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0 pointscyphar3y ago0 comments

(I guess we've skipped over the discussion about whether language death can occur without genocide.)

> it's a bit of a mistake to say latin disappeared but I digress

Latin is a dead language. It's not extinct (because it's used for ceremonial reasons by the Catholic Church) but it has no native speakers. This is not a remotely controversial statement. Old Church Slavonic has a similar role in Slavic Orthodox Churches and is also a dead language for the same reason.

> Nowhere in the article says that. And most smartphones do even have support (including the Icelandic keyboard).

In my defense, I can't read the article -- I linked it because this Tom Scott video[1] uses that article as a reference for the Icelandic example he gave where he explicitly says that Icelandic is not supported by modern smartphones. My phone does have Icelandic support now so I guess the statement was only true at the time he said it?

[1]: https://youtu.be/qYlmFfsyLMo?t=137

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raverbashing3y ago

Thanks for clarifying

You're of course right about "Latin is dead" (for practical purposes). But there's lots of nuances that get lost in this statement

Latin is dead in the same way as Middle English is dead. The Latin that died is the one around the late Roman Empire time that was "photographed" and frozen in time as Ecclesiastical Latin (oversimplification, of course)

And of course the modern romance languages derived from it, but there's no exact time where those "flipped the switch" and became modern French, Spanish, Catala, Portuguese, etc. So in a way it could be argued that they're Latin 3.0 w/ DLCs (which I'll totally give that it's a big stretch)

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raverbashing3y ago

Thanks for clarifying

You're of course right about "Latin is dead" (for practical purposes). But there's lots of nuances that get lost in this statement

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse