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Comment on Which language was spoken in ancient empire armies ?

Latin was the market language of Rome, and commanders/generals would have issued orders and received reports written in Latin.

Most soldiers would have spoken it, including the local auxiliaries that were conscripted. (Or at least a pidgin version of it.)

Even if the conscripts would speak whatever amongst themselves, they’d have understood Latin. (It’s also very likely that foreigners brought into the province would pickup at least a pidgin version of the local language.)

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Lazycog@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I for one vote for EU wide usage of Latin commands, EQUALITER AMBULA!

I might be wrong here but NATO countries already have to adapt language related practices to NATO practices, e.g. the NATO phonetic alphabet.

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- FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Good god no. Conjugation is bad enough in English. You don’t want know what my latin grammar is like.
  
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  - Successful_Try543@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    As far as I understood, @Lazycog@sopuli.xyz was talking about the phonetic alphabet used in the armies of NATO countries which is standardised by ICAO as Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, … and is not the everyday phonetic alphabet in each country, e.g. in Germany commonly Anton, Bertha, Cäsar, … but there are plenty of different versions and variants for each German speaking country.
    
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    FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    oh, it’s definitely standardized, no doubt. But people are people, and some of them are going to call out as it’s familiar to them, and in some sort of urgent response… you’re not going to get too confused at the German guy reading off grid coordinates as ‘24-Richard Wilhelm Theodor…’ to get to a particular random stretch of the Atlantic. (using the MGRS coordinates. 24RWT)
    
    but most of my point was that’s not an actual language; you’re still going to have to designate some language as the common language- and get enough understanding to at least be functional in that. it seems logical to just pick one… but, uh… well. humans aren’t very logical.
    
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    Lazycog@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Exactly my point, thank you for clarification!
    
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  - Lazycog@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Yeah no I think I would just butcher the language trying to speak it.
    
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    FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Though, it’d be fun to have some French guy be like “how Vulgar!” And not be calling me rude.
    
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