AHC: Form alternate/new ethnic groups of the world
- Thread starter Caravels of Portugal
- Start date
Gothic diverged from North Germanic in the 2nd or 3rd century AD and West Germanic around 1st or 2nd century BC which would mean little mutual intelligibly even in the best case, if we mix that with Slavic, Greek and Turkic loanwords, it’s even less understandable, but it likely have a basic vocabulary and grammar which is relative easy for other Germanic people to learn. Of course a Gothic revival may see replacement of non-Germanic loanword with Germanic ones.
(From an RPG setting idea I had)
Novosibirian
Language: Russian
History/Ancestry: In a TL where the sea level is the same, but only about 1/5 of Antarctica is glaciated, Russian colonists, including cossacks, were sent to East Antarctica, founding the city of Novaya Perm and New Siberia, whilst conquering the native Polynesian-descended Antarcticans.
Language: Russian, with Influences of Ukrainian from the Cossacks, and Native Antarctic.
Majority Religion: Russian Orthodox
Cultural groups: East Slavic, Antarctican
Region: OTL East Antarctica
Novosibirian
Language: Russian
History/Ancestry: In a TL where the sea level is the same, but only about 1/5 of Antarctica is glaciated, Russian colonists, including cossacks, were sent to East Antarctica, founding the city of Novaya Perm and New Siberia, whilst conquering the native Polynesian-descended Antarcticans.
Language: Russian, with Influences of Ukrainian from the Cossacks, and Native Antarctic.
Majority Religion: Russian Orthodox
Cultural groups: East Slavic, Antarctican
Region: OTL East Antarctica
Name: Romalanders
Language: Standard Romani (Koine language with Balkan and Vlax elements predominating alongside partial Calo and Carpathian influences)
Religion: Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Sunni Islam, Shaktist Hinduism
Ancestry: South Asians, Persians, Armenians, Turks, Balkanites, Hungarians, Slovaks, Iberians, and more recently Africans
Phenotype: Wide spectrum ranging from European to South Indian/Dravidian
Population: 4,600,000 (400,000 in the diaspora, excluding non-Romalander Romani and Domari)
Distribution: Romaland (OTL Guyana + Trinidad-Tobago + Grenada)
Culture: South Asian, Middle Eastern, Eastern European, Southern European, South American
History: After the devastating Porajmos of the Second World War and near extermination of Europe's Romani population, many Roma intellectuals, believing that the continent which had hosted their ancestors for centuries could no longer guarantee their safety anymore, proposed the creation of a new homeland for their nation where they wouldn't have to life alongside other Europeans. As the British government approved turned the Mandate for Palestine into the new Jewish homeland, Israel, so did the colonies of Guyana, Trinidad-Tobago, and Grenada become the new Romani homeland, Romaland (the proposal to name it Romanistan was rejected by its first president, Gheorghe A. Lăzăreanu-Lăzurică), on April 8, 1950. The reasoning behind choosing those Caribbean colonies as the designated Romani nation-state was that they were already home to significant South Asian populations for at least 100 years by then.
Upon the establishment of Romaland as a country and its admission into the United Nations, strict anti-miscegenation laws were established, prohibiting intermarriage between Romani and Africans, although they were allowed to marry former South Asian indentured servants due to their own ancestral origin from South Asia. Paying homage to the Indian heritage of its people, Romaland aligned itself with India by becoming a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961, being the organization's only representative from the Americas other than Cuba. Despite being nominally a liberal democracy for just over the first two decades of its existence, it unfortunately fell to a military dictatorship in 1972 under General Žarko Jovanović (who interestingly enough, wrote the country's national anthem), who would rule with an iron fist until his death in 1985, being succeeded by his close associate, Colonel Juan de Dios Ramírez Heredia. The latter was deposed in 1999 by the mayor of the capital city New Kannauj (Georgetown renamed), Flórián Farkas, who proclaimed a de jure "constitutional" (de facto absolute) monarchy by declaring himself "King of the Gypsies". His despotic rule, and in turn 46 years of national tyranny, would finally come to an end in 2008 with the global financial crisis forced him to resign and restore the democratic process.
