What is a DEAD LANGUAGE? Can You Be Fluent In It? Should You Learn One?

[@michaelshelton5488]

You should have Dr. Jackson Crawford on to talk about Old Norse, and Simon Roper to discuss Old English.

[@ibrahimihsan2090]

@@chrismiller5198 If Icelandic was considered a dialect of Old Norse, Old Norse would be considered a dead dialect while the language survives but Old Norse and Icelandic are regarded as two distinct languages. And so, Old Norse is a dead language.

[@C_B_Hubbs]

@@ibrahimihsan2090 Im curious which are closer: modern Icelandic and Old Norse (900 AD), or modern Sardinian and Classical Latin (100 AD)?

[@willmosse3684]

I second that!

[@gustavovillegas5909]

Exactly my thought!

[@kenichiotaku3693]

@@ibrahimihsan2090 I wonder why because it seems to me that the difference between modern Icelandic and Old Norse is like the difference between American English and British English. It's a first glance impression I should add, I didn't study either one extensively.

[@gabriellawrence6598]

I'm majoring Hebrew at uni. They primarily focus on Modern Israeli but my interest lies on Ancient. I really want to dive into Greek, Sanskrit and Latin in the future, maybe Aramaic as well.

[@Moaaz7777]

I don't think latin and ancient greek are dead languages because you can learn them and you can still hold a conversation by them , unlike etruscan for example .

[@marcello7781]

I've always been fascinated by those ancient languages that didn't leave any written record. There's so much mystery around them.

[@sakesaurus]

and you can decide how far you want to go with reconstruction. You can speak Church Slavic, you can speak Proto Slavic, you can mix and match that being said, church slavic is actually a dialect of slavic from Salonia. It was forced on all Orthodox slavs.

[@unarealtaragionevole]

Agreed makes you wonder if it's all the mysteries of the universe, or a recipe for soup.

[@5podsolnuhov]

@@sakesaurus Slavonic*

[@sammoblammo5810]

I've been studying Latin as a foreign language for my university degree, and I absolutely love it! I agree with Metatron, if learning a language is simply a fun thing for you, do whichever one you are most passionate about. I hope to work on some other ancient languages at some point. I'm probably just insane, but they're just a lot more fun to me than modern languages.

[@janebach279]

Since childhood I wanted to learn Latin, but didn't have a chance. Recently I got myself a Hans Ørberg's Familia Romana. And I love it! The fun thing is, that my kids also showed interest in it. I really do think, that learning Latin can help in learning and understanding other European languages. When my kids have to remember some new spelling in their first languages (English and Russian) or a new vocabulary in French (they learn it at school) they can often remember a cognate from another language. And Latin proved to be the most helpful. It also helped with my dyslexia. The point I'm trying to make is that learning a new language, dead or alive, and getting familiar with a new culture is always beneficial. As long as you have fun doing it of course)

[@Lyridan]

Knowing something about Proto-Indo European would be nice because as far as I know we don't have samples of this language and it is only a reconstruction. How accurate is a reconstruction?

[@geraldodamasceno7855]

I am learning old tupy, the most spoken languge along the brazilian coast way back in 1500

[@angreagach]

I hope you've seen the movie How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman, which is largely in this tongue. If not, SEE IT! (Actually, I would not be surprised if this was what made you interested in learning the language.)

[@davidbraun6209]

It's a little early to write the death certificate for New West Aramaic (it has a handful of native speakers still using it as what I call an "ADL language" [ADL = "activities of daily living"], largely in Jordan or other parts of what's been called "Greater Syria"). Ditto New East Aramaic (it has a handful of native speakers in northern Iraq or eastern Turkey). ISIS may end up liquidating the few remaining speakers of each and both forms of Aramaic, long after most speakers ended up abandoning their version of Aramaic for some modern living language (usually some variant of Arabic, Israeli Hebrew, or some variant of English).

[@avrowolf]

Old Irish and Gothic would be interesting ones (I'll have to look up the websites that were reconstructing Gothic language)

[@Ali-bu6lo]

Aramaic is actually still spoken in Iraq, Syria, Iran and some other Middle Eastern countries

[@eeengineer8851]

In college in the 1980s a chem prof offered some extra credit homework. One of the problems was in Latin. I borrowed a Latin dictionary from my parish (catholic) priest that he had used in seminary in the 1940s to work out a translation of the word problem. I think the prof was amazed I'd took this on and not sure he even knew what the word problem was (probably found it someplace). More recently, I have been into genealogy and come into some church records from the 1700s that are in Latin. Other newer ones in some German dialect (Bohemia). I have no illusions or aspirations to speak these, just want to be able to read them well enough to get at least a rough translation. For the "Bohemish" I have had help from a distant cousin who has some old dictionary of that dialect as according to them a lot of words do not have modern German for. The sloppy hand writing is another matter for many of these!!!

