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So I know that GW likes using Latin names for tons of stuff because it sounds cool and gives the far future a oddly gothic/medieval feel.
But are there any fluff explanations for using a language that, by the 30th-40th millennium, would be so ancient and dead that it should theoretically be lost to history?

In-game it is not latin, but GW chose to use "latin" to make the language/words seem ancient, much like latin is for us today. [If I recall correctly]

For much the same reason everyone's still speaking English.

Pretty much what Forcemajeure said, they chose Latin to represent High Gothic because it feels ancient and ornate, and fits the gothic aesthetic.

It's "High Gothic", which is a bastardized version of Latin. "Low Gothic" is also spoken which is the common language of the Imperium translated to English for our ease.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/High_Gothic
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Low_Gothic

Ruin wrote:
It's "High Gothic", which is a bastardized version of Latin. "Low Gothic" is also spoken which is the common language of the Imperium translated to English for our ease.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/High_Gothic
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Low_Gothic

Except to be correct and to properly answer OP's question, High Gothic is not Latin, nor is it related to Latin in any way.

GW uses pig-Latin for High Gothic for thematic reasons. High Gothic is an ancient language known only by the well-educated: wealthy elites, technical workers, and religious scholars. It fills the same role Latin did in Europe in the Middle Ages (and the Imperium is one big mashup of bad medieval and Renaissance history) and so Latin is a good thematic fit.

But High Gothic isn't Latin any more so than Low Gothic is English.

What I heard (as has been already mentioned) is that the actual Gothic languages are like hybrid english-chinese.

However, it is rendered as latinate to us to give us the same feeling that that language would have to Imperial citizens.

That is to say, to us, Latin sounds almost mystical and certainly ancient, the purview of theologians and scholars and daemon-hunters (Malleus Maleficarum, anyone?).

In-universe, the Anglo-Chinese Gothic languages sound almost mystical and certainly ancient, and are the purview of theologians, scholars, and Daemonhunters. So this Gothic language is rendered for our imaginative convenience in the closest IRL analogue.