So Latin spread pretty well across Europe, being the basis of almost every language there, but how come it didn’t take as strong a hold in the Middle East? It’s not as if the Romans were never there, and they lingered there far longer than they did in Europe. Was it just a matter of a stronger preexisting culture, or did the Arabs have something to do with it? What happened here?
When I first started taking high school Latin, I thought any language with such an arcane grammar deserved to die. Later, I joked with a linguist about how I was so relieved modern romance languages like French have abandoned all that, and he said “Well, we still have Romanian.” Now, I live in horror of visiting eastern Europe.