question: Why is it that in many languages (for example Germanic ones, like English or German) have their "noble" words, and almost exclusively the noble words, derived from Latin, whereas the common words are from the original (Germanic, in this case) language family?
comment: Back in the day, like today, not everyone was equally educated. The most educated members of society got to learn more than just simple, everyday language. (German, English etc.) The Catholic Church performed their rituals in Latin. The clergy and the nobles were some of the best educated people in the land, so they got to learn Latin. They would speak to each other using little bits here and there from all of the languages that they knew, including Latin. This kept going long enough that everyone, even the less-educated, picked up on the changes. Even though everyone would use the mixed language, they still knew that the Latin sounding words were associated nobles and other highly educated people.
passages: BULLET::::- "æðele": 'noble'; also "æðelu": 'noble descent'; "æðeling": 'hero' and "ēðel": 'native land', 'home'. Once very common words with many extant compounds, these words exists in Modern English only in the Germanic loanwords "edelweiss" and some proper nouns like "Ethel" (the same Germanic root gives the "Ad-" in "Adelaide", "Adolph" and "Albert"). The Latin-derived terms "noble" and "gentle" (in its original English meaning of 'noble') both appeared in English around 1230. Compare with German "edel", Dutch "edel", rare English word "athel".
   BULLET::::- the formation of superlatives with reflexes of the PIE suffix *"-ism̥mo-" (Latin "fortis", "fortissimus" "strong, strongest", Old Irish "sen", "sinem" "old, oldest", Oscan "mais", "maimas" "more, most"), where branches outside Italic and Celtic derive superlatives with reflexes of PIE *"-isto-" instead ( "broad, broadest", "beautiful, fairest", Old Norse "rauðr", "rauðastr" "red, reddest", as well as, of course, English "-est").
   The modern English word "generosity" derives from the Latin word "generōsus", which means "of noble birth", which itself was passed down to English through the Old French word "généreux". The Latin stem "gener–" is the declensional stem of "genus", meaning "kin", "clan", "race", or "stock", with the root Indo-European meaning of "gen" being "to beget". The same root gives the words "genesis", "gentry", "gender", "genital", "gentile", "genealogy", and "genius", among others.
   In any case, in the Netherlands (see below) and many Hanseatic cities such as Hamburg, patricians scoffed at the notion of ennoblement. Indeed, Johann Christian Senckenberg, the famous naturalist, commented, "An honest man is worth more than all the nobility and all the Barons. If anyone were to make me a Baron, I would call him a [female canine organ] or equally well a Baron. This is how much I care for any title."
   Possessive or associated adjectives could be created from nouns through internal derivation. Such words could be used directly as adjectives, or they could be turned back into a noun without any change in morphology, indicating someone or something characterised by the adjective. They could also be used as the second element of a compound. If the first element was a noun, this created an adjective that resembled a present participle in meaning, e.g. "having much rice" or "cutting trees". When turned back into nouns, such compounds were Bahuvrihis or semantically resembled agent nouns.
   It is not always easy to tell at what point a word entered English, or in what form. Some words have come into English from Latin more than once, through French or another Romance language at one time and directly from Latin at another. Thus we have pairs like fragile/frail, army/armada, corona/crown, ratio/reason, and rotund/round. The first word in each pair came directly from Latin, while the second entered English from French (or Spanish, in the case of "armada"). In addition, some words have entered English twice from French, with the result that they have the same source, but different pronunciations reflecting changing pronunciation in French, for example, chief/chef (the former a Middle English borrowing and the latter modern). Multiple borrowings explain other word pairs and groups with similar roots but different meanings and/or pronunciations: canal/channel, poor/pauper, coy/quiet, disc/disk/dish/desk/dais/discus.
   Often quoted loan examples are "kuningas" "king" and "ruhtinas" "sovereign prince, high ranking nobleman" from Germanic "*kuningaz" and "*druhtinaz"—they display a remarkable tendency towards phonological conservation within the language. Another example is "äiti" "mother", from Gothic "aiþei", which is interesting because borrowing of close-kinship vocabulary is a rare phenomenon. The original Finnish "emo" occurs only in restricted contexts. There are other close-kinship words that are loaned from Baltic and Germanic languages ("morsian" "bride", "armas" "dear", "huora" "whore"). Examples of the ancient Iranian loans are "vasara" "hammer" from Avestan "vadžra", "vajra" and "orja" "slave" from "arya", "airya" "man" (the latter probably via similar circumstances as "slave" from Slav in many European languages).
   Most loans from Celtic appear to have been made before or during the Germanic Sound Shift. For instance, one specimen *"rīks" 'ruler' was borrowed from Celtic *"rīxs" 'king' (stem *"rīg-"), with "g" → "k". It is clearly not native because PIE *"ē" → "ī" is typical not of Germanic but Celtic languages. Another is *"walhaz" "foreigner; Celt" from the Celtic tribal name "Volcae" with "k" → "h" and "o" → "a". Other likely Celtic loans include *"ambahtaz" 'servant', *"brunjǭ" 'mailshirt', *"gīslaz" 'hostage', *"īsarną" 'iron', *"lēkijaz" 'healer', *"laudą" 'lead', *"Rīnaz" 'Rhine', and *"tūnaz, tūną" 'fortified enclosure'. These loans would likely have been borrowed during the Celtic Hallstatt and early La Tène cultures when the Celts dominated central Europe, although the period spanned several centuries.
   Latin is usually the most common source of loanwords in these languages, such as in Italian, Spanish, French, etc., and in some cases the total number of loans may even outnumber inherited terms (although the learned borrowings are less often used in common speech, with the most common vocabulary being of inherited, orally transmitted origin from Vulgar Latin). This has led to many cases of etymological doublets in these languages.
   However, language change has eroded many grammatical elements, such as the noun case system, which is greatly simplified in modern English, and certain elements of vocabulary, some of which are borrowed from French. Although many of the words in the English lexicon come from Romance languages, most of the common words used in English are of Germanic origin.
   A similar path was followed by Italian and Romanian. Romanian uses "dumneavoastră" "your lordship", while Italian the former polite phrase "sua eccellenza" "your excellency" has simply been supplanted by the corresponding pronoun "Ella" or "Lei" (literally "she", but capitalized when meaning "you"). As in European Spanish, the original second-person plural "voi" serves as familiar plural. (In Italy, during fascist times leading up to World War II, "voi" was resurrected as a polite singular, and discarded again afterwards, although it remains in some southern dialects.)
   BULLET::::- "rund" "cattle" → "runderen"
  
