Danny
Revival of Latin

I recently read somewhere that Hebrew was a language that died and was preserved strictly as liturgical language for Jewish people until it was revived and made the official language of Israel. This got me thinking about Latin. I didn't know that languages could be revived and so I was wondering if anybody thinks in the future that it is possible for Latin to be revived? What are your opinions? This would be a dream come true for me and would give me even more motivation to learn Latin! :)


P.s. and yes, I am aware of Vulgar Latin. 

Apr 16, 2018 10:03 PM
Comments · 16
7

Dubito an id fieri possit ... quia lingua hebraica in oriente vel lingua goidelica in insula hibernia, exempla praeclara linguarum nuper resuscitatarum, a populationibus longe oppressis pro signo identitatis suae habebantur. Quisne hodie praeter vaticanum linguam latinam pro signo identitatis suae habet?

April 16, 2018
4
@josegal - you mean the one where everybody speaks Yucatec Maya? ;-) Too much honor :-P
April 17, 2018
3

Hebrew is not the only language to be brought back from the dead. Although the last native speaker of Manx (the Celtic language of the Isle of Man, closely related to Irish and Scottish Gaelic) died in 1974, there has been a concerted effort to revive the language; it is now taught at all the schools on the island and boasts about two thousand "new" native speakers. Cornish (another Celtic language, related to Welsh and Breton) died out in the 18th century, but is also undergoing a revival and now has several hundred speakers. There are various other movements around the world to revive extinct languages, such as Wampanoag in North America. What all these have in common, as Aurelio suggested, is that they are important symbols of cultural identity to the populations that once spoke them.

@Aurelio, Lingua hibernica, dissimilis hebraicae, nunquam emortua est.

April 17, 2018
3

On a side-note: while Latin is in all likelihood not coming back as the official language of any nation state or people (see above for why not), you can find up-to-date Latin material at:

News in Latin: http://ephemeris.alcuinus.net/ (text only)

News in Latin: https://areena.yle.fi/1-1931339 (text and radio show)

Podcast: https://www.latinitium.com/podcast/ (great, fluent delivery)

So, not quite dead yet ;-)

April 17, 2018
2
Certainly :-). It is one of the best documented languages on the planet. People have been writing grammar and instruction manuals for it for millennia (since Varro). The only languages impossible to resurrect are those never written down. In other words, probably half of our world’s current languages. 
April 17, 2018
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