>From: Andrew Larsen <aelarsen_at_mac.com>
>> From: Julian Lord <jlord_at_free.fr>
>> The congregation, in fact, had no difficulty whatsoever understanding the
>> texts.
>
> This is a serious oversimplification. At the time that Jerome was
>translating the Bible into Latin, Latin was the language of most people in
>Western Europe, so in the 4th and 5th centuries, many people would have
>understood it if read to them (although it probably would have sounded much
>like formal high British pronunciation sounds to a farmer in the American
>south).
I doubt that Latin was ever the language of most people in Western Europe. For most of the Roman Empire the language of Gaul, Britannia and Iberia would be a Celtic one. After the Germanic migrations that would, in many areas, be replaced by forms of old German. Educated and literate people would also know Latin but they were always a minority, often a small one.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/ --__--__-- End of Glorantha Digest
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