Language in a Unified Americas

[danielb1]

I would like to know what the linguistic effects would be if both North and South America, prior to 1850, were completely or almost completely unified under a relatively democratic and open regime, with significant immigration from the Old World, a large degree of internal movement and trade, and an elimination of slavery akin to OTL Brazil's (no bloody civil war, no later than 1880s).

I am aware that this is almost ASB - its possible that a United States that includes Canada from the Revolution, a happy-shiny uberMexico stretching from California to Costa Rica, a friendly Bolivarian South American superstate, and a much-earlier-than-OTL Brazil might merge, but its pretty darn unlikely. It also ignores what said state's foreign policy might be - splendid near-isolation or playing hardball with European states who would rightly be scared of this democratic behemoth. Or religious quibbles between the majority Catholics and minority Protestants. Or even whether this state is more like a big United States, a big Brazil, or (in my mind most likely), a mixture of the two.

What I want to know would be what sort of language, by the present day, would be the lingua franca, a true "American" language formed by 150-plus years of internal movement and trade amongst the Americas, immigration of a variety of ethnic groups (I'd personally be partial to bigger-than-OTL populations of Middle Eastern Christian groups, Uighurs and other minority groups in "Greater China", Sorbians (and other small Slavic groups), and Romani/Gypsies, and at least OTL levels of Jewish, Scandinavian, German, and Italian immigration... but thats just personal preference), and political unity. I imagine it would be primarily English/Spanish mixed with lots of Portuguese as well, then add in a smörgåsbord of loanwords (including smörgåsbord itself, of course) from everything from Algonquin to Arabic, but... in what proportions and where? What sort of grammar would this language have - simpler like Spanish, or an even greater nightmare than English grammar? And how fast would the language form and spread, until at some point there's a single language that can be spoken between Labrador and Tierra del Fuego that is no more difficult to mutually understand, say, American and Nigerian English?

 

[Leo Caesius]

Mischsprachen of the sort you're describing here are usually the result of the slave trade or, barring that, a need for basic transactions in liminal areas well-beyond the extent of the central governments. In any free and democratic society with universal or near-universal education, such languages rarely arise (and before anyone brings up Spanglish, that's a different phenomenon known as code-switching).

So, the best way to get a mixed "American" language is a demiglobe-straddling creole society, the product of retaining the institution of slavery at a very high level for a long, long time after the unification of the Americas. Otherwise, you're looking at a series of regional languages like the OTL situation, possibly with the language of the dominant group or (in a democratic society such as the one you've posited) the language with the most utility (most widespread, most speakers, whatever) being adopted as a second language by most citizens. Obviously there would be lots of influence of the regional languages upon the common language, but this influence would be restricted almost entirely to the lexicon, and would be rather obvious regionalisms.

 

[danielb1]

Leo,

while "Code-switching" is obviously what will happen at first, what would happen if the situation remained stable for many decades/centuries, with substantial internal migration akin to the United States during the 1800s and early 1900s, especially as modern transportation speeds up communications between areas? If people speak English with a liberal dose of Spanish loanwords in, say, Atlanta, and Spanish with a liberal does of English loanwords in Havana or Mexico City, when people start talking to each other between these cities they might use a "national language" like pure English or Spanish, or they might find a halfway English/Spanish thats even more of a mix.

Even beyond that, a single "common tongue" could mean that one language serves primary source of grammar and serves as the 'backbone' (probably Spanish, as it has the most speakers and Portuguese is a close relative; English is the other possibility, especially if said union does not include South America), with most of the major linking words and such. It would just include so many new loan words and phrases, starting as regionalisms and spreading nationwide over decades/centuries (I don't need to provide you with examples of words that started in say, Yiddish, that entered the New York City 'regional' vocabulary in the early/mid 1900s and are now understood in most of the US), that most of the dialects would be mutually incomprehensible with, say, Spain's Spanish or the Queen's English.

 

[Leo Caesius]

There are three things that conspire to keep such mixing at the code-switching level:

• The existence of a written standard or standards;
• Mass literacy (presumably through universal education);
• Mass media (newspapers, cinema, radio, television).

So long as the "regional" languages have a written standard and some exposure through education and the media, borrowings of the sort you have described will remain at the level of code-switching and slang, by which I mean non-standard usage. I'll allow that some words for foreign imports (kayaks, boomerangs, bananas) and new technology (television, email, that sort of thing) will spread, if they enter the standard form, but the standard forms of languages have proven themselves remarkably resistant to the intrusion of other forms of borrowings.

You're right that some Yiddish words have penetrated American slang, to the extent that they are understood generally, but in the end how many Americans are really familiar with this slang beyond words like "bagel," "schmuck," and maybe "putz"? I keep finding myself constantly being forced to explain Yiddishisms in my own speech to non-Jews and non-NYers. Plus, there's no guarantee that they're here to stay (ok, well, bagels are here to stay but take a look at any list of slang from earlier eras to see what I mean). From generation to generation the written standard reestablishes itself through education and the media.

So, those are your biggest enemies. What you need to do is ensure that education and the media are available in only one language. This has had remarkable success in places like the European countries, where one dialect of a language has been selected as the "standard" form, and other (usually mutually intelligible varieties) have atrophied and disappeared, even when they have their own written standards and even when those standards may be older than that of the "standard" form.

Even then, it's going to be hard. Look at the Turkish Republic's language policy, which has been rather brutally enforced over many decades now. Despite this, and despite the fact that Kurdish lacks a true written standard (although there have been several attempts), Kurdish remains rather robust. Stable bilingual situations have been known to exist for centuries even in the absence of a written standard. In the event that such a situation arises, the two languages do tend to influence one another, but only in ways that would be perceptible to a linguist - usually they're imperceptible to the speakers, unless they travel away for many years and come back, to discover that their language has changed over the intervening period and that they now speak a markedly archaic form.