[geoelectric]

Though obviously it's not the reason it was adopted, it is kind of neat that using a dead language for scientific terms disambiguates them cleanly for the purposes of searching.

Any live language would have accidental matches (even quoted) where it's just the obvious thing to say, a la "born without a cerebellum".

[beambot]

To expand on that... it also solves the problem of technical terms evolving new nomenclature (or new meanings for old nomenclature!) over time.

[jkdsfhkssfhjk]

not a dead language.. greek language is still alive and indeed it sounds like "born without a cerebellum" (but to be fair the syntax reminds of medical term)

[zarriak]

Latin is a dead language, there has not been a native speaker for a very long time[1].

[1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death

[lotsofmangos]

It is still in constant use as the official language of the Vatican.

They keep having to invent new Latin words and phrases so they can discuss things like hotpants, which are brevíssimae bracae femíneae apparently.

Have a look here - http://usvsth3m.com/post/95991771713/hotpants-flirt-and-othe...

The cashpoint with Latin in comic-sans is awesome.

edit - translating from the latin, comic-sans is a pretty accurate font name.