AHC: Literary culture in Western Europe is mainly Latin thru modern times despite fall of WRE in 476

raharris1973

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...and written vernaculars, whether they are Romance, Germanic or Celtic, are marginal at best.

Given the low rates of literacy in Medieval Europe, combined with, among the small literate minority (especially Church personnel), the widespread use of written and spoken latin, is there any way the niche for Romance and Germanic literary vernaculars could be squeezed out, leaving written forms of modern West European languages insignificant in modern times?

In the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th or 11th centuries, in any given territory like England, France, the HRE, Italy or Spain, did the number of people who could read and write a local vernacular exceed the number who could read and write Latin? And if so, by how much?
 
Byzantium reconquers the west. While Greek becomes the predominant language, Latin is the second language of administration used primarily in France, Iberia, and northern Italy.
 
AHC: Literary culture in Western Europe is mainly Latin thru modern times despite fall of WRE in 476 and written vernaculars, whether they are Romance, Germanic or Celtic, are marginal at best.

If the early modern nation-states had not seen having its own language as an important part of state-building, but instead had viewed the creation of a large cadre of educated latin-writing people to show off its high cultural level to others, this might be the case today. It is not a huge difference to OTL, since Latin was the scientific language still in the 1700s, and classical education was strong until after 1900, but there is a need for holding back the vernaculars to fulfill the OP.
 
It is impossible to do this to the present day. Perhaps latin could have a greater role as an international language, but in the sense of it replacing the vernacular, this simply cannot be achieved.

Before the modern era, the influence of the State in regards to cultural affairs is very limited and circumscribed, and directly acts against cultural homogeneity. The interest of the State is to create barriers between the common folk and itself, because the realms of division of society are organized horizontally (between classes) rather than vertically (between nations and regions), so therefor a pre-modern State has little interest in achieving cultural homogenity between the high culture and the scattered local and village cultures. Practical benefits to this in the era before industrialization would also be rather limited. However, even if a State, for some reason, wished to impose such a cultural homogenity, it is entirely beyond the reach of it, without modern education to enforce a standardized tongue and writing system. As a result, the vernacular(s) will be the language of the vast majority of the people, with only a limited upper class speaking the high language.

Then, when mass print media comes into effect, if it restricts itself only to the high language - Latin - it will find itself incapable of accessing the vast vernacular market. The population that spoke Latin may naturally have been an out sized percentage compared to its base numbers for the literate reading classes, but in absolute percentage terms (per Benedict Anderson) its a small percentage of the population. Thus, it is inevitable once mass print media and attendant mass print media capitalism emerges, that it will eventually print in the vernacular to access this market.

To sum up my arguments, primarily taken from Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner with appropriate fusing and combination;
Before the existence of the modern nation-state and its attendant educational infrastructure, no state wishes, or indeed is able to,create a common high culture.
This means that vernaculars will be the primary languages, with latin the high language.
The development of printing will result in the print media eventually adopting the vernacular to access the majority population
Whichever crowned vernacular is adopted will then become the mass language and the literary language.
Circumventing this would require latin to be the mass language, but by the time print capitalism emerges latin will long have been replaced by the vernaculars - which brings us to catch 22, to have Latin be the mass language we need a modern education system, but to reach this modern education system we will destroy Latin.

Vernacular thus has to spread up to dominate the high language, and the high language lacks the resources and the capacity to spread down and dominate the vernacular.

There are also administrative aspects I'll sum up in the next part.

If the early modern nation-states had not seen having its own language as an important part of state-building, but instead had viewed the creation of a large cadre of educated latin-writing people to show off its high cultural level to others, this might be the case today. It is not a huge difference to OTL, since Latin was the scientific language still in the 1700s, and classical education was strong until after 1900, but there is a need for holding back the vernaculars to fulfill the OP.

It is rare that vast systematic processes can simply be changed by the decision of a few initial leaders; there were good reasons why Vernaculars became the language of administration. In this case, administration vernaculars happened long before the nation-state ever existed; consider that France switched to French under Francois I,and England to English in 1362. Austria meanwhile, conducted the switch over to German in the 1780s; were the Hapsburgs German nationalists then? They were not, but German was the logical language for administration by that point. The above changes to English, and a lesser extent in regards to French, happened before print media came to be dominated by the vernacular, and certainly long before any nationalist leanings towards French, English, or German.
 
Whichever conqueror manages to get capture Italy actually holds it and solidifies his control over the penninsula, restoring the use of Latin. Italy never breaks up, and eventually develops a small empire in the mediterranean, controlling Sardinia, Corsica, the Balearic islands, Malta, Tunis, the Dalmatian coast, Crete, and Cyrprus. Italy becomes the dominant power in Western Europe.
 
The EU decides that a new, unifying language is needed to represent the unity of the continent and chooses latin at its foundation in 1957.
 
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