<p><strong>Yes, that is a realistic choice in fictive works.</strong></p>

<p><strong>Abstractly</strong><br>
Nobody can be 100% sure of how realistic it is, and in conlanging&mdash;or even fictive worldbuilding in general&mdash;you may always be a bit unrealistic. Think about some fictive works or conlangs you know placed in another world; they make many assumptions that extraterrestrial life has two eyes, hair on their head, ~1m&ndash;2m tall, and their mouths have lips, teeth, an alveolar ridge, a glottis and a tongue. (Your idea takes place in our (but alternative) world, but the point of the example still stands.)</p>

<p><strong>Linguistically</strong><br>
There could be many ways of forming such a language, of which the most realistic are (chiefly from Mark Rosenfelder's <em>Advanced Language Construction</em>):  </p>

<ul>
<li><p>A creole. A creole is, by <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/creole#Noun" rel="nofollow noreferrer">definition</a>, a pidgin which has native speakers. A pidgin is formed when two languages try to communicate, for reasons of trade or otherwise. If you read about <em>Tok Pisin</em> (etymologically "talk pidgin", a creole), you'll see a lot of simplified grammar (and, as you say, English is already quite simplified).</p></li>
<li><p>From Swedish, but developing independently from main Swedish. As a native English speaker born in Holland, informal English I use to talk to my family is very different from main English. For example, I'd say *<em>How late is it?</em> (from Dutch <em>Hoe laat is het?</em>) by accident. Also, lots of sound changes happen. Even though I don't merge /w/ and /ʍ/, many people I know that used to be able to can't anymore, and my rhotic in both Dutch and English is [ʁ], even though neither Dutch nor the Scottish dialect of English has it.</p></li>
<li><p>A combination of the two. After a period of isolation (independent development), the Swedes start talking more like the Germans (like creoles, but slightly different)&mdash;a combination of the two.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>So, even though it might be somewhat unrealistic, within the dome of fiction it isn't unrealistic enough to stop you.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-03T15:29:43.313Z
2018-03-03T17:33:19.937Z
2018-03-03T17:33:19.937Z
Duncan
<p>Well, in an alternate history this is a perfectly plausible scenario.</p>

<p>Note that the the German contribution to the language should be <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Low German</a> corresponding to the local dialects of Pommerania. It is cloaser to Swedish because the second sound shift characterising High German has not affected the Low German dialects. A good dose of loan words from High German can add some spice to Soudwegian. </p>

<p>In the time frame you are looking at, Polish or other Slavonic influence is already very low, don't overdo it.</p>

<p>You may look at languages like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plautdietsch_language" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Plautdietsch</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Afrikaans</a> for more inspiration.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-03T18:36:28.743Z
I'm thinking of adding several phonological changes; I'm not sure that this would leave much to recognise from High or Low German. For instance, their main city should be Gustauhau - Gustav's Harbour.
Luís Henrique
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-03T18:40:50.877Z
Add Gustauhau to your question, it indicates some directions! The sound shift /av/ to /au/ is not that disturbing, I see the /g/ remains /g/ and /st/ remains /st/ ...
Sir Cornflakes
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-03T19:54:31.620Z
Thanks for the links, though Wikipedia is probably unusable (1,500,000 native High German speakers in Brazil? Where?)
Luís Henrique
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-04T03:01:01.670Z
I'm not sure what page you're complaining about exactly, but [Brazilian German](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Brazilians#Language) has all the sources.
Circeus
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-05T00:34:36.283Z
And those sources... do not support that absurd figure: they either refer to 1940, or tell us about much lesser numbers (700 or 900 K) of speakers of unspecified "German" - which, of course, is Hunsrückish, never Hochdeutsch. And, of course, many of those sources are in Portuguese, which makes possible to "cite" them to say exactly the opposite of what they actually say.
Luís Henrique
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-05T01:04:40.200Z
Speaking of Hunsrückish, the Wikipedia article has it as "Low German", which it is certainly not.
Luís Henrique
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-03T18:18:39.917Z
2018-03-03T18:18:39.917Z
Sir Cornflakes
<p>The idea is that the Swedes retain a small bit of what is nowadays German territory that they conquered in the 17th century. This is now independent territory, Soudway, with a language of its own named Soudwegian.</p>

<p>Their vocabulary is basically German with a lot of phonetic changes, plus a huge amount of Swedish loans (and smaller but important contributions from Polish and French), while the grammar is very simplified, like Middle/Modern English as opposed to Old English.</p>

<p>Is that a realistic choice, or was the grammatic simplification that characterised the process between English/French unique&mdash;not something that we should expect from other similar fusions?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-03T17:01:39.873Z
Would downvoters please mind explaining?
Duncan
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-16T19:20:39.327Z
There is already a lot of overlap in both vocabulary and grammatical structures; after all, they are both Germanic languages (Swedish is North Germany). You would replace some of the Norse vocabulary by Middle German equivalents. Perfectly plausible.
Oliver Mason
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-10-14T22:47:39.137Z
Seems to me that the German spoken in Soudway would not diverge much from neighboring dialects, unless commerce is cut off.  A Swedish-speaking community, on the other hand, would diverge from the home language, but (because of proximity) not as much as Afrikaans did.
Anton Sherwood
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-01-19T21:27:59.127Z
You might be aware, and this is an old question, but someone should note that you could argue that (at least some soft version of) the reverse scenario actually took place. The language of Sweden was under heavy influence from Low German in the middle ages, and a fair proportion of the modern Swedish vocabulary can be traced back to Low German and that time. In the same time, much of the grammar of Old Norse, with noun cases, verb forms agreeing with persons and other stuff found in many Indo-European languages, were lost in many dialects during this time.
Edvin
<grammar><conlang-creation><diachronics>
Soudwegian: A Swedish-German process similar to what happened to English and French?
# Soudwegian: A Swedish-German process similar to what happened to English and French?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-03-03)

The idea is that the Swedes retain a small bit of what is nowadays German territory that they conquered in the 17th century. This is now independent territory, Soudway, with a language of its own named Soudwegian.