  BULLET::::- "volk" "people, nation" → "volkeren" (the regular "volken" is also used)
  
  When used in compounds, the stem of these nouns usually includes the "-er". For example: "eierschaal" "eggshell", "kinderarbeid" "child labour", "klederdracht" "traditional costume", "rundertartaar" "beef tartare", "volkermoord" "genocide". This is not a rule, however, and compounds with the singular form also exist: "eivorm" "egg-shape", "rundvlees" "beef", "volkslied" "national anthem".
  
  Section::::Nouns.:Plural.:Foreign plurals.
   Words were often taken from Latin, usually through French transmission. This gave rise to various synonyms including "kingly" (inherited from Old English), "royal" (from French, which inherited it from Vulgar Latin), and "regal" (from French, which borrowed it from classical Latin). Later French appropriations were derived from standard, rather than Norman French. Examples of resultant cognate pairs include the words "warden" (from Norman), and "guardian" (from later French; both share a common Germanic ancestor).
   Regarding forests, words for most conifers and shrubs are native, as are the terms for "alder", "elm", "oak", "beech", and "linden", while "ash", "chestnut", "birch", "maple", "poplar", and "willow" are loans. 
  
  The original kinship terminology of Indo-European was radically reshaped; changes included a shift from "mother" to "sister", and were so thorough that only three terms retained their original function, the words for "son-in-law", "mother-in-law" and "father-in-law". All the words for second-degree blood kinship, including "aunt", "uncle", "nephew", "niece", and terms for grandchildren, are ancient loans from Latin. 
   Modern scholars writing in English usually refer to the Kingdom using the name "Fortriu" and the adjective "Verturian", and use the name the "Waerteras" to refer to the people as an ethnic group.
  
