A Latin-speaking world

Challenge: What historical changes would need to be made in order to make the majority of the world speak Latin? Or is Latin in any circumstance structured to decay into different dialects over a period of time?
 
Last edited:
I believe that a Latinate language could become the majority tongue, but Latin as we know it couldn't. Mainly because it would doubtless mutate over the time it would take for a language to take over the world, but also because Latin as we know it is a structured and rigid language, and as English in OTL shows, the more successful languages are those that can and do absorb other languages like the Blob.
 
I believe that a Latinate language could become the majority tongue, but Latin as we know it couldn't. Mainly because it would doubtless mutate over the time it would take for a language to take over the world, but also because Latin as we know it is a structured and rigid language, and as English in OTL shows, the more successful languages are those that can and do absorb other languages like the Blob.

As i see it, what makes a language succesful is its usefulness, not any inherent flexibility of the language. English IOTL happened to be the language first of the British empire, the most important trading network of the world at its time, and then of the US, which was basically the same thing.

The biggest handicap Latin suffered was the lack of a compulsory schooling system at that time, and specially, at the the time of the fragmentation of Rome. There was no cohesion between the fragments of Rome, there was no accepted common normative, nor way to teach it, except for a handful of privileged people.

While the empire lasted, the intra-trade network kept latin cohesive... even if it was still evolving! Vulgar latin was fairly coherent throught the empire, with very small fragmentation if we have in account that only a few people had schooling, and the slow speed of the communications.

Any language at that time would have fragmented and eventually become several different languages, and die. Any language nowadays suffers very little fragmentation over time (as long as it's spoken by urban communities, not just isolated agrarian or pre-agrarian human groups).
 
Can we have a majority of the world where Latin is used as the language of administration, governance, diplomacy and possibly trade?

Yes, although its going to be tough. You either need a world run by the Roman Catholic church or by some variant of a Holy Roman Empire, one that is NOT German dominated. Neither is at all likely, but both are at least possible.

Can we get a world where it is the native language of a majority? No way, no how. See the arguments above.
 
Top