Apologies if this is not the correct community for this question, happy to post elsewhere if that is the case.
In English, it feels common place for fantasy novels to use Latin inspired words for their spells or magic languages - unfortunately Harry Potter is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, but I’m sure there are more! Sci-fi can also fall into this ‘trope’ using Latin themed titles or names - such as “Augustus”, “Primus”, military titles, names etc.
Is this common for other languages in Europe to pull from Latin for their fantasy/sci-fi books? Do novels in the eastern hemisphere pull from dead/uncommonly spoken/ritualistic languages for this purpose? Does one languages pull straight from other living languages?
Is Sanskrit used in South-Eastern Asia? Are there extinct Chinese dialects that live on in the fantasy/sci-fi genres? Do novels written in an Arabic language use a dead sister language from the Arabic continuum? Do books in South American pull from the wealth of languages spoken before European colonization? Do languages with multiple alphabets (looking at you Japanese, but would love to learn about other languages with multiple alphabets) use only a specific alphabet for magic spells? Is Swahili used for magic words in Somalian media?
I’m not looking for answers on these questions explicitly (not that they wouldn’t be appreciated), just giving examples of the theme.
A notable (English) exception I recently read - A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine - which uses names from the native language(s?) of the Americas, primarily Aztec if I’m remembering correctly.
While you are right in general, Fullmetal Alchemist isn’t an example of glorifying Nazi Germany. The country is a military dictatorship, they committed a genocide while conquering a neighbouring region and are not portrayed as the good guys. The war and genocide was shown to have long lasting bad effects both on the victims and the perpetrating soldiers. And the leadership is literally working for the big bad.
Just wanted to clarify, as this is one of the few examples where they play the Nazi card straight instead of going: “nice uniform and marching music”.
it’s interesting seeing people examine a work, confidently working out the most surface stuff while completely missing the forest behind it