49

I thought about this question and wondered: Are there any known cases where a country switched to a different language other than because of being conquered? If some country ever did this I would be very interested in how exactly they implemented it.

What I could come up with:

  • Mongols that conquered China and to some extent Germanic tribes that conquered Rome took over the language of the country they conquered. But they simply assimilated with the native population, they didn't bring the new language back to their home country.
  • Danish used to be the language of the Norwegian upper-class. However, it was when Norway was in a union with Denmark, so essentially they were the same country. And Danish was the official language of that country while Norwegian wasn't (not that any of the Norwegian dialects was ever accepted to be the Norwegian language).
  • Hebrew in the modern Israel is essentially an artificial language. However, it was created to have a common language where previously was none, the Jews who came to Israel spoke many different languages. So it's not like the whole country switched from one language to another. Of course, many other countries went through a similar (even though less radical process), e.g. the modern German (High German) is only one of the many dialects that existed in Germany (and some still exist).

So Japan considered having the whole country switch to English. Did any country actually do something like this?

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  • 4
    I know china has tried to enforce one dialect, but I don't know how well that's going.
    – DForck42
    Oct 24, 2011 at 17:48
  • 1
    @DForck42: That would be similar to Israel - creating a common language where there was none. Lots of countries went through this, e.g. Germany (High German is only one of the many dialects). But that's not really what I am looking for. Oct 24, 2011 at 17:49
  • 1
    I didn't think so, that's why I added it as a comment.
    – DForck42
    Oct 24, 2011 at 17:54
  • 1
    Considering China still has many dialects, I'd say not that well. They did redo the characters under Mao to simplify them, which is why there are Simplified and Traditional Mandarin today. I know it's a lot, but you could probably look at some of the countries that came out from under colonialism in Africa or SEAsia to see if they went back to their original language.
    – MichaelF
    Oct 24, 2011 at 19:15
  • 8
    China did redo its written language with new simplified characters, they also redid the spelling of the transliterated words using Latin alphabet forming Pinyin. Regional dialects and even minority laguages exist within China such as Mongolian, Tibetan. There is a movement to ensure everyone learns Mandarin (Putonghua - "Proper Speak") however this is in addition to, not instead of local languages. I taught at a school in Inner Mongolia where classes were all given in Mongolian and Mandarin was taught as a second language. Oct 25, 2011 at 6:20

18 Answers 18

54

Scotland has gradually changed to using English without being conquered by England. Now I shall temper that a little in that there have been English speaking people living in Scotland just as long as there have in England. The Anglo-Saxons settled south east Scotland as well as north east England. However, English didn't become the majority language for hundreds of years after that.

Scotland had several native languages such as Scots Gaelic, Pictish, a Brythonic language similar to Welsh, and also some Norse or Norn speakers. The Angles brought in Old English. Magnus Magnusson's book "Scotland, The Story of a Nation" has a map of this distribution on page 35.

Old English changed to Middle English and then split to become Scots and Modern English. By the late middle ages just three languages remained. Gaelic, Scots and a small minority English speakers. (Map of Languages in Scotland circa 1400)

After the Union of Crowns and latter Union of Parliaments, Modern English started to increase in use and Scots and Gaelic withered. However, the Union wasn't an invasion. Scotland was never conquered by the English. In fact the opposite. The Scottish king inherited the English crown.

Today almost nobody uses Scots. Instead they use Scottish English with a few hits of Scots. There is a small group of Gaelic speakers but no where near the number of just 200 years ago. Wikipedia gives numbers of 297,823 speakers (18.5% of total population) in 1800 and just 58,652 (1.2%) today. Thus I would argue that Scotland has changed it's language without being conquered.

Mongolia would be a contender for a second answer. Mongolia split from China during the early 20th Century. At that time they used a mix of Mongolian and Chinese (Mandarin) and a little Tibetan. They had there own Mongolian script for writing. However, today if you travel to Mongolia, you will see little use of the Mongolian script. It was replaced with Russian Cyrillic script. The strong influence of of the Soviet Union, which bordered Mongolia, brought about a change in the written language of the area. However, although the Soviet Union had a strong influence, Mongolia always remained a separate nation state and was never conquered by the USSR. Today Mongolian script is usually only seen in Inner Mongolia, within China. Outer Mongolia changed.

