why did latin beget so many daughter languages and greek so few, considering how widespread the latter was in the roman empire? or did it and I'm even more clueless than i thought?
@erin_nerung, @eigenrobot?
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Meanwhile the Arabs conquered and held the Levant for a millenium and basically extirpated Greek
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east/west - oc ty eigen
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Greeks sired alphabets, like the Phoenicians before them, rather than languages
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Latin was the top level admin language everywhere until officially replaced by Greek around 600, iirc. Eastern parts of the empire spoke Greek widely long before the Romans, but not necessarily natively.
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A notable factoid here is that the New Testament was originally written in common (as opposed to Attic) Greek, not Aramaic (the other contender for a universal language in that region)
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Eastern Empire conquered plenty! Trick was their stuff got conquered by people who imposed their different languages in the populace. In the West, the barbarians assimilated before conquering.
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When the West fell, it wasn't by a dominant hegemon. It fell apart, and its successors were just whoever was there. The East was conquered by the caliphate who had their Arabic language to impose
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power is power
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