18 Jun
2026
18 Jun
'26
9:34 a.m.
On Jun 18, 2026, at 10:41 AM, Bill Degnan via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Thu, Jun 18, 2026 at 7:54 AM Paul Koning via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
.
Yes, that's what I thought too. And then I found Sanskrit on a list of languages
spoken in India today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speaker… --
about 25k speakers of Sanskrit. Blew my mind.
paul
>>> Perhaps a better definition of a dead
language is one for which there is
> The real linguistic definition of a dead language is one which children no
> longer learn from their naive (NB not "native") environment, i. e., where
the
> language is spoken around them for purposes other than simple paedagogy. What
> this means for language revitalization is that until the generation *after* the
> one(s) studying, say, Lushootseed speaks it from infancy, it is still dead (or
> at best moribund).
A computer language is not exactly a native spoken language, but you
can apply this test pretty accurately. For example, Sanskrit. We do
have access to writings in Sanskrit today, it has been preserved, but
there is no country where Sanskrit is spoken natively. It's a dead
language but not a lost language.