonants would exist as marginal phonemes in loanwords only, pronounced almost exclusively by the upper, educated classes. There's no way these consonants would make their way into native Russian words, though.

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I don't know enough about Russian and its phonology (or about the Arabic script) to make a "proposal" for how Russian would be written with the Arabic script, but I'd recommend basing it off of the Arebica script for Bosnian that @secondmoonofuranus linked to above. I'll give it a shot, though. Someone correct me if I've done something that wouldn't work because of the nature of Russian phonology (particularly the vowels and palatalization).

I'd take the consonants directly from Arebica - using <ي> for <й> (<ј> in Bosnian Cyrillic, apparently). Also, I'd use <ڃ> for <щ> if it's really necessary for that to be written as a separate letter from <ш> (again, I don't know enough about Russian phonology to know whether or not it's really necessary), even though <ڃ> is used for the Bosnian Cyrillic affricate <ћ> in Arebica.

I would use <آ> for <а/я>, <ە> for <э/е>, <اٖى> for <ы/и>, <ۉ> for <о/ё>, and <ۆ> for <у/ю>, and then <ݗ> (used in Arebica for <ђ> in Bosnian Cyrillic) to represent /ʲ/. If <и> and <ы> have to be spelled separately, I'd use <ج> (used in Arebica for <џ> in Bosnian Cyrillic) for <ы> and keep <اٖى> for <и>.

Looking at DesEsseintes' post for examples, perhaps:

<ۉزݗەرۉ> (озеро) ['ɔzʲɪrə] lake, <ۉزݗۉرآ> (озёра) [ɐzʲɔrə] lakes

[zyma]

It would be cool to have a Song dynasty industrialization timeline, with Chinese influenced European languages.

What level of industrialization are you talking about?

[cntrational]

It would be cool to have a Song dynasty industrialization timeline, with Chinese influenced European languages.

What level of industrialization are you talking about?

The Song dynasty was an era in Chinese history where it nearly achieved industrialization, similar to England much later. The only reason it didn't happen was because the Mongols overran them.

[zyma]

It would be cool to have a Song dynasty industrialization timeline, with Chinese influenced European languages.

What level of industrialization are you talking about?

The Song dynasty was an era in Chinese history where it nearly achieved industrialization, similar to England much later. The only reason it didn't happen was because the Mongols overran them.

Interesting, I didn't know that.

My question still stands, though. You say the level of industrialization was similar to England much later - but how much later, exactly? I assume sometime between circa 1760 and 1840, but I could be wrong, and even if I'm not, that's still approximately 80 years.

Also, what would stop the Mongols from overrunning them in this timeline? How would their continued industrialism cause European languages to be influenced by Chinese when real-world European industrialism hasn't caused Chinese languages to be considerably influenced by European languages? Would the differences in time between the real-world European and althistory Song Dynasty industrial revolutions be behind this? Would the Song Dynasty have control over Europe, either economically, politically, or in both ways? Would they physically invade parts of Europe? Would all this lead to Asia colonizing the Americas, Africa, and Australia sooner than, and instead of, Europe? And what variety of "Chinese" was the dominant language of the Song Dynasty?

I personally think that a creole of some sort used for Song-European trade would be more likely than Chinese influencing European languages, but both scenarios sound interesting to me.

[cntrational]

Oh, see, the Song weren't just a few decades early. It existed between the 800s and 1200s.

[zyma]

Oh, see, the Song weren't just a few decades early. It existed between the 800s and 1200s.

Yeah… I know. What does that have to do with any of the questions I asked?

My question still stands, though. You say the level of industrialization was similar to England much later - but how much later, exactly? I assume sometime between circa 1760 and 1840, but I could be wrong, and even if I'm not, that's still approximately 80 years.

If you're referring to this, I'm not saying that the Song Dynasty existed circa 1760 - 1840, I'm asking if their level of industrialization was similar to the level of industrialization that existed in real-world England during the "First Industrial Revolution", which was circa 1760 - 1840.

[Keenir]

And what variety of "Chinese" was the dominant language of the Song Dynasty?

I would guess Cantonese, as the Song China was in what we would nowadays consider southern and (central) China.

[DesEsseintes]

And what variety of "Chinese" was the dominant language of the Song Dynasty?

I would guess Cantonese, as the Song China was in what we would nowadays consider southern and (central) China.

No, almost certainly not. The northern Song had their capital at Kaifeng, in what is now Henan province, and spoke an ancestor of early Mandarin. I'm pretty sure that when the Song court moved south to Hangzhou they took their language with them.

The ancestor of modern Cantonese almost certainly already existed at this point as Cantonese retains many features of Tang Dynasty Chinese that were lost in Mandarin. The speakers of this dialect may not have reached Guangdong until the 11th or 12th century if I remember correctly.

Wu dialects would probably have been spoken in the vicinity of the southern Song capital and might have influenced court language.

It is important to bear in mind that due to China's vast area, endless dialectal variation has always existed.

[zyma]

So they would have spoken Mandarin… what stage of the language would have been spoken around that period? Middle Chinese or Old Mandarin?

[cntrational]

Oh, sorry. They weren't at true industrial levels yet, but it was comparable to the 1760 - 1840 industrial revolution, yes.

[zyma]

Oh, sorry. They weren't at true industrial levels yet, but it was comparable to the 1760 - 1840 industrial revolution, yes.

No worries - just a silly misunderstanding. Do you know what kind of technology they got the most use out of?

[Keenir]

And what variety of "Chinese" was the dominant language of the Song Dynasty?

I would guess Cantonese, as the Song China was in what we would nowadays consider southern and (central) China.

No, almost certainly not. The northern Song had their capital at Kaifeng, in what is now Henan province, and spoke an ancestor of early Mandarin. I'm pretty sure that when the Song court moved south to Hangzhou they took their language with them.

my bad then; perhaps its best that I lost that atlas years ago.

Wu dialects would probably have been spoken in the vicinity of the southern Song capital and might have influenced court language.

might that be what I remembered seeing on the historical atlas?

(it had one map for at least the two or three centuries prior to the Mongols, so I think the (southern) Song were neighbors with a nation which the atlas called Pagan)
{it was worse for Japan in that atlas - at least 700 years in one page}