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> Greek might use philia where we'd just say 'brotherly love', it doesn't make our language less for not having a single word for the concept. Every time I've heard someone say "you can't express x in English", I've been able to express it in 1-4 words.

The Romans believed that philosophy had to be done in Greek because Latin wasn't suited to the field.

There is a speech (letter?) by Cicero railing against the belief, in which he demonstrates that it's possible and in fact easy to use Latin for all of the concepts that are supposed to be restricted to Greek.

Apparently nobody learned anything from this.



> Apparently nobody learned anything from this.

Is it because he wrote it in latin?


English yet had to be invented, and in term of life span for egemony over western intellectual linguistic expression, Latin probably is still on the top of the podium by a large margin.

And of course many proeminent figures in philosophy expressed their major works in Latin.


Whoosh


Many Romans were grecophiles, and it showed. Not only did many feel Latin wasn’t a suitable language for philosophy, but also for mathematics. Of course, they also distrusted Arabic numerals.


> Of course, they also distrusted Arabic numerals.

Really? Did they ever see them? They had abaci.


Yeah. So, in the West, Rome proper didn’t allow Hebrew numbers. However, in Constantinople, all accounting had to be done in Greek or Latin and Arabic numerals were forbidden. One can cite all kinds of reasons: tax assessors not wanting to learn it, distrust of foreigners, the fact that the Rhomaioi were almost always at war with the Arabs and/or Turks.




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