Lars Aronsson wrote:
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