Note: This article is written as a comparison between OTL and the Differently TL.
Between Differently and our timeline, there are major and minor differences in the languages and their distribution throughout the world. Differently also has some unique languages, like Teedish and Vinlandic.
Words and phrases[]
Some words and phrases in several languages differ.
English[]
Due to a strong purist movement, several words of Old English origin, which in our timeline fell into disuse, survived and are still widely used in Modern English with the senses listed below. Although not to the point of other Germanic languages, English is slightly less Latinized than in our timeline.
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| starlore | astrology |
| ead | wealth, prosperity |
| wight | animal |
| eld | age |
| ettle | intend |
| eke | add |
| tale | quantity, amount |
| pintle | penis |
Portuguese[]
In OTL, Saint Martin of Braga (520–580 AD), wishing to remove Pagan influence, replaced the names of weekdays (Monday to Friday) in the Galician-Portuguese language, which at the time referred to planets named after Roman gods, by Latin liturgical days. As a result, the modern Portuguese, which descends from Galician-Portuguese, as well as Mirandese, are the only Romance languages with numbered weekdays. In Differently, Martin of Braga failed to incorporate such a change, resulting in weekdays similar to those of Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian, etc.
| OTL | Differently | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| segunda-feira | lues | Monday |
| terça-feira | martes | Tuesday |
| quarta-feira | mércores | Wednesday |
| quinta-feira | joves | Thursday |
| sexta-feira | vernes | Friday |
The trema (¨), which in OTL was abolished by 2013, is still used in Differently. It is used in the syllables que, qui, gue and gui to indicate that the U is pronounced, working much like a W in English.
| OTL | Differently | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| frequente | freqüente | frequent |
| linguiça | lingüiça | sausage |
Japanese[]
In Japanese, some words have different forms, or older forms remain more popular than newer ones.
| OTL | Differently | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| コンピューター (Conpyūtā) | Computer | |
| テレビジョン (Terebijon) テレビ (Terebi) (abbre.) |
Television | |
| サッカー (Sakkā) (Main) フットボール (Futtobōru) |
Association Football a.k.a Soccer |
Farsi[]
Due to the Islamic influence never happening, many Arabic loanwords are never created. Salam becomes Dorood for instance.
Romanian/Dacian[]
The language is named Dacian instead of Romanian.
Writing differences[]
Polish[]
The Polish language can be written with either the Cyrillic or Latin scripts, just like Serbian in OTL. Generally, Cyrillic letters are used in eastern parts of Poland while Latin letters are used in the western parts. Warsaw, as the capital, uses both scripts.
Korean[]
Hanja (Chinese Characters) are more commonly used in Korean than in our timeline, but not to the same level as the Japanese kanji. They are also written in simplified forms "borrowed" from Japanese Shinjitai.
Japanese[]
The kana ゐ/ヰ (wi) and ゑ/ヱ (we) remain in use, though mainly the katakana forms for transcribing loanwords. Other extended katakana that are more common in this timeline include ヷ (va), ヸ (vi) and ヹ (ve).
Persian/Farsi[]
Due to Islamic influence never happening, it is written in a different script.
Miscellaneous[]
Latin[]
G and C’s place in the Latin alphabet are swapped, this was due to in this timeline, the Romans when adopting Old Italic, decided to keep the place of the “G” sound as the third spot over the shape of C, and C was moved to Z’s former spot, and like our timeline Z was put in last place. The alphabet goes like this: ABGDEFCHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. No words are changed due to this, except that the word “ABCs” is now “ABGs”:
Distribution[]
- Australia in Differently was colonized by many different European nations, so multiple European languages are spoken there instead of English only. Its languages are English, Dutch, German, Greek, Spanish and French. That, of course, does not include the native Aboriginal languages, spoken not only in Anangu but also all across the continent.
- Alaska, as a federal subject of Russia, has Russian as its most widely spoken language.
- The Arabic-speaking region of the world in OTL has the most significant difference: Arabic itself is restricted to the Arabian Peninsula and certain parts of Africa, while in the rest of the area several different Afro-Asiatic and Romance languages, most of are which are extinct in OTL, are spoken in lieu of Arabic; this includes Syriac, Egyptian (OTL Coptic), and Carthaginian. Persian still adopts the Arabic script.
- Since the differences between Afrikaans and Dutch are fewer in this timeline, Afrikaans is considered a dialect of Dutch rather than a language on its own; together with a Dutch-speaking New Holland, this makes Dutch a much more prominent language in this world, with over 40 million speakers (instead of 25 million as in OTL).
- French is much more common in Louisiana, as legislature that lead to its decline was never passed.
- In the continental Germanic nations of Europe, the constructed language Teedish, created by Adolf Hitler, is often used for intercommunication and to promote cultural integration.
National languages - Indo-European
| Romance Spanish Portuguese French Italian Romanian Other (Catalan, Mauretanian, Carthaginian) Germanic English Dutch German Nordic (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic) Balto-Slavic East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian) West Slavic (Polish, Slovak, Czech) South Slavic (Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Bulgarian, Macedonian) Baltic (Latvian, Lithuanian) | Iranian Iranian (Persian, Pashto, Kurdish) Indo-Aryan Indo-Aryan (Hindustani, Bengali, Punjabi) Isolates Other (Greek, Armenian) Non-Indo-European Other families |
| ||||||||||||||||||
