Is latin a dead language?

[Mordac]

In this opinion released today, Judge Boyce Martin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit declares that Latin is a "dead language" (in footnote 5). Judge Alice Batchelder begs to differ. Her opinion concurring in the judgment reads:

I concur in Judge Martin’s opinion. I write separately only to express my suspicion that, like the reports of Mark Twain’s death, see The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (Third Edition, 2002), the report of the death of Latin in the majority opinion’s footnote 5 is greatly exaggerated.

[carvell]

From what I know latin was the Roman catholic church's official language until the mid 20th century, so it being dead yes but only in everyday usage but I believe it is still being used by the church.

[Jamven]

I do not think that latin is a dead language. Close to 150,000 students took the 2007 National Latin Exam ( source ) Considering when this exam started, in 1977, only 6000 students took it. We can conclude that Latin in it's written form, at least, is not dead. Also the Harry Potter books along with many modern books have been translated into Latin. As we all know, Harry Potter is a worldwide phenomena

Really though, living and dead is all about one treats the subject. All it boils down to, at least to me, is that Latin is a means of communication. Can a means of communication really be dead?

*edit*
I would fully support Latin being used a means of international communication.

[The Fine Balance]

I would fully support Latin being used a means of international communication.

And why is that? What does Latin have that English doesn't? Besides a user base that round about a few million, that is.

[deathinapinkboa]

I don't know what Latin has both a singular and a plural for the word "you." This would make it possible to write non shitty 2nd stories.

Latin also has no word of computer, corn, or surgar.

[LogrusMage]

As far as I'm concerned, a language that hasn't added a new word in such a long time is dead. Languages are the ultimate vehicles of adaptation in the world of communication.

Latin is dead. Who cares?

[Le]

O_o. I was one of those 150,000. Joy.

Even so, Latin is dead. Very few people speak it and there are more people that can read HTML than Latin.

My conclusion? Dead as a doornail.

[Alexeyy]

Originally Posted by LogrusMage

As far as I'm concerned, a language that hasn't added a new word in such a long time is dead. Languages are the ultimate vehicles of adaptation in the world of communication.

Latin is dead. Who cares?

There're different outlooks on that.

Personally, I think Latin is cool and so what does that mean there were no new words in ages? We'll add some! And there're people doing just that. Given, some of them produce scary results, like suggesting to use, for out-of-blue example, "oblongi follis ludus," which supposedly means "rugby." Still, those people are working to introduce neologisms inherent to our time into Latin. Basically, they want to see Latin as means of inter-national communication (as in, Latin, and not English...)

The workable solution, of how to create new words, obviously, don't exist. There're different means: using existing Greek-to-Latin and other loaning schemes, appropriating South Italian spoken dialects as the closest to actual Latin, plowing through modern European languages to find just the right words to introduce into Latin (preferably derived from Latin in the first time), incorporating onomatopoeia, and just doing plain insertion without bothering about things like suffixes and declensions.

The people who work on that are doing Sisyphean toil, they will never succeed for obvious reasons (the language is dead, and had long lost its ability to sustain itself). Still, the most important new books will always get translated into Latin, I have seen Harry Potter books translated into Latin. They are enthusiasts, and I guess they're a little bit desperate: people nowadays are too lazy to bother with Latin.

So, what we have is,

it's practically insane to use Latin in technical areas, like programming, electronics, etc. and it's a struggle to use it in science texts; because these texts, in Latin, grew in size, and suffer in clarity.

it's hard to use Latin in spoken discussion, for the simple fact that the many things around us had not existed around 100 b.c.

But: Latin is in fact the language of jurisprudence, biology, astronomy, religion, and (till recently) science.

Latin is a language of style and good taste -- it sounds phoney, but it's cool to know the language that was used as a language of international communication for almost 1.5 thousand years. Considering how many people know Latin, I guess nowadays it's a privileged thing.

And you simply must know Latin if you are a linguist studying history, and want to amount to something. The same is if you are a philologist: Latin is the must. English and many other European languages were influenced greatly by Latin (English has from 50 to 60 persent of its vocabulary derived, directly or not, from Latin).

Personally, I would enjoy reading Virgil and Horatio in original rather then in translation. Just because I can. Those are my masochistic tendencies. As dark007 said, Harry Potter is a worldwide phenomena: to be entirely honest with myself, I would have never started to learn Latin, if it were not for Harry Potter books, and for complete disregard of Latin grammar in fandom (not to mention canon). I decided to go for it while it's still interesting: it's too boring without active interest.

[Eidolonic]

Latin is far from dead, methinks. As Alexeyy stated, a majority of the English language is derived from Latin, and a fair bit of other languages are similar. Latin is 'universal', in that a solid understanding of Latin can enable you to piece together the general idea of text in most any language. There are exceptions, of course, as I don't believe any amount of Latin is going to enable me to read Chinese.

[Giovanni]

Languages need to evolve and change. Is Latin still spoken? Absolutely. Is Classical Latin (which differs from the 'Church' Latin of the Catholic Church) dead under that definition? Yes.

Are Latin derivatives still alive and well? Absolutely, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and several other languages draw their roots from it.

I, however, view Classical Latin the way I view Attic Greek, Coptic Greek, and Old English: static, and therefore dead. Language, as a medium of communication, must be able to evolve and change with the times.