  Section::::Location.
   Class III nouns show a separate form in the nominative singular that does not occur in any of the other forms. IIIa nouns ended in "-ātor", "-ātōrem" in Latin and preserve the stress shift; IIIb nouns also had a stress shift, from "-ō" to "-ōnem". IIIc nouns are an Old French creation and have no clear Latin antecedent. IIId nouns represent various other types of third-declension Latin nouns with stress shift or a change of consonant ("soror", "sorōrem; īnfāns, īnfāntem; presbyter, presbyterem; seiior, seiiōrem; comes, comitem).
   Conditional nobles were legally distinguished from "familiares", that is, from noblemen who served a secular lord or a prelate (usually in exchange for a salary), but preserved their direct connection to the monarch. Nevertheless, in some cases "familiares" resigned from their "true noble" status in order to receive protection from more powerful lords, such as the ancestors of some nobles living on the estates of the bishops of Veszprém. On the other hand, conditional nobles whose estate was liberated from the obligations formerly attached to it acquired the status of "true noblemen".
  
  Section::::Groups of conditional nobles.
   PIE very frequently derived nominals from verbs. Just as English "giver" and "gift" are ultimately related to the verb "give", 'giver' and 'gift' are derived from 'to give', but the practice was much more common in PIE. For example, 'foot' was derived from 'to tread', and 'house' from 'to build'.
  
  Section::::Morphology.
   A reminder of the missionary by German Catholic lay brothers are the words "bruda" from German "Bruder" for brother and "prista" from German "Priester" for priests. A relic of German colonialists' behaviour are invectives such as "rinfi" from German "Rindvieh", literally cattle, but used also as invective for a silly person, and "saise" from German "Scheiße", shit.
  
  Section::::Examples in different languages.:Turkish.
   An early example is from 1130, in the Gospel book of Munsterbilzen Abbey. The following sentence mixes late Old Dutch and Latin:
  
  poem
  
  Tesi samanunga was edele unde scona
  
  et omnium virtutum pleniter plena
  
  /poem
  
  Translated: "This community was noble and pure, and completely full of all virtues."
   Although Anglo-Norman and Anglo-French were eventually eclipsed by modern English, they had been used widely enough to influence English vocabulary permanently. Thus, many original Germanic words, cognates of which can still be found in Nordic, German, and Dutch, have been lost or, as more often occurs, exist alongside synonyms of Anglo-Norman French origin. Grammatically, Anglo-Norman had little lasting impact on English although it is still evident in official and legal terms where the ordinary sequence of noun and adjective is reversed, for example "attorney general": the spelling is English but the word order (noun then adjective) is French. Other such examples are "heir apparent", "court martial", and "body politic".
   The philosopher Nelson Goodman anonymously published another version in the Boston Post issue of June 8, 1931, with "nobles" never lying and "hunters" never telling the truth. Three inhabitants "A", "B", "C" meet some day, and "A" says either "I am a noble" or "I am a hunter", we don't yet know which. Then "B", in reply to a query, says ""A" said, 'I am a hunter'". After that, "B" says ""C" is a hunter". Then, "C" says ""A" is noble". Now the problem is, which is each, and why?
   Today the Romance languages, which comprise all languages that descended from Latin, are spoken by more than 800 million native speakers worldwide, mainly in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Romance languages are either official, co-official, or significantly used in 72 countries around the globe.
  
  Additionally, Latin had a great influence on both the grammar and the lexicon of West Germanic languages. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and Dutch vocabularies. Those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch.
  
  Section::::Europe.:Italic and Celtic.:Celtic.
   Many are used verbatim in English texts—"et cetera" ("etc."), "ad nauseam", "modus operandi" (M.O.), "ad hoc", "in flagrante delicto", "mea culpa", and so on—but this is rarer for : "hoi polloi" 'the many', "eureka" 'I have found (it)', "kalos kagathos" 'beautiful and virtuous', "hapax legomenon" 'once said', "kyrie eleison" 'Lord, have mercy'.
  
  Section::::Calques and translations.
   Section::::Old Dutch glosses.
  
  Glosses to the Salic law code (the "Malbergse glossen") contain several Old Dutch words and what is likely the earliest full sentence in the language:
  
  * Old Dutch and Early Modern and earlier versions of English used the second-person singular pronoun, like "thou" and "thee".
  
  ** A "lito" was a form of serf in the feudal system, a half-free farmer, connected to the lord's land but not owned by that lord. In contrast, a slave was fully owned by the lord.
  
  Section::::Some tenets of the law.
  