17 Jun
2026
17 Jun
'26
7:41 a.m.
On 6/17/2026 9:48 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
I have stood in on conversations in Latin. I know a lot of people who
can and do still converse in Latin. While my ability to converse has
declined I can still read Latin easily and I have at least one friend
whose Christmas greeting inside the card I still write in Latin.
bill
On Jun 17, 2026, at 4:25 AM, Doug Jackson via
cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
...
Perhaps a better definition of a dead language is one for which there is
nobody left who can read it, write it, teach it, or care about it. By that
standard, many of the languages being discussed here are very much alive.
You could use the linguistic definition, which is similar to what you said but a bit
different. Dead languages are those that are no longer used in conversation. For
example, Sumerian is dead by that definition, as is Latin,