Ever since then, Romaland has become one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America in the Caribbean, with rapidly expanding foreign investment and tourism driving its relatively quick GDP growth. The anti-miscegenation laws were lifted, and Africans were recognized as a national minority with the same status that Amerindians, Portuguese, and Chinese had since Romaland’s founding. The country is classified as an upper middle income economy, albeit with considerably visible inequality among the people. Unfortunately, Romaland doesn't have the high level of development that Israel has in the present, making it unattractive for the remaining Roma in Europe to immigrate to.
The Romalanders, as a people, are mainly descended from the Roma who immigrated to Romaland in the latter half of the 20th century, in two waves; first in the 1950s and 1960s during the initial settlement of the country from their original host nations in Eastern Europe, and second following the fall of the Iron Curtain, when a mass migration of economically troubled job seekers sought new lives with their ethnic kin. The Roma immigrants have intermarried with the well-established colonial-era South Asian society (Tamils, Punjabis, Gujaratis, Marathis, Bengalis, etc.), and Caribbean Hindustani vocabulary gradually seeped into the speech of Standard Romani. And more recently, mixed marriages with Africans have been on the rise, following the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws, adding Sub-Saharan African DNA into the diverse Romalander gene pool. Romalanders pride themselves on being a "chameleon nation" and are truly a cultural intersection between continents.
Language: Standard Romani (Koine language with Balkan and Vlax elements predominating alongside partial Calo and Carpathian influences)
Religion: Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Sunni Islam, Shaktist Hinduism
Ancestry: South Asians, Persians, Armenians, Turks, Balkanites, Hungarians, Slovaks, Iberians, and more recently Africans
Phenotype: Wide spectrum ranging from European to South Indian/Dravidian
Population: 4,600,000 (400,000 in the diaspora, excluding non-Romalander Romani and Domari)
Distribution: Romaland (OTL Guyana + Trinidad-Tobago + Grenada)
Culture: South Asian, Middle Eastern, Eastern European, Southern European, South American
History: After the devastating Porajmos of the Second World War and near extermination of Europe's Romani population, many Roma intellectuals, believing that the continent which had hosted their ancestors for centuries could no longer guarantee their safety anymore, proposed the creation of a new homeland for their nation where they wouldn't have to life alongside other Europeans. As the British government approved turned the Mandate for Palestine into the new Jewish homeland, Israel, so did the colonies of Guyana, Trinidad-Tobago, and Grenada become the new Romani homeland, Romaland (the proposal to name it Romanistan was rejected by its first president, Gheorghe A. Lăzăreanu-Lăzurică), on April 8, 1950. The reasoning behind choosing those Caribbean colonies as the designated Romani nation-state was that they were already home to significant South Asian populations for at least 100 years by then.
Upon the establishment of Romaland as a country and its admission into the United Nations, strict anti-miscegenation laws were established, prohibiting intermarriage between Romani and Africans, although they were allowed to marry former South Asian indentured servants due to their own ancestral origin from South Asia. Paying homage to the Indian heritage of its people, Romaland aligned itself with India by becoming a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961, being the organization's only representative from the Americas other than Cuba. Despite being nominally a liberal democracy for just over the first two decades of its existence, it unfortunately fell to a military dictatorship in 1972 under General Žarko Jovanović (who interestingly enough, wrote the country's national anthem), who would rule with an iron fist until his death in 1985, being succeeded by his close associate, Colonel Juan de Dios Ramírez Heredia. The latter was deposed in 1999 by the mayor of the capital city New Kannauj (Georgetown renamed), Flórián Farkas, who proclaimed a de jure "constitutional" (de facto absolute) monarchy by declaring himself "King of the Gypsies". His despotic rule, and in turn 46 years of national tyranny, would finally come to an end in 2008 with the global financial crisis forced him to resign and restore the democratic process.
Ever since then, Romaland has become one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America in the Caribbean, with rapidly expanding foreign investment and tourism driving its relatively quick GDP growth. The anti-miscegenation laws were lifted, and Africans were recognized as a national minority with the same status that Amerindians, Portuguese, and Chinese had since Romaland’s founding. The country is classified as an upper middle income economy, albeit with considerably visible inequality among the people. Unfortunately, Romaland doesn't have the high level of development that Israel has in the present, making it unattractive for the remaining Roma in Europe to immigrate to.
