I didn't mean it disappeared overnight but, as far as I know, formal education in Latin declined with the fall of the Empire, thus giving preponderance to Vulgar Latin. As a consequence, correct pronunciation diverged from the canon. At the same time, Germanic peoples travelled south bringing with them new dialects.
Anyway, I am not as worried about an eventual hegemony of English as I am about the disregard for the value of other languages.
Portuguese language, for example, was made the official language for matters of law by King Denis in 1290. But Castillian was still the lingua franca of the court for centuries. The then recent creation of the University of Coimbra helped build the formal Portuguese we know today.
I believe that it is always by creating something new, alongside the old, that good things happen. Hoping progress to come by following utopian notions of simplicity, making tabula rasa (oh, Latin, you...) of former culture is a recipe for disaster.
I didn't mean it disappeared overnight but, as far as I know, formal education in Latin declined with the fall of the Empire, thus giving preponderance to Vulgar Latin. As a consequence, correct pronunciation diverged from the canon. At the same time, Germanic peoples travelled south bringing with them new dialects.
Anyway, I am not as worried about an eventual hegemony of English as I am about the disregard for the value of other languages.
Portuguese language, for example, was made the official language for matters of law by King Denis in 1290. But Castillian was still the lingua franca of the court for centuries. The then recent creation of the University of Coimbra helped build the formal Portuguese we know today.
I believe that it is always by creating something new, alongside the old, that good things happen. Hoping progress to come by following utopian notions of simplicity, making tabula rasa (oh, Latin, you...) of former culture is a recipe for disaster.