71 replies to this topic

[ᗅᗺᗷᗅ]

Of course English has proper grammar. It is spelled out clearly in any number of texts, such as the OED or the Chicago Manual of Style. Here's another grammar site that says "on accident" is wrong. "By accident" is an adverbial phrase that means the same thing as "accidentally." That said, I doubt "on accident" is going anywhere, and as its use continues eventually it will be accepted as correct. Such is the way with languages. They are growing, living things. Well, except for Latin.

[Haflinger]

Even Latin actually. You look at Church Latin or Law Latin, they're both full of stuff that would confuse the hell out of CIcero.

[ᗅᗺᗷᗅ]

Latin is famously referred to as a "dead language," but yeah, I'm sure they have to make occasional adaptations to accommodate new words. 

 

So if it's dead, but it's still moving and changing... OMG! LATIN IS A ZOMBIE LANGUAGE!

[Haflinger]

Any language which is still in use is not a dead language. Latin isn't a dead language, people still speak it. Not many people though, and most of them are members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

 

Mayan is a dead language.

[ᗅᗺᗷᗅ]

A dead language has no native speakers, i.e. no one who uses it as their primary means of communication. What you're talking about is an extinct language. From Wikipedia:

 

 

An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers,^[1] or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication.

 

 

Some archaeologist somewhere might still speak Mayan (or at least read it; probably there is no record of the spoken language).

[ᗅᗺᗷᗅ]

Okay, it turns out that Mayan is alive and well. Heh.

[*Anastasia]

'Well' might be going too far, but it's at least not Kusunda (7 native speakers), or worse yet, Yaghan (1, 86-year-old speaker). Language death is sad.

[ᗅᗺᗷᗅ]

6 million speakers is doing pretty well, I'd say. There are plenty of better known languages, like Catalan or Irish Gaelic, with far fewer!

[Haflinger]

Well, I did not know that.

 

Latin has no native speakers at all, which sometimes counts it as a dead language. Nobody learns Latin in the cradle anymore. However it does have spakers, as I said it's used in Catholic contexts. Canon law proceedings are still held in Latin I believe.

 

Of course that's church Latin, which as I mentioned before Cicero would find very strange.

[ᗅᗺᗷᗅ]

He would probably know the vocabulary, but the context and usage would be strange.

 

I wonder if I could craft a master's degree in Theory of Dead Languages?

[Haflinger]

The pronunciation is the biggest difference between church and classical Latin.

[*Anastasia]

At least most people have gotten over using digraphs like Æ and Œ in Latin. Most people.