this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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Yes? I think you may have missed my point in the shuffle.
What I'm saying here is that Latin doesn't make sense as a mystical, secret language for magic because it was too common. I'm not saying it wasn't the language of scholars, I'm saying that not only was it the language of scholars, so every treatise on optics or history would have triggered accidental lightning bolts, but it was also a commonly spoken language as well.
Hey, you know what is lingua franca for science while being widely spoken? English.
Does that sound mystical to you?
If English had been a dead language for fifteen hundred years and was only used by people who talk about things only a tiny subset of the population understands?
Yeah, it would seem pretty mystical.
But that's my point, it hasn't been, and it wasn't.
Again, Latin was mandatory in my high school for a year, optional for two more. In the 1990s. It's still optional, I believe. My parents went to church in Latin as kids.
So no, it doesn't sound mystical outside the anglosphere, it sounds like crusy old priests, lawyers and boring lessons. Today.
You are very much in the minority as someone who has studied Latin. Very few non-Catholic high schools even offer it, much less make it mandatory.
And sure, Catholic mass was held in Latin back in the day. Personally, I suspect that's a reason it's associated with rituals and magic. What is a priest doing, if not invoking mystical powers beyond the understanding of man? What language would someone use to invoke the powers of Satan?
Outside the anglosphere, I have no idea.
Well, it took a minute, but you got to the point there in that last sentence.