| ▲ | dcminter 7 hours ago |
| Academia in Britain was intimately connected to membership of the church and, thus, to the ability to speak Latin to hold services. It held on beyond that tenure out of both momentum and prestige. |
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| ▲ | graemep 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| That was true in medieval times. From the start of the early modern (e.g. Henry VIII) the Church of England used English for services. The prestige also accrued because it was the language of the educated in Europe for a long time. |
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| ▲ | dcminter 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I agree, but latin was the language of the educated in Europe because of the (Catholic) church, and the universities pre-date the C of E by several hundred years. I was going to answer with just "the church" but the OP specifically asked about academia. | | |
| ▲ | constantius 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | It was the language of the educated because of the Roman Empire. The elites used to study how to be Roman elites before the 5th century, and when Rome fell they just continued, as it was the established sign of higher class. The elite has been educated by Cicero for the last 2 millennia, and continues to be so. A good analogy is French being the language of the elite in Britain, well after the Normans got merged into the general population. |
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| ▲ | LtWorf 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| All academia used latin until quite recently. Because all books were written in latin. Why do you think all animal species have a latin name? You think the ancient romans classified them? |
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| ▲ | dcminter 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Genuinely bizarre comment. Why do you think the books were written in latin? | | |
| ▲ | graemep 23 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | They were written in Latin until well into the modern era. Newton wrote his major work in Latin, for example. | | | |
| ▲ | LtWorf 21 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Because other languages didn't have a writing system, which is why every western language is using latin alphabet now. | | |
| ▲ | dcminter 11 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Would you like to qualify that hilariously wrong statement a bit? | | |
| ▲ | LtWorf a few seconds ago | parent [-] | | Is there a question here or just sneering? I don't really care to waste my time since you don't really seem interested in learning anything new. Have a nice day. |
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| ▲ | 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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