AHC: Surviving North American Gaelic/Swedish/Dutch/Finnish

Gian

Gian

Banned
The challenge: to come up with a way to have Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Dutch, and Swedish/Finnish survive in the regions of North America (Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Jersey, Delaware, and New York) up to the present-day, all with little changes to the political structure of things. (Bonus if you have them all as official languages)
 
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Chris Triangle

Chris Triangle

Most important thing is to increase non-anglophone immigration to North America and decrease Anglophone migration. Then you have to make sure that England is weakened for long enough that the other nationalities will have time to start building their numbers by natural population growth. Once their numbers are large and they have consolidated themselves into colonies, they have the ability to defend themselves or to threaten to rebel if their language rights aren't respected even when they are absorbed by the British empire. When the colonies declare independence, they insist on retaining this right and a multi-language system. Different states will try to colonize as fast as they can to extend the boundaries of their linguistic sphere. This will cause the Union to disentigrate from friction between English speakers in New England, Virginia and Carolina, Gaelic speakers in Nova Scotia, French Speakers in Canada, Louisiana and the Great Lakes, Dutch Speakers in New York, Swedish and Finnish speakers in New Jersey and Delaware and possibly even German speakers in Pennsylvania.
 
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Zirantun

Banned
There are already very small surviving enclaves of Scottish Gaelic speakers in the Cascades. I believe the last census taken recorded that 1,200 people in the United States speak Scottish Gaelic at home.
 

telynk

There are also enclaves of scotch Gaelic speakers in nova Scotia. From what I remember there are more who speak Gaelic as a first language in nova Scotia than Scotland right now, but they're quickly dying off
 

danwild6

Maybe the the Dutch win the First Anglo-Dutch War and force a repeal of the Laws of Navigation. This leads to greater trade and immigration between The Dutch Republic and England's North American colonies. Maybe continuing after the English seize New Netherland.
 

Zirantun

Banned
Ok, well, in reality, I think that it's a matter of the Founding Fathers coming to a consensus on a national language. Dutch, French, and German, especially German were considered as national languages during the Constitutional Convention. The majority languages of Pennsylvania and New Jersey/New York were German and Dutch (various varieties) respectively. Perhaps if Philadelphia and not Washington D.C. became the official capital, German might have become the de facto national language, with Dutch being preserved as a minority language in New York and New Jersey.
 

katchen

Banned
Ziratun, you may have just put your finger on one of the major reasons the capital was moved from Philadelphia and New York to Washington. There would have been no way that the Southern colonies would have joined with a Union that mostly spoke German. And the German speakers were marginalized.( Benjamin Franklin wanted no more German immigrants (now we may know why). The continentals had no German speaking generals with the exception of Baron von Steuben. (If the Continental Army was drawing a lot of Pennsylvania Germans, that now makes sense). But Steuben was mainly a trainer of troops, not a leader of troops. Had Steuben led, maybe taking Philadephia from Howe or Clinton, history might have been seriously changed, linguistically.
 

Zirantun

Banned
But not only linguistically. 25% of White Americans are ethnically German (claiming German descent, but if you look at their genealogy, there's actually not a lot of mixing). It was difficult for the US to side with England during WWI because so much of the country was fresh from Germany. Now imagine if we spoke German? How would we feel then?
 
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