Jan Henning wrote:
Sorry, I guess I did not manage to correctly
convey what I wanted to
get across: Latin is not a 'dead' language, in the sense that it is
still used today by actual people to communicate information (as
There actually is an entry [[en:dead language]] that redirects to
[[en:extinct language]], and the common definition does include Latin,
since practically no children are brought up speaking this as their
first and native language. Now, there is nothing wrong in a language
being "dead". But Latin is about as dead as it gets. Hebrew was de
facto dead (according to the article), but has been revived.
Maybe "historical language" would be a better term. Sanskrit would be
another, perhaps even proto-indo-european. It is most important to
distinguish these (whether or not resurrected) from those intended to
satisfy someone's intellectual ideals or fictitious environment.
Ec