[@kovaxim]

You know what would be a good video? An explanation of the difference between an extinct language, a dead language, a revived language and an evolved language. I think Dalmatian is extinct, Latin is dead-ish, revived would be Hebrew possibly even Irish, evolved would be Modern English compared to Middle or Old English. Even Ancient Sumerian is a dead language, yet there are people who still read and write it (most notably dr. Irving Finkle of the British Museum)

[@chrissermoon4156]

Estruscan!!! Do a video on Etruscan. I remember my old latin teacher always say that much of Etruscan is still a mystery, but that we do know thing, partly because we know latin borrowed some words from it. Would be so interesting!

[@davidbraun6209]

We don't have a lot of material in Etruscan, and only one set of bilingual inscriptions, in Etruscan and Punic. I think they're called the Pyrgi Tablets.

[@stalhandske9649]

Seconded! The mystery only adds to the intrigue methinks.

[@gregmuon]

Yeah, that'd be cool. Problem is the early Christian Romans destroyed pretty much all Etruscan written materials during the late Roman Empire, and the language is mostly lost. They thought of them as pagan.

[@alexrainbow7372]

Just wanted to drop a comment of thanks. I've been watching Metatron for the last couple years when I was just getting interested in ancient history and languages and his videos helped inspire me to change my whole education path. I'm now aiming for a masters in Greek and Roman studies, and I'm having a blast learning Classical Latin and Greek. I'm even doing some archaeology in Italy this summer 😄Thank you for helping me discover my greatest passion!!!

[@iberius9937]

This video came at exactly the right time, when I've decided to go back to learning Latin and focus on it. I'm already pretty conversational in it and can even think in it, but I'm far from fluent and will need an extra year to two years to attain that goal with the right amount of discipline AD DISCENDUM.

[@Astropeleki]

I started the same journey as well back in January. Can't wait to read ancient Latin poems and understand them with no need to check up the words and grammatic 🥰

[@Fedexed1]

Id wanna see you cover Old Norse, Ancient Greek, Old English, Aramaic and Coptic

[@FrancescoVitellini]

There is a lot of affinity between dead languages and some modern dialects. In the southest part of Calabria (and in some parts of the province of Messina, in Sicily) they speak a dialect (grecanico) that is very close to ancient Greek; in Iceland they speak a modern form of Norse (very close to the ancient one) and in the North-West of Germany (and in the Netherlands) there are dialects (for example Plattdeutsch) that are very close to ancient Anglosaxon. In a certain way, those dead languages still survive, albeit in a different form :) These are very interesting videos ;) Keep them coming (perhaps, it would be very interesting to learn more about Indo European languages and on how they are all connected)

[@wnkbp4897]

Sorry to say, but modern Plattdeutsch is very close to modern Dutch. For comparison with Old English you should look for Old Low German aka Old Saxon. I think you can find more on Old High German though.

[@FrancescoVitellini]

@@wnkbp4897 yep, I knew it's very close to Dutch, but as far as I know, there are many similarities with anglosaxon as well :)

[@stalhandske9649]

Concerning that question of which language I'd like to see elaborated on this channel: I would say Etruscan. I know next to nothing about it & I'd imagine Italy has a prolific community of research for that language, so that a scholar of that *field* could be relatively easily contacted. Also, Mika Waltari, a famous author from my country, once wrote an excellent historical novel _The Etruscan_ that had, well, an ancient Etruscan man as protagonist; I have let myself understand that his research on the topic - at least by what was known back then - was rather well done (Waltari was usually pedantic in his research). Reading that book as a teenager sparked an interest in me for that culture that has prevailed. So yes, Etruscan would be my choice!

[@wolfcryerke]

Latin also helps with medical studies. I've had 3 years of latin in high school (but I didn't put much effort in it). Yet when my husband started studying as a nurse 20 years later, there was a lot of terminology I could take an educated guess on :)

[@codymoon7552]

It also helps with things like paleontology, archeology, and anthropology!

[@iberius9937]

I can answer that question about the MOST dead languages: Etruscan, the Italic languages that are not Latin (Oscan, Faliscan, etc), Ancient Egyptian, Akkadian, Sumerian, et cetera. These languages are rarely studied let alone spoken aloud in any way, therefore truly dead.

[@cahallo5964]

You should make a whole series inviting experts on dead languages, looks interesting. I have no clue about aramaic or iberian, for example.

[@LDSVenus]

I took 2 years of Latin in high school and loved translating Julius Caesar’s journals. It’s been a long time ago and I’ve lost most of that knowledge, but I can still see the Latin words in English, reminds me the fun in that class.