Their vocabulary is basically German with a lot of phonetic changes, plus a huge amount of Swedish loans (and smaller but important contributions from Polish and French), while the grammar is very simplified, like Middle/Modern English as opposed to Old English.

Is that a realistic choice, or was the grammatic simplification that characterised the process between English/French unique—not something that we should expect from other similar fusions?

**Tags:** grammar, conlang-creation, diachronics
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Would downvoters please mind explaining?  
> **username_2**: There is already a lot of overlap in both vocabulary and grammatical structures; after all, they are both Germanic languages (Swedish is North Germany). You would replace some of the Norse vocabulary by Middle German equivalents. Perfectly plausible.  
> **username_3**: Seems to me that the German spoken in Soudway would not diverge much from neighboring dialects, unless commerce is cut off.  A Swedish-speaking community, on the other hand, would diverge from the home language, but (because of proximity) not as much as Afrikaans did.  
> **username_4**: You might be aware, and this is an old question, but someone should note that you could argue that (at least some soft version of) the reverse scenario actually took place. The language of Sweden was under heavy influence from Low German in the middle ages, and a fair proportion of the modern Swedish vocabulary can be traced back to Low German and that time. In the same time, much of the grammar of Old Norse, with noun cases, verb forms agreeing with persons and other stuff found in many Indo-European languages, were lost in many dialects during this time.  

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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2018-03-03. Score: 1 | Accepted answer

**Yes, that is a realistic choice in fictive works.**

**Abstractly**  
Nobody can be 100% sure of how realistic it is, and in conlanging—or even fictive worldbuilding in general—you may always be a bit unrealistic. Think about some fictive works or conlangs you know placed in another world; they make many assumptions that extraterrestrial life has two eyes, hair on their head, ~1m–2m tall, and their mouths have lips, teeth, an alveolar ridge, a glottis and a tongue. (Your idea takes place in our (but alternative) world, but the point of the example still stands.)

**Linguistically**  
There could be many ways of forming such a language, of which the most realistic are (chiefly from Mark Rosenfelder's *Advanced Language Construction*):

* A creole. A creole is, by [definition](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/creole#Noun), a pidgin which has native speakers. A pidgin is formed when two languages try to communicate, for reasons of trade or otherwise. If you read about *Tok Pisin* (etymologically "talk pidgin", a creole), you'll see a lot of simplified grammar (and, as you say, English is already quite simplified).
* From Swedish, but developing independently from main Swedish. As a native English speaker born in Holland, informal English I use to talk to my family is very different from main English. For example, I'd say \**How late is it?* (from Dutch *Hoe laat is het?*) by accident. Also, lots of sound changes happen. Even though I don't merge /w/ and /ʍ/, many people I know that used to be able to can't anymore, and my rhotic in both Dutch and English is [ʁ], even though neither Dutch nor the Scottish dialect of English has it.
* A combination of the two. After a period of isolation (independent development), the Swedes start talking more like the Germans (like creoles, but slightly different)—a combination of the two.

So, even though it might be somewhat unrealistic, within the dome of fiction it isn't unrealistic enough to stop you.


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### Answer by username_5 on 2018-03-03. Score: 0

Well, in an alternate history this is a perfectly plausible scenario.

Note that the the German contribution to the language should be [Low German](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German) corresponding to the local dialects of Pommerania. It is cloaser to Swedish because the second sound shift characterising High German has not affected the Low German dialects. A good dose of loan words from High German can add some spice to Soudwegian.

In the time frame you are looking at, Polish or other Slavonic influence is already very low, don't overdo it.

You may look at languages like [Plautdietsch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plautdietsch_language) or [Afrikaans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans) for more inspiration.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: I'm thinking of adding several phonological changes; I'm not sure that this would leave much to recognise from High or Low German. For instance, their main city should be Gustauhau - Gustav's Harbour.  
> **username_5**: Add Gustauhau to your question, it indicates some directions! The sound shift /av/ to /au/ is not that disturbing, I see the /g/ remains /g/ and /st/ remains /st/ ...  
> **username_0**: Thanks for the links, though Wikipedia is probably unusable (1,500,000 native High German speakers in Brazil? Where?)  
> **username_6**: I'm not sure what page you're complaining about exactly, but [Brazilian German](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Brazilians#Language) has all the sources.  
> **username_0**: And those sources... do not support that absurd figure: they either refer to 1940, or tell us about much lesser numbers (700 or 900 K) of speakers of unspecified "German" - which, of course, is Hunsrückish, never Hochdeutsch. And, of course, many of those sources are in Portuguese, which makes possible to "cite" them to say exactly the opposite of what they actually say.  
> **username_0**: Speaking of Hunsrückish, the Wikipedia article has it as "Low German", which it is certainly not.  

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