The Romalanders, as a people, are mainly descended from the Roma who immigrated to Romaland in the latter half of the 20th century, in two waves; first in the 1950s and 1960s during the initial settlement of the country from their original host nations in Eastern Europe, and second following the fall of the Iron Curtain, when a mass migration of economically troubled job seekers sought new lives with their ethnic kin. The Roma immigrants have intermarried with the well-established colonial-era South Asian society (Tamils, Punjabis, Gujaratis, Marathis, Bengalis, etc.), and Caribbean Hindustani vocabulary gradually seeped into the speech of Standard Romani. And more recently, mixed marriages with Africans have been on the rise, following the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws, adding Sub-Saharan African DNA into the diverse Romalander gene pool. Romalanders pride themselves on being a "chameleon nation" and are truly a cultural intersection between continents.
Name: Nan, Nanese people, Nanzhaoans, Dalinese
Language: Nan Chinese (Southern Sinitic language with strong Bai and Yi substrate)
Religion: Chinese folk religion, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity
Ancestry: Mandarin-speakers, Pinghua-speakers, Cantonese, indigenous non-Sinitic Yunnanese
Phenotype: East Asian, Southeast Asian
Population: 25,000,000 in China, 5,000,000 in the diaspora
Distribution: China (particularly Yunnan), Taiwan, Southeast Asia, Western world
Culture: Southern Chinese, Taiwanese, Southeast Asian
History: The premise of the Nan people existing ITTL as a separate subgroup of the Han Chinese and not being Mandarin-speaking is that Dali isn't conquered by the Yuan Mongols in the 13th century and survives as an independent kingdom at the geographical and cultural intersection of East Asia and Southeast Asia for another 400 years until the Qing Manchus conquer it in the 17th century, leading to a more recent Han colonization that resulted in weaker assimilation of the native peoples (Bai, Yi, Miao, etc.). Moreover, the Han colonists that arrived in Yunnan mainly spoke Pinghua and Yue instead of Mandarin, resulting in a weak Northern Sinitic influence on the formation of the Nan language and its numerous dialects. Nevertheless, the ethnogenesis of the Nan people was mainly linguistic instead of genetic, with the aboriginal Bai, Yi, and other Yunnanese ethnicities adopting the speech of the Pinghua-speaking and Cantonese immigrants as part of assimilating into the "civilized" Han majority while mixing it with their own non-Sinitic vernaculars, which is why the Nan language is the most divergent of all the varieties of Chinese, with some linguists even arguing for its classification as a separate branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family altogether. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, many Nan immigrated out of Yunnan into Taiwan and Southeast Asia, seeking better opportunities and new fortunes. The 20th and 21st centuries saw the formation of Nan communities in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and to a lesser extent Western Europe. Today the situation of the Nan language is much stronger outside of China than in it, due to Beijing's policy of giving preference to Mandarin over other Sinitic languages in all spheres of public life. The Nan culture is the most similar to those of Southeast Asia among the Han subgroups, and genetically the Nan people are closest to the other ethnic groups of Yunnan.
Language: Nan Chinese (Southern Sinitic language with strong Bai and Yi substrate)
Religion: Chinese folk religion, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity
Ancestry: Mandarin-speakers, Pinghua-speakers, Cantonese, indigenous non-Sinitic Yunnanese
Phenotype: East Asian, Southeast Asian
Population: 25,000,000 in China, 5,000,000 in the diaspora
Distribution: China (particularly Yunnan), Taiwan, Southeast Asia, Western world
Culture: Southern Chinese, Taiwanese, Southeast Asian
History: The premise of the Nan people existing ITTL as a separate subgroup of the Han Chinese and not being Mandarin-speaking is that Dali isn't conquered by the Yuan Mongols in the 13th century and survives as an independent kingdom at the geographical and cultural intersection of East Asia and Southeast Asia for another 400 years until the Qing Manchus conquer it in the 17th century, leading to a more recent Han colonization that resulted in weaker assimilation of the native peoples (Bai, Yi, Miao, etc.). Moreover, the Han colonists that arrived in Yunnan mainly spoke Pinghua and Yue instead of Mandarin, resulting in a weak Northern Sinitic influence on the formation of the Nan language and its numerous dialects. Nevertheless, the ethnogenesis of the Nan people was mainly linguistic instead of genetic, with the aboriginal Bai, Yi, and other Yunnanese ethnicities adopting the speech of the Pinghua-speaking and Cantonese immigrants as part of assimilating into the "civilized" Han majority while mixing it with their own non-Sinitic vernaculars, which is why the Nan language is the most divergent of all the varieties of Chinese, with some linguists even arguing for its classification as a separate branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family altogether. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, many Nan immigrated out of Yunnan into Taiwan and Southeast Asia, seeking better opportunities and new fortunes. The 20th and 21st centuries saw the formation of Nan communities in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and to a lesser extent Western Europe. Today the situation of the Nan language is much stronger outside of China than in it, due to Beijing's policy of giving preference to Mandarin over other Sinitic languages in all spheres of public life. The Nan culture is the most similar to those of Southeast Asia among the Han subgroups, and genetically the Nan people are closest to the other ethnic groups of Yunnan.
