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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

> Academic life was dominated by Latin and, to a lesser extent, Greek. The exact share varied, but the classical languages took up generally at least half of teaching hours, and sometimes as much as 80 percent, especially earlier in the century.

That's so weird to me. How did that tradition hold on for so long? Where did it come from? Who thought that was a good idea?

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This theory continues in modern elite American Universities -- they exist not to provide job skills but to deliver a "liberal education" -- one that teaches students to think, be moral, etc. (I read from the brochure here).

Those Ivies that have more job-oriented programs tend to have (at the least) those schools looked down upon in comparison to the more 'pure' academic pursuits, e.g. Cornell's Hospitality school.

While Ivies are not tied strictly to America's true upper class, serving more as a means of entry into the upper-middle and lower-upper, this sort of signaling is an important part of some of the soft benefits they provide students -- it would be gauche to be worried about a job, ne c'est pas?

n'est-ce pas ? Sincerely,the French grammar police

Surely you mean the police grammar French

Alours. merci monsieur

It's a thing in other countries as well. Schools which teach the classical languages in Belgium are called humaniora (literally 'more human'). About 30% of my classes were Latin and ancient Greek but we would also have more in depth art history classes.

They would lack in other education (like math and sciences) in theory but as it's also the place the best students get their education they tend to just force you to learn both (which is against some protocols afaik).

USA universities have lately corrupted the meaning of the word "liberalism", turning it into its opposite. So-called "liberal education" doesn't exist anymore.

Signals must to be costly in order to be effective

Also also hard to fake and easy to slip in. You throw in a Latin quote in your conversation and either the other person gets it and you both know you're the proper class, or they don't and you both know you're higher up the ladder than they are.

This is repeatedly used in Yes, Minister to demonstrate the large class gap between Sir Humphrey (and Bernard) and Jim Hacker.

si tacuisses philosophus mansisses ;)

Yup. It’s the shibboleth. Cuius regio, eius religio, and all that.

Spent my childhood at boarding school having my head stuffed full of Latin and Greek. Forgotten all of it.

Remember that religious study was the driving force behind much of the education that went on for a long time. If you view some version of the bible as literal divine word, learning the language it's written in makes sense.

The Catholic church only allowed mass to be delivered in a language other than Latin in the 1960s. If you wanted to simply understand what was said, you had to learn it.

The Anglican church (to which virtually all of the Victorian elite belonged) had phased out Latin since the 17th century. Likewise Victorian scientists, eg Darwin, wrote in English. (If they needed to correspond with their peers abroad, they might use Latin, but many would learn French, German, Russian...)

Its use in the Catholic church probably helped Latin survive as long as it did, but by the 19th century it was already an impractical relic whose prestige in English schools came partly from the fact that it had no actual application.

This is why grammar schools are so called, they're talking about Latin grammar

The term comes from the trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Yes grammar is literally part of it but more generally it's the learning of facts and definitions.

To know another language is to possess a second soul - Big Chuck aka Charlemagne.

Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote an entire journal in Greek in the middle of enemy territory. "You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.". Historians criticize his Greek fluency.

Academia in Britain was intimately connected to membership of the church and, thus, to the ability to speak Latin to hold services. It held on beyond that tenure out of both momentum and prestige.

That was true in medieval times. From the start of the early modern (e.g. Henry VIII) the Church of England used English for services.

The prestige also accrued because it was the language of the educated in Europe for a long time.

I agree, but latin was the language of the educated in Europe because of the (Catholic) church, and the universities pre-date the C of E by several hundred years.

I was going to answer with just "the church" but the OP specifically asked about academia.

It was the language of the educated because of the Roman Empire. The elites used to study how to be Roman elites before the 5th century, and when Rome fell they just continued, as it was the established sign of higher class. The elite has been educated by Cicero for the last 2 millennia, and continues to be so.

A good analogy is French being the language of the elite in Britain, well after the Normans got merged into the general population.

Henry the Eighth never allowed vernacular service, that was his son Edward the VI.

All academia used latin until quite recently. Because all books were written in latin.

Why do you think all animal species have a latin name? You think the ancient romans classified them?

Genuinely bizarre comment. Why do you think the books were written in latin?

They were written in Latin until well into the modern era. Newton wrote his major work in Latin, for example.

Yes, I know. Why the confidence that this contradicts anything I said?

Edit: Re-reading I realise you were reading that as me thinking the books weren't written in Latin, whereas I was trying to get the parent poster to think a bit beyond "the books were written in Latin" to wonder why they might be written in Latin long, long after the fall of the Roman Empire.

Yes. that was how I read it. Sorry for that but think the poster you were replying to got it either.

The other poster seems to have got on the wrong end of the stick about something, but I don't think it's that.

> Newton wrote his major work in Latin, for example.

Newton wrote in Latin because he was, famously, an arrogent bellend. The rest of the sensible scientific community had long since swiched to living langauges.

That doesn't sound right. Newton's contemporaries like Leibniz, Huygens, Halley all wrote much of their most significant work in Latin.

Newton also wrote Opticks in English, perhaps because he was aiming at a more mass market audience.

Do you have a source for this made up information? Seems to contradict with this:

"Leibniz wrote mainly in three languages: scholastic Latin, French and German."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz

"Many of his writings were in Latin"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus

Because other languages didn't have a writing system, which is why every western language is using latin alphabet now.

The only language that literate people in Europe had in common. Mostly because of the church.

> Why do you think all animal species have a latin name?

Good god! This proves you have _completely_ missed the point!

The reason scientic names are in lattin, is BECAUSE it is a dead language. The scientific name can therefore never be confused with the many local/regional names for a species which will always be in a living langage.

Who thought understanding, in depth, the fundamental bases of their legal system was a good idea?

the clergy.

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