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We are Poles, so, of course, we print in Latin

110 points by danielam

by expedition32

3 subcomments

I remember reading 17th century letters from Dutch diplomats. They used French to write back home- except when they talked about money. Such matters required a higher form of communication.

by comrade1234

4 subcomments

My grandfather emigrated from Vilnius (was polish at the time) to the USA as a teenager and managed to find a church that did their mass in Latin, and still does to this day. I assume he understood it but I'm not sure - he was well-educated and spoke a few languages.

by snowpid

4 subcomments

As a side note I do think Latin language should be become the official language of the EU. It's dead so - its a compromise for all member staes - you can change as you like - it was used millennials as a law language so it fits

by quercusa

0 subcomment

One nice thing is that the Polish church records are in Latin (with Latinized names), so I've been able to find and read birth/baptismal records for my wife's ancestors from the 1800s.

by p0w3n3d

1 subcomments

This phenomenon is well explained in ``God's Playground: A History of Poland'' by Norman Davies, which I am currently reading/listening to. But historically Latin was the lingua franca that time, and Polish people who wrote were always educated. So no other possibility back day I'd say...

by krzyk

2 subcomments

What is strange, that medical matters are mostly translated to Polish, while when I watch medical shows on TV I see that US still tends to use Latin there.
Similar thing for species names, not sure where I've seen it.
A side note from Polanmd: My professor of Solids State Physics was pretty fluent in both Latin and Greek, which I find quite interesting (it was about ~20 years ago, he was in his 60-70s).

by toyg

0 subcomment

The macaronic approach was pretty common everywhere, it's a natural stage of evolution - the old language 'holding on' with specialized terminology that would be pointless to replace with more inefficient expressions. Which is why Latin words and expressions are still deployed every day in legal and scientific conversations around all Western countries.

by Tade0

1 subcomments

I'm Polish and my father (boomer generation) attended a boys-only high school, where Latin was part of the mandatory curriculum.
He managed to use it once when we were living in Kuwait and he had to arrange for my sister to get baptized - he knew that there were two missionaries visiting the local Cathedral - one Spanish and the other Polish but as he didn't know who was who, he started the conversation in Latin and of course got an appropriate response.

by lifestyleguru

1 subcomments

I even have some medical diagnosis from Poland of a family member in Latin from the early 1990s. Weird elitist way of saying "you have cancer and our healthcare is one big corrupted ruin so you will suffer". The doctor was probably smoking a cigarette while typing it.