A very interesting post that opens with a (dissenting) opinion of two U.S. Court of Appeal’s Judges, attempts to go beyond the dictionary definition of what a Dead Language is by asking its participants: is Latin a Dead Language?
Here is an amusing article by the BBC that reports on the publication of the latest edition of the Vatican’s Latin dictionary called Lexicon Recentis Latinitas (Recent Latin Lexicon), an abridged Italian-Latin version being available online. You will find it interesting to learn that the FBI is the “officium foederatum vestigatorium” and that the video-phone is called “telephonium albo televisifico coniunctum”.
And finally here is a quote from Wikipedia that makes a distinction between Extinct Languages and Dead Languages:
By contrast to an extinct language which no longer has any speakers, a dead language may remain in use for scientific, legal, or ecclesiastical functions. Old Church Slavonic, Avestan, Coptic, Old Tibetan, Ge’ez and Latin are among the many dead languages used as sacred languages. (Wikipedia)
Filed under: Linguistics , dead language, latin, Roman Catholic Church, www.vatican.va
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