I got this idea from Modern Standard Arabic. Modern Arabic varieties are as divergent as modern Romance languages, and many are not mutually intelligible. But, Modern Standard Arabic is used as the medium of governance, culture and media. This helps to create a sense of "Arabness" among the various nationalities. So, how do we get a situation where a standard Latin language is used for means of governance, media and culture, and is not usurped by the various Vulgar Latin languages? How does this effect nationalism?
WI: Standard Latin language
- Thread starter Dfront21
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By the same use of high Latin, ie that used by the politico-literary elite, throughout the western empire. In the East of course koine Greek served the same purpose. Romance languages began to diverge concurrently with the political challenges to Rome and the progressive dissolution of the western empire in the 5th century. Sardinian was the earliest in the 3rd century, the period of the military anarchy. So long as Rome is united, high Latin can continue. Literary Arabic is based on the Quran, Latin doesn't have a similar text - Jerome's Vulgate Bible notwithstanding - and so needs political unity as the catalyst for the continued dominance of high Latin. Nationalism, with rare exceptions, is an essentially modern phenomenon based on the nation-state.
Of course Latin was the European lingua franca for the church and scholars right to the 20th century. It was used by the Hungarian parliament as its official language in the 19th century because of the great linguistic diversity of the kingdom of St Stephen. When Primo Levi emerged from Auschwitz, he was able, through his classical education, to communicate in Latin with a Polish priest. It is really only in the last fifty years or so that this cultural primacy has slipped.
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Is there a way for getting a controverse on English as lingua franca after WW2 (Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Just an example) and keep Latin as lingua franca?
I think it reflects American political, economic and military might. Latin is still quite strong in a number of countries, including, I believe, Poland. I prefer Latin to American English myself, but then I am British and classically educated myself.
The Catholic Church practically helped preserve and expand scientific knowledge. The Caliphate by the Renaissance was a shadow of it's former self and the Islamic Golden Age was by gone by then. As others have pointed out the decline of High Latin and subsequently a standard form of Latin came with the decline of the Western Roman Empire. If having a standard form of Latin means keep the Western Empire alive, it would require a rather early POD in the Roman Empire period.
I really hate the myth of the anti-science catholic church. The Church went to all the trouble of preserving and maintaining european literary and scientific tradition for hundreds of years and ultimately created some of the greatest minds in the humanist movement and scientific revolution but all because they put Copernicus on trial for something only tangentially related to his scientific work they get treated like backwards fools throughout history.
+1,000 for this, except that it was Galileo who was put on trial, not Copernicus. Copernicus was able to do science unimpeded, which is probably because he, unlike Galileo, wasn't an obnoxious a-hole who managed to alienate pretty much all his supporters.
(Incidentally, the idea that Galileo was a great scientist is something of a myth anyway. His main proof for heliocentrism, that the tides could only be explained by the movements of the earth causing the sea to slosh about, was provably false even with the knowledge available at the time. Nor was he a martyr for the freedom of scientific enquiry, given that the entire controversy only arose because he kept demanding that the Church officially come down in support of his theory, rather than taking the -- scientifically correct -- position that heliocentrism was possible but not yet proved.)
As for the question asked in the OP, Latin only really stopped being Europe's lingua franca in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the cultural influence of France was such that French was able to displace Latin as the common medium of communication. Reduce this cultural influence somehow, and you'd probably see Latin carrying on as the international language of the continent.
I should note that I used the term high Latin for convenience and sense. It isn't necessarily a standard scholarly usage. I mostly agree about the church though it did have its destructively authoritarian moments. Consider the experiences of St John of the Cross. Without monastic copying though most ancient knowledge would have been lost.