Re: CHAT: Nov 11th

Quoth Nik Taylor:
> alypius wrote:
> > I wonder, too,
> > how different the 20th century might have been if the mother tongue of the
> > USA had been, say, German rather than English.  Just a thought.  ~alypius
>
> Kinda reminds me of a book I read once, called "The Great War: American
> Front".  It was an alternate history book.
Harry Turtledove is *awesome* at doing alternate history.  I'm right now
working through his Worldwar series, whose premise is an alien invasion
that takes place in ~1942 amidst WWII, and the concomitant battle for
the planet.  Seriously, he's gotta be at least somewhat linguistically
oriented, because he's pulling out all sorts of French, German, Yiddish,
and Russian for this. :)

> The premise behind it was that during the Civil War, Britain stepped
> in to mediate a treaty between the USA and the CSA (The South), using
> the threat of intervening on the CSA's side to force the USA to agree.
Not exactly: the idea was that in real life the Confederacy lost an
important set of orders, but in the book those orders went through and
turned the tide (or rather, allowed the Confederacy to demonstrate that
it could defend itself indefinitely, at which point Britain and France
stepped in and recognised the Richmond government).

> Anyways, jump ahead to 1914.  The USA has allied with Germany, due
> mostly to their hatred of Britain for helping the CSA to secede,
Britain and France both; also, during the second war between the states
(~1880s, in _How Few Remain_) they provided some aid to the CSA, iirc.

> the CSA (as well as Canada) has allied with Britain.  So, when WW1
> breaks out, the CSA and the USA are at it yet again.  It ended in the
> middle of the war, with the CSA having occupied Washington, DC (the US
> government had already moved to Philadelphia long ago), and the USA
> parts of Canada and the CSA.  I'll have to buy the sequel to see what
> happens.
No kidding, I'm dying to see how this one turns out.  Among other
things, it is an interesting notion that North America could sustain
four separate "nation-stripes"; as of 1890 or so, each of the four
countries stretch from coast to coast.  This gives each one an
*extremely* long border with the next....

--
-=-Don Blaheta-=-=-dpb@cs.brown.edu-=-=-<http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/>-=-
On a Scientist's door: "Gone Fission"