Communication in Europe (History question)?

The clergy and the products of church schools spoke and wrote Latin as their common language. European languages were not standardised and the Germanic and Romance dialects each tended to blend into one another. Even today a Spaniard can generally understand a Portuguese or an Italian, and in the Middle Ages Provencal, Catalan and Genoese were closer to one another than modern French, Spanish and Italian. Dutch, Flemish and Low German are closely related dialects, traders from all three regions were part of the Hanse, a league of trading ports around the North Sea and Baltic. High German was spoken around the Austrian Empire and among the many German origin aristocrats in other nations of Central and Eastern Europe. Often traders came up with their own common jargon and I was told that even today fisherfolk around the North Sea can understand one another even though one is speaking Scots and the other Dutch or Flemish. Today I am sure you can understand most dialects from around the UK without them being identical.

People were often proficient in several languages. This may seem unusual to a native English speaker but a Dutch person considers fluency in four or five languages quite normal. As a relatively weak trading nation they needed to learn the languages of their customers.

English is only the latest in a series of dominant languages. In the 17-19th century French was the main European language of communication. Even the Prussian Frederick the Great used French as his normal language, as did Catherine the Great, the German-born Tsarina of Russia. It was generally expected that anyone who called himself a gentleman had at least enough French to hold a simple conversation.

Movies use the language the audience understands. I'm not sure what the point was in doing a film in authentic Aramaic and Latin (The Passion of the Christ), nor would a film in Medieval English make much sense to you. Listen to the YouTube clip below.

There was no mail service, but merchants, couriers, clergy and diplomats carried messages around Europe. As only people of status sent written messages there was not much problem with addressing them, but if you wanted to send a message to your brother at a trading centre then you sent it to the "English House" / "Scots House" etc. which was a kind of club house which each nation had and which represented their local interests. You could be fairly certain it would be received.

Latin was the most widely used lingua franca as far as factual literature is concerned prior to the 1700's in Europe as a whole. It was used in fields as wide ranging as science, medicine, theology, philosophy, and the law.

It's also true that diplomatically French was used quite often too, and in Britain Norman French became the language of the nobility after the Normans invaded in 1066. However the ordinary people continued to speak English.

English was more or less confined to the British Isles, and later in the early British colonies.

To start with, their used to be a lot more languages spoken in Europe. The nation states eliminated most regional dialects.

They usually by speaking French, Italian or German. These were the cultural centers. This is where the great universities were located. At one point it would have been Latin, but as time passed, French came to dominate "cultured" speech. Italian is fairly easy for a French speaker to pick up and German was spoken in a lot of different countries, long before Germany became a country in the 19th century. Dutch is close enough to German for someone to pick it up easily.

English, not that popular, as it was only spoken in England.

In fact for along period after the Norman Conquest, England's nobility spoke only French. About a third of English is just Norman French, making English sort of a pidgin version of French. This is why it is "beef on the table, but cattle in the yard." A phrase which illustrates this, because beef is French and table has its roots in Latin via the French, while cattle and yard are derived from German, that is Anglish.

Most people in the world aren't as stupid as you monolingual Americans. Except for Americans, speaking multiple languages is considered normal in most places.

by courier and post.

yes I know that postal services did not exist but... .

Latin was often used but French was the language of diplomacy.

There were healthy trade links between European countries and sailors from all over came to Britain add to that the fact that wealthy scholars and those not so wealthy who were sponsored by rich merchants studied in universities that weren't necessarily in their own country.