Ask A Scientist© General Science Archive

 

>>   name
>>   status    student
>>
>>   Question - What is the reason/ origin of why latin words are used for 
>> scientific terms? why not another language?
>
>
>Latin is the base language of many of the world's languages, such as Italian,
>French, Spanish, and English has many word roots that are Latin. Since Latin
>is an ancient language, many of the early scientists spoke it or had learned
>it as part of their education.
Van Hoeck
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> >Latin was the universal language throughout the dark ages because the only
> >real connection between countries were through the Roman Catholic religion
> >which used Latin as their language to communicate between different
> >speaking nations. Thus, Latin became the standard between countries using
> >different languages before traveling became practical in many other
> >aspects of life. Science started out using Latin as its universal
> >language as well, hence the connection. You may know that all the
> >romantic languages of Europe came from Latin roots.
>
>
>Steve
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>Hi Mark!
>   At the time of the Roman Empire the latin was spoken there
>  and was spread through all the Europe as the more cultivated
>  language. After that , during the Moyen Age, the sciences and
>culture were segregated inside the monasteries where the
>language spoken was the latin,
>By tradition and for maintaining science universal latin
>was chosen to name mostly the biological terms.
>But.. not all scientific terms are written in latin...
>nowadays the more known language and the universal one
>is the english...
>Thanks for asking NEWTON!
>Mabel
>(Dr. Mabel Rodrigues)
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>Interesting question...I'll give my opinion. English is a Germanic Language
>but it has accepted thousands of latin, and greek terms alone through the
>scientific/medical fields. Latin and Greek were the two common languages of
>the western scholars well into the 1800's. Much of this was influenced by
>the Catholic church which kept Latin alive in its ceremomies and in its
>illumination of the biblical scriptures. Ancient texts like the gospels and
>Greek myths were written in Greek and later translated into the Vulgate by
>church scholars and scibes. It was a natural place for those early
>scientists to go for a rich source of new descriptive words. Along with
>most any scholar most poets, and other icons of literature up to the 20th
>century were commonly schooled in Latin and Greek. They read in the great
>works of the ancients Aristotle, Plato, Homer, Pythagorus, Lucretius,
>Marcus Aurelius in their original languages. Even well into the 20th century
>the mark of a learned person was to some extent marked by their command of
>Latin and Greek. As we say in latin today...quocumque (whatever). One last
>word; many terms are combinations of both Latin and Greek. How about
>hyperblepherokinesis, or polydactylia...
>
>
>bene vale
>ex animo'a quaelo usqua ad centrum
>Peter Faletra
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>I have given some more thought to this interesting question and to put the
>influence of Latin in the perspective of the "sciences" of
>cartography/geography might be a good example. In this general field most
>of the original map makers of the ancient western world ~300 BC to 1000 AD
>spoke either Greek or latin and usually both. As time progressed and latin
>was the language of the educated person in Europe up to 1000 AD these map
>makers/geographers needed names for the objects they were studying and
>creating...Consider the following words:
>Longitude, latitude, peninsula, isthmus, equator, pole,... are all latin
>words.
>
>nota bene...of the 20,000 most commonly used words of anyone's english vocab
>about 10,500 are of latin origin!...so says one of my Latin instructional
>texts printed in 1972.
>
>ex animo
>Peter Faletra
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