A Langue is known as died when there does not exist any more speaker S natives using it like communications tools in the everyday life in the form considered dead.

The two nuances “like communications tools in the everyday life” and “in the form considered dead” have their importance if one wants to preserve this phrase disputed (in particular because of the biological metaphor that one also finds in Living language, inappropriate) in the conceptual arsenal of linguistics. Indeed:

  1. some define a dead language by the fact that it does not have any more any user. It would be there a very restrictive definition, which would cause to limit the application of the concept to the only not deciphered old languages. Indeed, of the languages like the Egyptian and the Latin writes traditional still have users, would be this only in the person of those which study them;
  2. one knows that the languages change; consequently certain languages considered dead must be regarded as Living language if one considers the new forms which they could take later on. For example, Latin survives nowadays under the species of the Romance Langues, produced evolution of spoken Latin, and the Araméen, a long time principal language of communication in the Middle East still lives in several forms of néo-araméen.

There are thus degrees in the statute of dead language, and this statute can evolve/move. Thus, if the Latin is generally regarded as a dead language, it does not remain about it less than it is always the Official language of the Roman Catholic church, after having been that of the university (one still defended of the Latin theses to the Sorbonne at the beginning of the 20th century); the last council was held in this language, and a little everywhere in the world, of people communicate in Latin. According to an article of Pierre Georges in his chronicle of the “World”, Latin would have grown rich by 60.000 terms and phrases during the last two centuries; its article gives some examples of them: screw atomica for “nuclear power”, LMBO inexplicata volans for “flying object not identified”, etc a wikipédia exists in Latin: '' Wikipedia, released encyclopedia ''. The old Greek is undoubtedly a little less alive. It grew blurred, according to Paul Valéry, shortly after the First World War; to see a man reading Thucydide in the text did not astonish anybody in his youth.

If the statute of dead language can evolve/move, that supposes that a dead language can possibly return to the life. The Hebrew is the typical example of a ressuscitée dead language: supplanted during Antiquity by the Araméen, it was preserved like liturgical Langue, then used as of the 19th century by the movements Zionists, and modernized by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. And it is today again a living language, mainly used in Israel. But of other less spectacular examples of ressuscitée language exist, like that of the Cornique.

In addition, a Living language tending to the statute of dead language is known as Langue in danger or threatened Langue or language of transition. It is the case of the Manx, of the Vote, the Live, the Eyak, the Kikai and good of others. One will thus not hold, as some do it, the statute of dead language in the languages of antiquity (Greek, Latin, Akkadien, Sumérien, hittite, Hourrite, etc) or of the Early middle ages (Gotique, suève). Languages can die at the time modern or contemporary (case of the Dalmate).

It is guessed that there is a correlation between the statute of dead language and the social evolutions which the languages know. Thus the old Egyptian, supplanted by the Greek then by Arabic, survived in the form of the Copte, more and more minorized within the Egyptian company.

Transition and safeguarding

Nowadays, the linguist S consider that a big number of languages are in the course of transition from the statute of Living language to that of dead language. Indeed, of many cultures (and the languages which accompagent them or carry them) are in danger because of the reduction in the number of the speakers. The 21e century could thus see disappearing half of the spoken languages in the year 2000, inflating thus quickly the battalion of the dead languages. Reciprocally, there exist more Breton speakers in 2004 than in 1954, and television programs take place regularly in Occitan.

One of the stakes of the dead languages or the disappearance of the languages remains their conservation which passes by the restitution (in a durable way) of their linguistic contents. For the languages of which one lays out any more no alive speaker, the analysis of the old documents and the work of the linguist can make it possible to reconstitute in whole or part the original language (for example, the reconstitution of the ancient Egyptian languages starting from the preserved engraved Hiéroglyphe S and of the bonds between these languages and their downward). For the languages in the course of disappearance or for which the documents (written or recorded) are still very numerous, the stake is often to constitute dictionaries and grammars in order to preserve a corpus as broad as possible (see, for example, work of safeguarding of certain Amerindian languages or South-East Asia).

The almost disappeared languages sometimes played a part in the Cryptage of the communications; thus operators Navajo S communicated by radio in their language at the time of the operations of the Pacific during the Second world war, safe from any Japanese interception.

List dead languages

  • Akkadien
  • aljamía
  • Assyrian Araméen
  • Babylonian Avestique
  • Bactrien
  • Burgonde
  • Celtibère
  • Dalmatian Curonien
  • Dace
  • éblaïte
  • élamite
  • Etruscan
  • eyak
  • Falisque
  • Gallate
  • Galindan
  • Gallic
  • Greek old
  • Greek medieval
  • Gotique
  • Guèze
  • Hatti
  • hittite
  • Hourrite
  • Ibère
  • Illyrien
  • Irish (old -)
  • judéo-Greek
  • Judéo-Italian
  • Judéo-French
  • Judéo-Portuguese
  • Judéo-of Provence
  • Latin Kamasse
  • koutchéen
  • laurentien
  • Ligure Lépontique
  • (not to be confused with the Ligurian, Romance dialect of this name)
  • lombard Germanic (with not to confuse with the Romance variety same name)
  • louvite
  • Lydian Lycien
  • Hellenic Macedonian (not to be confused with the Slavic variety same name)
  • Mède
  • Méroïtique
  • Minoan Messapien
  • Mylien
  • Moabite
  • Mozarab
  • Nadruvien
  • Nubian, old Norique
  • -
  • Ombrien
  • Oroc
  • Osco-ombrien
  • Osque
  • Oubykh
  • Ougaritique
  • Palaite
  • Parthian
  • Phrygian Phénicien
  • Picte
  • Polabe
  • Poméranien (old -) or Prussian Slovince
  • (old -)
  • Punic
  • Rhétique (not to be confused with the Romance group same name)
  • romaniote
  • Russenorsk
  • Sabin
  • Sace
  • Samaritan
  • Samogitien
  • Scythian Sarmate
  • Sélonien
  • Sémigalien
  • Skalvien
  • Slovince, or old poméranien
  • Sogdien
  • Sudovien, or yotvingien
  • Sumérien
  • Tokharien
  • Thrace
  • Anatolian languages
  • Vandal
  • Vénète
  • Old volsque Irish
  • Yévanique
  • yotvingien

Internal bond

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