Taiwan would also make a third answer. This one maybe politically contentious depending on how you view the status of Taiwan. However, before 1949, Mandarin Chinese was a minority language on Taiwan. When the Republic of China government relocated to Taiwan in 1949, a large number of refugees from the Mainland settled there. Today Mandarin Chinese is the majority language. So officially, the language changed without invasion.

Some Taiwanese will not agree with my assessment as they consider Taiwan to have always been independent from China, assigned to Chinese control, and occupied after WWII. However that is a minority opinion. Others will disagree with me on the opposite argument that Taiwan is not an independent country and thus as part of China, doesn't count.

Singapore will be my fourth contender as an answer. The official languages are Chinese, English, Malay and Tamil. The Last two, Malay and Tamil, are the native languages of the area. English came in via conquest and colonial rule. However, Chinese is now the largest language in use (49.9% of total population) but Singapore has never been conquered by the Chinese. Rather a large influx of Chinese immigrants has changed the cultural balance of the country.

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  • 1
    Thank you, nice answer. The case of Scotland is similar to Denmark-Norway, technically Scotland and Britain were already the same country when the change occurred. As to Mongolia, its independence from Soviet Union was rather theoretical, and things like introducing Cyrillic script is something the Soviet Union would do on occupied territories (Moldova being another example). Finally, Taiwan is an interesting scenario that I know very little about. Looking through Wikipedia, the story seems complicated. What language did they speak before 1949? Oct 25, 2011 at 7:04
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    @ Wladimir Palant: While Mongolia was heavily influenced by the USSR, but it was not conquered by the USSR. It also was not a true part of the USSR. Mongolia is unlike ex-soviet states like Kazakhstan or Georgia which were fully part of the USSR. Mongolia can more be likened to the Easter European states or to North Korea. Very heavily influenced by, but not actually within, the USSR. Oct 25, 2011 at 14:00
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    @Anschel Schaffer-Cohen. I don't think Scotland can be compared to the Warsaw Pact countries during the cold war. During WWII Eastern Europe was conquered first by the Germans then conquered/liberated by the Russians. Soldiers marched through the streets. Scotland's position was quite different. Scotland could better be likened to Virginia and other Southern States in being voluntarily joined in a union that later became unwelcome but unable to secede. Oct 31, 2011 at 5:07
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    Scotland not conquered? Multiple wars of independence, having your coronation stone literally taken by another people, and ceasing to actually exist as a kingdom notwithstanding? May 18, 2015 at 16:31
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    Mongolia is irrelevant here -- 95% of the population speak Mongolian. All they imported from the Soviet Union was a writing system.
    – TonyK
    Oct 1, 2016 at 1:26
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The Roman Empire, at it start under emperors Julius Caesar (44 BC) and Augustus (27 BC) had Latin as its main language, and the one spoken by its elites and leaders. At the end of it, with the capture of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453, the prevailing language of the elites was Greek. The main change came under emperor Heraclius (610 to 641), whose reforms upon taking the throne included the introduction of Greek as the official language.

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  • 16
    @Wladimir Palant: I mean the eastern part of the Roman Empire, which later (starting in the 16th century, a good 100 years after its fall) was commonly being called the "Byzantine Empire", yes. Oct 30, 2011 at 16:13
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    @Michael: I meant the 16th century. Specifically 1557, the year Hieronymus Wolf published his "Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ". Oct 1, 2013 at 14:04
  • 6
    The eastern half of the Roman Empire, and its Byzantine successor always had Greek as the main language of its populace. Even in the Levant and Mideast Greek was a lingua franca. Latin was only pasted onto the elites in the capital, and quickly relapsed once Rome no longer dominated.
    – Oldcat
    Aug 15, 2014 at 22:41
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    @Wladimir Palant the empire under Heraclius DID include Rome.
    – Anixx
    Sep 30, 2016 at 23:06
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    The Eastern part of the Roman Empire never stopped speaking Greece. When the switch to Greek occurred it was just a pragmatic acknowledgement of that reality. Oct 8, 2019 at 10:08
15

How about the Holy Roman Empire?

Joseph II (Holy Roman Emperor, King of Germany etc) changed the language of the Empire to German in 1781 (Patent of Toleration), from Latin, and sometimes from local languages.

