<P> Latin was the lingua franca of the early Roman Empire and later the Western Roman Empire, while particularly in the East indigenous languages such as Greek and to a lesser degree Egyptian and Aramaic language continued to be in use . Despite the decline of the Western Roman Empire, the Latin language continued to flourish in the very different social and economic environment of the Middle Ages, not least because it became the official language of the Roman Catholic Church . Koine Greek, which served as a lingua franca in the Eastern Empire, is still used today as a sacred language in some Eastern Orthodox churches . </P> <P> In Western and Central Europe and parts of Africa, Latin retained its elevated status as the main vehicle of communication for the learned classes throughout the Middle Ages; this is especially seen during the Renaissance and Baroque periods . Books which had a revolutionary impact on science, such as Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543), were composed in Latin . This language was not supplanted for scientific purposes until the 18th century, and for formal descriptions in zoology, as well as botany - it survived to the later 20th century . The modern international Binomial nomenclature holds to this day: the scientific name of each species is classified by a Latin or Latinized name . </P> <P> 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 world . Of the United Nations's six official languages, two, French and Spanish, descend from Latin . </P> <P> 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 . </P>

What is rome's cultural legacy in mediterranean europe today