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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Miskin (talk | contribs) at 21:03, 4 July 2005 (That's because Ancient and Modern Greek are not two separate languages, they are two stages of the same language. Don't start an edit war. Make your changes without adding Greek.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

An extinct language (also called a dead language) is a language which no longer has any native speakers. The reason may be that the language itself has passed out of use, and has become the root of a family of modern languages, or because it was assimilated to by different language. Examples of the first type include Latin, which is the root of the modern Romance language group, and ancient Teutonic, which evolved into the modern Germanic language group. Examples of the second type include the Coptic language, which was replaced by Arabic, and many Native American languages, which were replaced by English, French, or Spanish.

In a some cases, an extinct language remains in use for scientific, legal, or ecclesiastical functions. Long after evolving into more modern languages, the classical forms of Latin, and Sanskrit have been used for scientific neologisms. Old Church Slavonic, Avestan, Coptic, and Ge'ez are among the many extinct languages used as sacred languages.

A language that does have living native speakers is called a living language. Ethnologue claims there are 6,912 living languages known.

In at least one case, Hebrew, an extinct language has been revived to become a living language. Other cases such as Manx and Cornish are disputed, as it is not clear they will ever become the common native language of a community of speakers.

See also

• Language death
• Linguicide
• Category:Last native speakers
• Endangered language
• List of extinct languages.

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