With only eight fluent Nyiyaparli speakers remaining, an Aboriginal group is racing against time to save its 41,000-year-old language.
  • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
    7·
    16 hours ago

    This might not be totally the right definition, but I think it is:

    Latin is dead, but we still understand it. There’s no one left who speaks it really, but we know how to use it.

    • mobyduck648@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      11 hours ago

      Isn’t the ‘dead’ part more that nobody speaks it as a mother tongue any more, so it doesn’t really evolve like a living language would even though it’s still spoken in specific contexts? I think it contrasts with an extinct language which nobody speaks for any reason.