While most of what you say is true, there might be a bit of embellishment in the "common folk" part. Education in much of Europe has its roots in the church. T

While most of what you say is true, there might be a bit of embellishment in the "common folk" part. Education in much of Europe has its roots in the church. The lingua franca of the Catholic Church was Latin. Therefore educated people knew and spoke Latin. Many Greek words were borrowed into Latin from Greek, so Latin speakers would know those, too. Other Greek words made it into English via other languages like French and Arabic. I think I'm leaving out a Greek component, but I can't remember what. In short, for a long time, being educated meant you knew Latin because that's the language you were taught in, and Greek kind of went hand-in-hand with the Latin and Latin-learning context of the church.