Which language was spoken in ancient empire armies ?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

A common critic we hear about an EU wide army is What language are they gonna speak but let’s forget Europe 2024,

Rome had a huge empire over the whole Europe, I may be wrong, but I don’t think that commoner spoke proper Latin in remote province. What happens when they join the legion ? Would the units be split by origin region (Dacian with Dacian, Lugdunumese with Lugdunemese) with only officer speaking latin ? Or would you merge legionaries from different province (So you have Tingitanian, a Lustitanian and a Thracian in the same unit) and give them a crash course in military latin (the way the french foreign legion does? ) Even going as far as Rome, Karl the great empire also spread over half of Europe, and modern European nation used to be way more multi-lingual than they are today, and most likely a random southerner/northerner in Britain, France or Germany couldn’t talk to each other.

So how did ancient armies managed the language question ?

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FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.)

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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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xmunk@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Armies don’t need complex phrases like “Last week did I see you go to the library?” And as such they’ve often used non-verbal communications in battle (especially because battle is fucking confusing) this has included drum signals, colored smoke, flags for different actions, and gestures.

When they are using verbal commands they’re often a greatly simplified set of phrases - sometimes in a jargon that isn’t even proper speech. It’s rare to see ten syllable commands and you’re much more likely to hear “company, right” than “Company of soldiers whom I command, please initiate a pinwheel rotation to the right around the rightmost file of your formation. Thank you kindly.” So if Europe had to form an army inter lingually than “a derech” and “a isker” would probably end up being right and left respectively… that or they’d follow the EU trend of “When in doubt, default to French”

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schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
There’s a Wikipedia section here about one that is not ancient, but relevant to your question about multilingual states: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Hungarian_Army#Lingu…

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- Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I actually forgot about that one, but indeed that’s an interesting case
  
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Joshi@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Emperor’s of Rome podcast addressed this in a Q&A episode.

From memory the answer is that top level generals would almost always speak Greek and Latin, mid level commanders would speak either Greek or Latin adequately as well as the local language of the troops they were commanding.

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- Joshi@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Found it
  
  Emperors of Rome: Episode CVIII - A Lesson in Latin II Starting from: 00:08:02
  
  Episode webpage: www.latrobe.edu.au/…/181128-latin02.mp3
  
  Media file: www.latrobe.edu.au/…/181128-latin02.mp3#t=482
  
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UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Don’t Europeans know basic English? Uk, basic enough to exchange coordinates and stuff? I doubt u would need to have a large enough vocabulary for this.

The World wars for example were fought together in a time where English competency wasn’t as high as it is today.

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- Kecessa@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  EU wide force
  
  No EU member has English as its main language
  
  “They could simply use English!”
  
  Anglos and the feeling of being at the center of everything, name a more iconic duo.
  
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  - Deconceptualist@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    
    No EU member has English as its main language
    
    Ireland?
    
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- Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  While I have no doubt that officer (and even most NCO) do know more than basic english, I have some doubts regarding the typical high-school drop out who enlists in the infantry.
  
  So if you need to talk about geopolitic, aircraft maintenance or even coordinates two different group of soldier, NATO english would be fine. But how would a multi-lingual crew works on a warship ? What about a multi-lingual patrol ?
  
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  - UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Why would a multilingual crew even exist? Wouldn’t an EU armed force be just like NATO without the US? Regiments and groups specific to countries instead of regiments involving multiple countries.
    
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