When does a language become a 'dead' language?

Question

i mean, for example latin, why is it considered a dead language? when so many people can still speak/read it? why are some languages more popular than each other?
What are your thoughts?
Thanks.

Answer 1

A language is considered "dead" when it does not have any native speakers (that is to say: no one speaks it as a mother tongue).

Many people speak/ write/ read Latin, but no one speaks it as a mother tongue, although many attempts to revive this language had been made.
The only recorded case in which a dead language was revived is Hebrew, that is now spoken as a mother tongue of about 3,000,000 people (total speakers: about 7,000,000).

Answer 2

There are two reasons a language becomes 'dead' or extinct. The first reason is that the language no longer has any native speakers. This happens when a language undergoes "death" while simultaneously being replaced by another language (for instance, many Native American languages being replaced by English, French, Spanish, etc.

The second reason goes along with your example of Latin. Latin underwent such a "rapid evolution" that it gave birth to an offspring, yet dissimilar, language(s). Latin may be a dead language but it gave birth to the modern Romance languages. Latin may still be used for scientific reasons, yet not enough native speakers still speak Latin. A closer example is Old English, which gave way to Modern English. Old English is almost entirely different from the English we speak today, yet it went through such a rapid evolution, it gave way to English. Many Germanic languages are the same as they also gave way to Old and Modern English.

Answer 3

A 'dead' language refers to a language that is no longer spoken by an ethnic group or country as a whole. When most people in the modern world refer to Latins, they're typically talking about the people of Central and South America. Most of those countries have Spanish or Portuguese as their official language.

People still learn Latin, especially for use in the scientific community or in history. Some Catholic Churches also still conduct services in Latin. However, this use is not widespread enough to be spoken by a people.

Languages popularity tend to be cultural. Japanese is popular among Americans because of anime, which are Japanese cartoons imported from Japan. Spanish is also becoming popular, likely due to the proximity with Spanish-speaking nations.

Answer 4

A language doesn't have to have no speakers to be considered "dead." Most linguists consider any language that has fewer than 1,000 speakers to be dead for all practical purposes.

Anthropologists tell us that a human society needs at least 300 people to propagate (reproduce) itself for any length of time. If that number falls below 300, both the people and their language will become extinct.

This is what happened to the Yana Indians in California in the latter 1800's. Unfortunately, they were killed to near extinction by early land hungry Caucasian settlers in California; much like the Fuegian tribes in southern Argentina. Their last speaker, known as "Ishi" died in 1916 and his native language, Yana, a member of the Hokan-Siouan family of American Indian languages, died with him.

Answer 5

language is dead when it is confines to a particular closed group for only a certain specific tasks. It is unable to geberate new concepts and define a new concept and spontaneous word ans structure formations.

The language is breathing alright but it has noway of evolving