h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's an interesting question, because people might have called Hebrew a dead language for about 2000 years. After all, during that time, it was used solely as a liturgical language. In fact, it was considered too 'holy' to be used for anything else. So, instead, you spoke Yiddish or Djudesmo.

But in the 19th century, Hebrew was revived by people who decided to speak it and figure out how it described things like telephones and choo-choo trains. It worked - it's now a living language again.

The business about Hebrew being holy reminds me of Thomas More's great line in 'A Man for All Seasons'. Talking about Latin, he says,'It's not holy, Your Grace. Just old.'

A dead language should not be confused with an extinct language. An extinct language no longer has any speakers and isn't in use. For example, the local native language of my area on the Texas Gulf coast is that of the Karankawa. There are only 100 words that were recorded by interviewing the daughter of a white settler who ran a trading post. Those 100 words were all she could remember when she was interviewed in her elderly years and now that's all that's left of the Karankawa language. That is truly extinct (along with the Karankawa).

Yep - excellent point about 'extinct' vs 'dead'. There's a big difference between 'nobody says that anymore' and 'their thoughts are just whispers on the wind.'

There's a Finnish radio station that broadcasts in Latin

http://www.latinitatis.com/latinitas/menu_gb.htm

Is it really all that far-fetched that there might be communities of monks or priests where people converse in Latin? That ought to meet the standard of common use. The only problem is figuring out how the words were pronounced before the fifth century A.D. Chances are, there were probably pronunciation differences in different parts of the Empire.

As for Yiddish, there was a time, not that long ago, when people worried that it, too, was becoming extinct. Then someone got the idea of establishing libraries of Yiddish literature, which began pouring in.

How to pronounce Latin? With an Italian accent, of course

That's not true. I've been to Latin America and I didn't meet anyone there with an Italian accent.

I've had that problem in class - in Germany, they pronounce Latin way differently than in the US. And then there is 'ecclesiastical Latin'...

Same with ancient Greek. The Greeks pronounce it like modern Greek, and now I can't do it any other way.

Etruscan is so little known to modern experts that although they know the Etruscan words for one to ten, they don't know which is which.

That could get dodgy if you ever ran into an Etruscan.

An Etruscan and a Karankawa walk into a bar...


...


...

It might go like this:

Jute. Yutah!
Mutt. Mukk's pleasurad.
Jute. Are you jeff?
Mutt. Somehards.
Jute. But you are not jeffmute?
Mutt. Noho. Only an utterer.

(Finnegans Wake.)

I took one glance at "Finnegan's Wake" and decided to read "Ulysses" instead. Now I'm just as confused by "Ulysses" as I was by the other one.

Ulysses is best listened to rather than read. And the first few chapters are tedious. It gets interesting once Leoplod Bloom enters the story.

Ulysses is better listened to than read. The first 3 chapters are rather tedious. It gets interesting when Leopold Bloom enters the story.

A lot can be learned about the Latin pronunciation from the way it was put to music. Our Gregorian chant teacher used to get quite worked up about the Latin scholars spending hours discussing the pronunciation problem. She said "it's all there in the notation, if only they'd listen to us". She really did know a lot about it and was really enthusiastic. It was fun to learn with her, going into the tiny details of intonation, pauses, and singing the consonants. Even the kids enjoyed her lessons.

I always tell people to sing languages to learn them - and I agree with your teacher. That would be a great clue!

Here's a Youtube about a language group in France - the Languedoc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXZi8a4bjzY

What's funny about this student video is that he obviously wanted some Gregorian chant in the background - but he used Sandra Boynton's 'Pigorian Chant' - which is in the great old language of Pig Latin.

I had a cousin who liked to listen to Gregorian chant when he was six.

Here in NM, I'm surrounded by people who speak languages in peril. Navajo is probably the healthiest of the lot, but there are knots of "traditionals" who are working to keep alive a range of languages including Hopi, three species of Pueblo, Jicarilla, Chiricahua, Mescalero, and Ute.

I hope Hopi and Pueblo can be saved.

I'm agnostic on this one. A language kept alive in hospital is not such an interesting language as it was in its vigorous youth.

Irish is a case. My grandsons are schooled through Irish, in a very successful educational movement. They are completely bilingual. Yet the language as spoken and written now has lost a lot of its idiom, and is inevitably influenced by English.

In a similar way, Indian classical music has inevitably picked up a lot of western idioms. The best Indian musicians admit this; it is an inevitable thing in a living improvised tradition.

A curious fact about Irish is that there is nowhere in the world a monoglot Irish speaker. The same will be true for other languages we may try to save.