Here is the thing: there is some inherent, anachronistic assumption in the question about the language of a country. Before the XXth century, without public education, without media or even general literacy people spoke whatever they wanted. The language of a country was formalized only in things like the language of administrative offices, military command and such. 99% of the population didn't need to speak these at more than an elementary level (if at all).

2
  • Greg - Did Emperor Joseph II change the offical language of the Holy Roman Empire by decree from Latin to German, or did he change the official language of his hereditary lands such as the Kingdoms of Hungary, Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia, Rama, Serbia and Cumania, Galicia and Lodomerica, Bulgaria, Bohemia, etc., the archduchy of Austria, the duchies of Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, Milan, Brabant, Luxemburg, etc., etc., etc.?
    – MAGolding
    May 25, 2016 at 20:20
  • He changed it for all the lands
    – Greg
    May 26, 2016 at 8:15
12

Of course, it happened many times when the country was conquered, later got its freedom and returned to the previous language, that it used before that last conquest. Sometimes the language even started to change before the real freedom came, as in Czech lands in 19th century, when they started to learn they own almost dead language.

The question is formulated obviously by a person, who lives in the mono-language culture. There are others, too. In the older Europe people very often used many languages - one at home, other in the village, third in the town, two more - with traders. For example, in Dagestan even now there are villages, where 2 languages are used that are no used in any other place. Of course, they also know 2-3 wider known Dagestan languages and Russian, too. How do you count these people?

And the picture in all old Europe was as that one. There were very many languages in France, in Germany, really in any country. They were no dialects, they were really very different.

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    + point for pointing out that many parts of Europe was multilingual. It is especially true fro towns which were often bi or trilingual.
    – Greg
    May 18, 2015 at 12:14
  • 1
    Great points. There are also many cases where a country, upon regaining independence, undertakes efforts to revive the previous language but, either intentionally or not, does not completely eliminate the previous ruler's language. Good examples of this are Ireland, which has valiantly slowed or even stopped the decline of the Irish language but is not likely to drop English anytime soon, and Norway, which has introduced the Nynorsk dialect (or language depending on who you talk to) but did not ban or halt the use of the Danish-based Bokmal.
    – Robert Columbia
    Dec 5, 2016 at 20:40
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Many countries have changed their official languages.

South Africa had two official languages (Afrikaans and English) before 1994 and now has 11.

Bolivia used to have only one official language (Spanish), but now it has 37 (yes, 37).

Rwanda went from having French and Kinyarwanda as its official languages to having English and Kinyarwanda, and now has English, French and Kinyarwanda.

In the U.S., Louisiana went from being French-speaking when it gained statehood to becoming bilingual and then in the 1920s actually banned French altogether, before trying to restore it in recent years.

You can find lots of other examples if you look around.

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    I wouldn't call that "changed" - that's adding more. May 26, 2016 at 19:55
  • 2
    +1 for Louisiana and Rwanda; the other examples are less relevant. Dec 4, 2016 at 12:03
  • The Union of South Africa established in 1910 had English and Dutch as official languages. This was changed in 1925, where Afrikaans was added as a form of Dutch. In 1986, all mention of Dutch was scrapped. Sep 12, 2017 at 11:53
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In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Ruthenian gradually became the main official language replacing Lithuanian. After the country became a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ruthenian was superseded by Polish.

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    Even more, the official language of Lithuania was Belorussian - the language of the conquered nation. (Belorussian is the contemporary name of Ruthenian). Only... Sorry, how an official language can change gradually?
    – Gangnus
    Jun 25, 2021 at 10:55
9

Turkey, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, introduced a series of language reforms via the public education system that seriously impacted comprehension of older documents. The changes included massive vocabulary changes as well as a switch from the Arabic to the Roman alphabet. Since the taxonomy of languages is always up for debate, it can be reasonably argued that a change to the Turkish language at this magnitude constitutes a shift to a new language, even if that new language is also called Turkish.

This change differs from the more gradual changes that typified transitions between classical, medieval, and modern languages (e.g. Latin to French, Middle English to Modern English, Old Norse to Danish, etc.) because it was quick, deliberate, and official. This was not a slow social process of changes filtering out through towns and villages and across social classes over decades or centuries, it happened via government decrees and official public school curriculum updates.

