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Newman was of the opinion that Latin died as the language of scholarship because people forgot that it was meant to be a common written language. How it was pronouned--with an English or an Italian accent-- was a matter of indifference. Newton could, therefore, publish his "Principia" and know that a Pole could read it, no matter how he pronouned the words he read. Today the writtten language of China is understood everywhere, but the spoken language is quite different from place to place.

The issue of the Chinese existed before there was a written language. The written language of China was developed precisely to create a common language where none had really existed before. Chinese spoke many languages and many dialects - which is unavoidable in a culture of that size. Even in Germany, a small country by comparison, what you are saying depends greatly upon who you are saying it to. High German is vulgar to low Germans and vice versa. The written language is no cure for the spoken, where in Chinese the oposite is true. The parallel is fitting only to the extent that the culture that had the largest base of advanced medical knowledge recognized at the time set the standard for what language would be used to discuss those things. It of necessity carried over into science. That by no means makes it common. For the time, it rather more tends to make it elite.

I haven't argued that Latin is bad or doesn't have a place. But I am saying that it was not the common spoken or written language. Day to day, cultures stuck to their own. When they dealt with others they dealt on the basis of what was necessary. And for centuries, that was Greek. Did the "Holy Roman Empire" try to force latin, I'm sure they did. Did it work? Well, the Empire was ultimately overrun, destroyed and what was left imploded due to fraud. The language died with the carcass it had been spoken by. Much as we know heiroglyphics did in Egypt. The difference is, there were still people who could understand Latin whether they could speak it or not. Heiroglyphics have taken a long time to be understood, and they still aren't fully understood. I have budge in my home and budge being something of an expert on the language has phrases that he hasn't a clue what to do with.

Now, where we depart is IMO in the notion that saying a language was common in higher learning means that it was the default and understood by all. That doesn't fly.

Latin was the language of the Church, but it was also a language that enjoyed high prestige among the German aristocracy that conquered the western Empire because it was accociated with the high culture of the Empire. Furthermore, it symbolized the continuation of the Empire. We say that the western Empire "fell" in 476(whatever). To the people of the time, however, the Empire remained a living presence, and they regarded Charlemagne's ascension as emperor to be a revival of it. In fact, of course, it was a German-Roman Empire, the First "Reich," and it last a thousand years until it was finally put to rest by Napoleon. Every educated European, in or outside that Empire, was familiar with Latin. In some places, such as France, it remained also the language of the people. 11th Century French was still recongizably a form of Latin and only gradually changed into something else. In England until the 15th Century, official documents were written in Latin in part so that they could be understood abroad as well as by all literate men at home. Just as German has a "high" form as opposed to local dialects (which are difficult for someone with only school german to understand even today). In the Middle ages. Latin was the "high" language in every country, and even the masses had some understanding of it through church services and even commerce. With the Reformation this changed, although Latin remained the common language of scholars and diplomats until the 18th Century, when it was finally displaced by French and now in our own times by English.