Comment on Which language was spoken in ancient empire armies ?
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 1 week ago
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.)
Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 1 week 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.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Good god no. Conjugation is bad enough in English. You don’t want know what my latin grammar is like.
Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 week 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.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 1 week 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.
Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
Exactly my point, thank you for clarification!
Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
Yeah no I think I would just butcher the language trying to speak it.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Though, it’d be fun to have some French guy be like “how Vulgar!” And not be calling me rude.