Does Latin have a word for internet? No. Do some of it's derivative languages? Absolutely.

That is the differentiation between living and dead.

(and for the record, I grew up in a house with more books written in the dead languages listed + Latin then books written in English).

EDIT for Alexxyy:

You'd be better served learning Greek for linguistics as it is closer to Indo-European then Latin is by several centuries.

[Dark Minion]

Latin is almost dead.

Lately German universities decided students studying Latin don't need to learn how to translate German > Latin anymore. So they won't able to use the language to communicate any longer.

But Latin is still used and fostered by the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican. After almost 50 years the Curia even allowed its priests to reintroduce the latin mass again. And, of course, the Vatican adds modern words, collected in the ‘Lexicon recentis latinitatis’. Some time ago I wrote an article for a tramway society about that. An excerpt:

"A car is usually a ‘currus’ (-us, m). Thus a tramway as a public urban car is called ‘publicus currus urbanus’ (m) or ‘publicus currus oppidanus’. The development (explicatio) of trams started with horse trams (publicus currus equo). The invention (confinctum) of the electric motor (machinamentum motorium electricum) enabled the development of electric tramcars (publicus currus electricus)."


EDIT: Gio: Of Course Latin has a word for Internet: interrete, -is (n)

[Giovanni]

There is a major distinction that needs to be made between Church Latin and Classical Latin. They are spoken differently and their grammar diverges in a few areas.

Church Latin evolved throughout Late Antiquity through the Rennaisance.

Classical Latin stayed static.

[Dark Minion]

"Classical" Latin is the kind of Latin written by Cicero, Caesar, Ovid (Golden Latinity) and, partly, by Tacitus and a few contemporaries (Silver Latinity). It is doubtful if it was ever spoken. Especially Cicero's sentence structure is designed for 'written' texts, to be read out by professional narrators. We don't know the speeches he really delivered as he rewrote them before publishing the texts. And we know only very few elements of daily Latin.

So, of course, Classical Latin stayed static. It was dead with Ovid - or at least with Tacitus.

But Latin isn't dead yet. It still is used today - just by a very small group. The Latin nowadays used by the Church is based on the 'rediscovery' of classical texts during the Renaissance and is rather based on 'classical' grammar than on medieval simplifications.

[Darkmakr]

I remember my grandmother talking about how she had to take a year of Latin for her nursing program in the 1930's because that was how medication was labled. I remember her speaking it here and there for cursing. Heh, she never cursed in English. Ever.

Latin is dead, pretty much at least. There are a few things that need to deal with it, but it's dead within fifty years.

[Silent]

Latin is more alive than it was 15 years ago.

Latin masses are more practical in some contexts than other languages. A church I've attended in an area populated heavily by immigrants had English, Spanish, and Vietnamese-speaking attendees. Some parts of it were in Latin, which was more comprehensible than the rest, which was in Spanish.

I won't praise its clarity of structure, nor will I talk about how easy it is to learn. (It isn't - I've never been able to decline nouns) However, it is beautiful, and the best way to read classics like Cicero or Virgil. It also sounds nicer sung, imo.

A language is not dead when people still understand it, and they do.

[Alexeyy]

"A car is usually a ‘currus’ (-us, m). Thus a tramway as a public urban car is called ‘publicus currus urbanus’ (m) or ‘publicus currus oppidanus’. The development (explicatio) of trams started with horse trams (publicus currus equo). The invention (confinctum) of the electric motor (machinamentum motorium electricum) enabled the development of electric tramcars (publicus currus electricus)."

Yeah, that was what I talked about when I said technical texts gain in size in Latin. Imagine a conversation made totally in descriptions:

"We shall hasten to hail yonder curious mechanical chariot!"
"My word! Let us haste!"
"Oh, it is gone away by means of applying unknown mechanical powers, damnation!"
"We shall try another curious contraption over there! It rans by electricity and cannot stray from the pair of metallical bars on the ground. Rest assured, it cannot get away from us that easily... oh, never mind, it is gone, too."

My point is, in the languages trully alive nobody in his right mind would call a tram, "publicus currus electricus." He'd be ran by it in sheer spite!

[Nobody]

Latin is dead. It isn't evolving, growing, with the times. Give me the specific Latin word for car, computer, microprocessor, video game.

[Xiph0]

Short Answer: Fuck no.

[Dark Minion]

Originally Posted by Nobody

Latin is dead. It isn't evolving, growing, with the times. Give me the specific Latin word for car, computer, microprocessor, video game.

Ah, it seems the Latin wikipedia uses different and more useable translations than the 'official' Lexico Recentis Latinitatis.


tramway: ferrivia strataria

car: autocinetum or automobile

computer: computatrum (The Lexico Recentis Latinitatis calls it instrumentum computatorium)

microprocessor: circulus electronicus integratus or processor or talus

video game: ludus computatralis, with for example C&C labelled as ludus strategosus computatralis

[malaga]

Is Latin a dead language? No.

It isn't commonly used, or solely used by anyone anymore, but neither is Maori, and that's still on all the signs in New Zealand.

It's used in conversation still, people learn it and speak it, just as some people learn and speak French or German. As long as people still speak it, it is alive. Therefore Old English = Dead, Latin = Alive.