Why Latin is a Dead Language

Latin was one of the original languages of this earth. It forms the basis of many modern day languages such as Italian, French and Spanish. As it spread across Europe Latin changed dramatically with colloquialisms and adaptations to modern inventions. Gradually Latin became more and more rarely spoken and nowadays it is only held together by scholars who wish to attempt to read ancient stories and not the modern adaptations of them and the Catholic church. Within the Vatican there is a priest who is fluent in Latin and he has the great job of making up words in Latin for the newest inventions of the world. How great would that job be? Someone comes up to you with a new invention lets say a computer, and you get to call it a computorius, and get paid for it?

A dead language is classified as a language not spoken by anyone as their main language. Latin is definitely a dead language. The slightly more extreme is an extinct language which no one speaks or reads. I don’t think that any language should reach this stage but it has become pretty pointless when they become dead.

Surely the point of a language is for it to help people to communicate with each other. If no one speaks it then how is it helping to communicate? People say that irish is a dieing language as the people who speak it fluently is smaller each year. But the Irish people are stubborn enough to retain enough of it to keep it alive so that when it comes back it will be able to return full force. Latin has gone too far and no one now know how it is pronounced. People like to have a stab at it but they are really just pronouncing each letter phonetically.

Latin words and phrases have become an art form. They have been used to express peoples views in tattoos and paintings. However it is found mainly in science as most of the scientific terms originate from Latin. Flowers and natural things all have names in Latin and most of these names when translated give the reasoning for why they were called such. They may have been used in medicine and so were called thus. In this way the Latin origin of some thing’s may be useful.

Because of Latin’s severe decline we will never be able to revive it. Having said that, we should not lose it all together as it is part of our history.