8

Ancient Aramaic was adopted as a "lingua franca" by most of the Mesopotamian states in the eleventh century. The Neo-Assyrian Empire, an Akkadian speaking culture, managed to conquer the Aramaean cities, a major center of trade, early on, which included internal exile for the Aramaean elite throughout the Assyrian empire. The meant the ruling class and clerical class Assyrians were likely to also speak Aramaic, making it easier for inter-city trade within and without the empire.

It's almost analogous to the Roman elite adopting Greek after the conquest of Greece, except commoners and nearby trade partners also adopted the conquered tongue as well, while the conquering Assyrians retained their own language as their primary tongue for a while. (And this would get weird when the Chaldeans took over, and energetically re-established Akkadian as the language of the empire.)

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  • 1
    expect you mean "eleventh century BCE"
    – AllInOne
    Sep 29, 2016 at 18:13
7

Although there were many languages spoken throughout the Byzantine Empire (or Eastern Roman Empire), its court and administration language switched from Latin to Greek over time.

6

All of the countries under Roman rule gradually migrated away from common Latin into their own distinctive languages. One example is French, which is a modification and combination of Gaulish and vulgar Latin. England reverted to English as the official tongue of the court sometime in the 13th century after 300 years of French.

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  • 4
    I wouldn't count the Roman one. Every language on Earth changes gradually over time.
    – Nate Glenn
    Oct 25, 2011 at 21:12
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    Both French and English were originally brought into England via invasion and conquest. Oct 26, 2011 at 1:55
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    Even if Roman provinces used Latin they were in fact conquered by germanic tribes that mixed their languages with those in the region, forming the Romance languages.
    – Wilhelm
    Oct 26, 2011 at 3:28
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    @rerun: Your link concerning French clearly shows that it didn't come to England "naturally", England was actually conquered by the French. And France doesn't seem to be a valid example either - Latin mixed with the languages of the invading Germanic tribes there. Oct 26, 2011 at 5:23
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    England reverted to english with out invasion. Latin was introduced by invasion but the derived languages are amalgamations.
    – rerun
    Oct 26, 2011 at 5:30
6

Indonesian

When Indonesia got independant from The Netherlands after WWII, they adopted Indonesian, a variation of Malay, as the official language of their newfounded state.

In 1945, when Indonesia declared its independence, Indonesian was formally declared the national language, despite being the native language of only about 5% of the population.

This choice met several purposes:

  • Getting rid of Dutch, the language of the colonisator.
  • Unifying the country with a common language.
  • Promoting equality of citizens, by adopting a language without class distinctions, hence not Javanese, the most widly spoken language in Indonesia at that time.

With thousands of islands and hundreds of different languages, the newly independent country of Indonesia had to find a national language that could realistically be spoken by the majority of the population and that would not divide the nation by favouring one ethnic group, namely the Javanese, over the others.

Indeed, already three decades beforehand, the Youth Pledge defined Indonesian as bahasa persatuan, the language of unity.

Nowadays, more than 200 millions Indonesians speak Indonesian, even if

Most Indonesians, aside from speaking the national language, are fluent in at least one of the more than 700 indigenous local languages.

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    If the downvoter can explain what's wrong with this answer, I will gladly try to improve it...
    – Evargalo
    Jun 25, 2021 at 7:12
4

The Norman's adopted French as their language even though they were the ones who conquered.

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  • And France itself changed to French at some point, instead of using only Latin for its official business.
    – ChrisW
    Apr 21, 2018 at 18:53
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    @ChrisW: French is just the result of Germans (ie the Franks) attempting to speak Latin. Jun 24, 2021 at 21:27
  • @PieterGeerkens I think French was made to be a lingua franca to be understood across France, where previously they had only local dialects (and Latin).
    – ChrisW
    Jun 25, 2021 at 16:37
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    @ChrisW: Prior to ~1790, "French" was the language/dialect only of Ile du France (plus the courts off Europe). Bretons spoke Breton, Gascons spoke Gascon, Provence spoke Languedoc instead of Landuedoui, etc. Jun 26, 2021 at 10:34
  • @PieterGeerkens Would you reference that statement? I'm referencing e.g. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographe_du_fran%C3%A7ais#Histoire and fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordonnance_de_Villers-Cotter%C3%AAts marking an official change from Latin to French in ~1540. It's true (as I said) that there are regional dialects -- but these days everyone goes to school to learn French also. What happened in ~1790 (apart from the Revolution) that you see it as a watershed -- was there some introduction then of universal schooling in French?
    – ChrisW
    Jun 26, 2021 at 10:48
2

