What is the origin and why are latin/greek phrases so common in academic practices? Why haven’t we developed English words to replace these phrases?

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Hi! I just had a random linguistic question. I was thinking of terms like “alma mater” and graduation designations like “cum laude” etc. and even in academic writing we commonly have phrases like “ad hominem” or “ad nauseum”. Why have these terms persisted in English societies, and where did integration of them with academia come from?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Latin and Greek linguistics have a strong tradition in medicine and academia and serve as a ‘bypass’ of language barriers, at least within Western society. This is probably due to the tradition of teaching Latin in schools in Western society, but this means a French academic can share information with an American one to at least some extent.

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