Latin Remains The Lingua Franca Of the World - What Happens?

I know the empire fell, but I still don't fully understand how the Latin language ultimately fell out of favour, such was its prominence as the lingua Franca of its time! Actually Romanian is the closest language to Latin still around!
Are all languages destined to go down this road - hard to see English dying ever!
So what would happen had it remained the Swahili of the Western world or indeed the world language fully?
 
Latin fell out of favor with most people because of the collapse of central Roman authority in most areas of Europe. However, the extent of the Roman influence persisted in the Romance languages.

It's hard to see English falling out of favor, but I assume the Romans also thought the same about Latin.
 

Germaniac

Donor
In terms of vocabulary its Italian thats closest, Romanian still uses latin grammer rules. However Romanian vocab is significantly different.
 
I think the reason Latin fell is because there wasn't any use for it other than as a lingua franca, and French worked fine for that.
 
If you could prevent the re-standardisation of classical pattern Latin in the 8th and 9th century, you could have 'Latin' (as in, Ropmance) continue as a language with twin standards, formal and colloquial. Like Arabic.
 
I blame the Reformation. Before, Catholic Church was the biggest international force in Europe, and Latin was its official and liturgical language. After, the Church lost a lot of its influence, and Protestant churches used national languages instead of Latin.
 
I blame the Reformation. Before, Catholic Church was the biggest international force in Europe, and Latin was its official and liturgical language. After, the Church lost a lot of its influence, and Protestant churches used national languages instead of Latin.

Actually, I blame the Enlightenment. Science even in the late 1600s was largely done in Latin, but by that point it became more important for new discoveries to be understandable by the people, so rapidly switched to the Vernacular.
 
Actually, I blame the Enlightenment. Science even in the late 1600s was largely done in Latin, but by that point it became more important for new discoveries to be understandable by the people, so rapidly switched to the Vernacular.
Yes, but people were arguing for use of vernacular in academics even in the middle 16th century.
 
Hmmm I once heared that Spanish was closer to Latin than Italian:confused:...
I think Spanish might be closer in pronunciation, though I suppose Italian could have kept more of the vocabulary.

Or it could be the other way around. The above is a largely uninformed personal impression of a nonitaliophone.
 
hard to see English dying ever!

English would die just as Latin did if it was in that situation.

The differences are essentially scope.

Latin died out primarily because it was only spoken in a single part of the world, unlike modern global languages, where for example even if English fell out of use in Britain (the result of an apocalyptic event perhaps), the place it came to being, it would still be spoken in other parts of the world.
 
English would die just as Latin did if it was in that situation.

The differences are essentially scope.

Latin died out primarily because it was only spoken in a single part of the world, unlike modern global languages, where for example even if English fell out of use in Britain (the result of an apocalyptic event perhaps), the place it came to being, it would still be spoken in other parts of the world.

I agree, English is a language just as my native Dutch, everything could happen.
 
Are all languages destined to go down this road - hard to see English dying ever!
I think that Recording Equipment, has reached the point that all Major Languages are fixed beyond disappearance.
 
I think that Recording Equipment, has reached the point that all Major Languages are fixed beyond disappearance.

Certainly (barring an apocalypse), but that only means that the major languages of the twenty-first century will still be available for study by linguists in the thirty-first century. The languages those linguists will speak to their spouses and kids will still not be English, at least as you or I know it.
 
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