There are of course many language reforms being performed from time to time, as partially listed in other answers. I won't mention language change that happened after the country stopped being "conquered" and as a result of being "free", and focus only on majority languages (there are way too many minority languages being made official in some partial function). However, there are indeed some (recent) examples when there was really a change in language (as in "a language is a sociolinguistic construct, not a mere linguistic one"):

  • Montenegro officially changed its language from Serbocroatian to Montenegrin on 22 October 2007, but the language remained "the same" until some standardization changes in 2009/2010, which made it slightly different from standard Serbian.
  • Bosnia and Hercegovina (or better, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina) slowly (since the 1990s) introduced standard Bosnian language as one of the official languages
  • borderline example is Moldova, where the language has been (since the independence from the USSR) called on and off Romanian and Moldovan, depending on then current political situation (without any changes to the language itself)
  • Singapore's Chinese population changed its languages from Cantonese to Mandarin around the 1980s; this was quite voluntary, because Mandarin gave much better economic opportunities. (Before anyone comments, Cantonese and Mandarin are two different, mutually unitelligible languages)
  • China switched its written official language from Wényánwén to Pǔtōnghuà (these languages are considerably different) slowly from the beginning of the 20th century until after the communist revolution. The situation with the official standard spoken language has been considerably more complicated, but by the end of 20th century, Pǔtōnghuà has firmly become the spoken standard.
  • Malta replaced Italian with Maltese as one (the second being English) of the official languages in 1934 (it was however a part of the British Empire, but this still a nice example)
  • Kingdom of Hungary was still using Latin as its official language until 1836, then switched to Hungarian (it can be argued that it has been "conquered" during all the time, but this did not influence its language choice)
  • USSR adopted Russian as the official union language in 1990 (it was "only" a language of the Russian Federation, one of the union republics until then).
1

One can consider the opposite case: switching the language when the country gains its independence. The new langauge certainly exists, but not all inhabitants of the country may master it, and it may lack written forms or significant representation in the culture and politics. One can consider former Soviet republics as examples, and probably Ireland.

Remark on Hebrew: It is incorrect to say that Hebrew is "an artificial language" (see Constructed language) and it was created from "none": Biblical Hebrew existed as a liturgical language, known to practicing Jews all over the world. The pronunciation was also relatively standard, since being codified by Masoretes. However it has undergone many innovations, such as:

  • developing vocabulary adapted modern realities (basic words like pen, pencil, monthly, etc.)
  • reconstructing some grammatical forms on the basis of of the parallel forms in the related languages (such as Arabic)
  • some grammatical changes due to being used by the speakers of Indo-European languages: notably switching to subject-verb-object word order, and transformation of perfect/imperfect tenses to represent past/future tense and active participle to represent the present tense.
-1

I believe Alaska would also count. I can't imagine there were many (if any) English speakers living there before it was sold to the United States in 1867.

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    I would say that the purchase fits in the 'conquered' category with a little stretching.
    – Oldcat
    Jan 9, 2014 at 22:37
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    There would in fact be a lot of English and French speaking trappers living there. That was part of the reason the US ended up purchasing the land...
    – jwenting
    Mar 3, 2014 at 9:50
-1

The Union of South Africa established in 1910 had English and Dutch as official languages. This was changed in 1925, where Afrikaans was added as a form of Dutch. In 1986, all mention of Dutch was scrapped, so it was Afrikaans only. In 1994, nine native languages were added.

-1

100 years ago, France had many different local languages, such as Breton, a Celtic language. WP says that as late as 1950, there were about a million native Breton speakers. Today the language is for all practical purposes extinct.

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    From all I know, Breton is still far from being extinct. Either way, "minor" languages declining when the official language of the country is a different one is a rather common case. Usually, there is a history of conquest leading to the other language becoming more accepted throughout the country. Apr 22, 2018 at 7:57
-1

One fairly typical scenario for this is the conquest of a foreign country, followeed by the assimilation of the new elite into the conquered population. A good example are the Manchu in China who assimilated so well that their language had becomme extinct at the end of the (Manchu) Qing dynasty. Other examples would be the Mongols in Iran, Russia and Central Asia, or the Bulgars in the Balkans

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