"The idea that ordinary language is expressively inadequate to account for mathematical (or even logical) reasoning became a recurring theme in the ensuing tradition of mathematical logic, so much so that the term ‘symbolic logic’ became synonymous with this tradition. Doing logic came to mean simply working with special symbols, not with ordinary words. In this respect, it is worth noting that the humanist authors had criticised the Latin of scholastic logicians precisely as ‘too artificial’, and even the Greek language that Aristotle relies on for syllogistic logic is regimented and removed from ordinary ways of speaking at the time. In a sense, perhaps a certain degree of ‘artificiality’ is at the core of logic throughout history, as it operates at levels of abstraction that are at odds with ordinary language usage."

True that, but were/are there alternatives? Difficult to say.