Catholic Japanese
Language: Primarily Kyushu and Kansai Japanese, Standard Japanese and Bilingual with English
Population: 5 million with Nagasaki being predominantly Catholic with Hiroshima and Kyoto having a significant Catholic population
History
The Americans refuse to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima which results in Nagasaki having a predominantly Catholic population and the Christian Japanese predominantly collaborate with Americans, the Catholic Japanese are considered a separate Ethnoreligious group from the Shinto-Buddhist Japanese.
The Catholic Japanese are descendants of Kirishitans and converts after the war, they increase population due to the baby boom after the war and some converted due to the missions and aid of the Catholic Church after the war.
Language: Primarily Kyushu and Kansai Japanese, Standard Japanese and Bilingual with English
Population: 5 million with Nagasaki being predominantly Catholic with Hiroshima and Kyoto having a significant Catholic population
History
The Americans refuse to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima which results in Nagasaki having a predominantly Catholic population and the Christian Japanese predominantly collaborate with Americans, the Catholic Japanese are considered a separate Ethnoreligious group from the Shinto-Buddhist Japanese.
The Catholic Japanese are descendants of Kirishitans and converts after the war, they increase population due to the baby boom after the war and some converted due to the missions and aid of the Catholic Church after the war.
Last edited:
I think it's more likely that Americans aggressively tried to convert them to American Evangelical Protestantism, especially considering that apparently their second most common language is English... although English-speaking Christians are overwhelmingly Protestant, and it is doubtful that the United States of the 1940s was considerate enough to specifically assign Catholic soldiers to these areas.
At that time Catholic media in English was practically non-existent unless the Japanese somehow had access to Irish publications. And if there is a significant Catholic minority in Japan, that would probably make it easier for Nisei to immigrate from Latin America (Japanese and Catholic at the same time... but who would speak Spanish or Portuguese as a first or at least second language).
In that case I think we would likely see a split emerging in the community, between those who want to remain Catholic (who speak Japanese and perhaps partly Spanish or Portuguese) and those who have embraced American evangelicalism (who embrace the use of English to distinguish themselves from their other companions / align themselves more closely with their American preachers and coreligionists / both).
Last edited:
I think if there is a Split those in Kyushu will be primarily Catholics, those outside of Kyushu will be primarily Evangelical Protestants, although here, the Christian Japanese are a separate Ethnoreligious Group from the Mainstream Japanese.
Last edited:
Christian Japanese
Language: Japanese Bilingual with English
Population: 6 million
History
The Americans refuse to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima which results in Nagasaki having a predominantly Catholic population and some the Christian Japanese collaborate with Americans in the War, the Christian Japanese are considered a separate Ethnoreligious group from the Shinto-Buddhist Japanese.
The Christian Japanese are predominantly descendants of Kirishitans and converts after the war, they increase population due to the baby boom after the war and some converted to Christiantiy due to the missions.
The primary difference between the Protestant Japanese and Catholic Christian Japanese is the practice of Circumcision at puberty by the Japanese Protestant Christians which is an american influence which makes them similar to the Korean Protestant Christians who also adopted the practice.
The Catholics, which are 5 Million in population are primarily concentrated in Kyushu in Nagasaki and nearby cities while the areas where there are large population of Protestants is in Kyoto and Tokyo and the Protestants are 1 million in population.
The Catholic Japanese would have some ties with the Philippines due to some of the Japanese Priests being assigned in Philippines and Filipino Priests being assigned in Japan.