[@forthrightgambitia1032]

There is an interesting video by Luke where he talks about Charlemagne's reforms of church liturgy through Alcuin of York's influence, which was an attempt to enforce a unified classical Latin in the Catholic church. Obviously the fact that the church until the 1960s was the main place where you would hear Latin spoken suggests this was highly successful - but it also created I think the sense that Latin was a dead language and created the sense that there was a strict division between romance languages and Latin. Before about the 9th century AD, there had been a 1000 years of drift in terms of colloquial and vulgar forms of the language, but this was just considered a dialect per se, and not a split language. I wonder if the Church had not tried to force a clean break between vernacular languages and official languages whether at some point the romance languages may have become reintegrated into a common educated language again. Especially after the humanists of the 16th century developed early philology and the conceptual tools to piece together the langauge this would have been feasible, and that might have lead to what we would have called a modern Latin, in the same way we have a modern Hebrew.

[@edspace.]

This might be an interesting perspective but I remember talking to someone and he told me that "you need Latin and Greek if you want to study medicine" and so he was studying Latin alongside his medical degree (his first language was Greek). He gave me the example of how when the doctors offered him the choice of metoidioplasty or phalloplasty, he knew which to choose as his language was good enough. Granted he was at a stall trying to get me to sign up for a language learning course that would supplement my degree, their test showed I lacked the English fluency to qualify for enrollment but hopefully other people on campus would have found it more useful, but it made me wonder, can learning languages help with other areas of study, outside what I believe is called "Cultural Subjects".

[@jorgkrause2362]

Thank you very much for your video. One aspect where a dead language can help is to understand one's own language better. At our school (German native speakers), Latin helped many students not only to use German grammar intuitively, but to understand it systematically. Of course, Old High German would have been even better for this, since, for example, the system of strong verbs (change of root vowel, often called irregular verbs) and weak verbs (no change in root vowel, often called regular verbs) or strong and weak declension seems somewhat obscure even to a modern native speaker. From the perspective of Old High German, however, this concept is actually extremely systematic. Unfortunately, Latin does not help with this concept, as it is missing here. (As far as I know.)

[@Pedro_Colicigno]

Hey Metatron, love your videos. A couple suggestions, one would be a video about "fake" languages and learning then, for example the various tolkien elvish languages, since they are very well developed. Also, on translations, a very fun video would be the various bible translations that got stuff wrong. If I recall, a very famous one gave Jose a pair of horns in a mistranslation. To be fair, the whole bible translations is a nice concept, since it is a the best selling book of all times and has been translated to pretty much everything at some point. Keep the good work.

[@JohnMiller-zr8pl]

And if Metatron wants an expert he could try contact "its just some guy", he knows how to speak very well in one of those Tolkinean languages.

[@troydavidson4197]

ive been learning japanese for around 2 years now and living abroad in japan for almost a year, and ive found my mind drifting to europe and specifically iceland. Despite my first choice of foreign language (i am an anglophone native) ive always been fascinated with medieval and dark age europe. And i feel like icelandic is a fantastic. Jumping off point for early migration era european study, as well as just sounding cool and being used in a beautiful country. But im worried about my japanese study as well, i put a lot of time and sweat and tears into my japanese study and i feel like i would have to drop it to go after icelandic, and im not anywhere near where i would like to be satisfied with my progress, so i feel very much caught in a language trap with japanese. The other big problem is that these languages are pretty exclusive to their native countries (icelandic much more so than japanese admittedly) and im worried about splitting my focus too globally.

[@AthanasiosJapan]

I focused on Japanese for about 10 years. Japanese needs a lot of time and practise, especially the Kanji/reading. It took me 8 years for JLPT1, 3 of them in Japan. If you plan to study or work in Japan, my suggestion is to focus on Japanese, until you have reached a stable life and have time to study something else. Settings priorities is something very important and your time is limited. By the way, I managed to find some Icelanders in Japan, so I had the chance to immerse into the Icelandic culture.

[@warbrush]

I've been learning Latin this past year, I plan to learn Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman and Koine Greek as well. idgaf, I picked up Latin on a whim and it was the best decision ever.

[@agrippa5643]

Optime facit amice!

[@joecal2360]

Quick unrelated note, since I noticed you chuckle when you were reading the phrase, "these United States". This phrasing is quite intentional, and is commonly a cultural and political statement indicating that the speaker is against the contemporary mode of centralized government in which the United States is seen as a singular unit, with the individual states being largely legally irrelevant, and is instead in favor of the traditional mode of decentralized government as practiced during the founding of the United States, in which each state is a sovereign governing entity, to which the federal government is subservient, but which collectively exist as THESE United States. Less commonly, this phrasing of these United States is used by someone who is fond of archaic language and who wishes to use outdated phrases, but who doesn't have an ostensible political cause behind their usage of the phrase. TLDR it's not a grammatical error, it's fully intentional, and as an anti-globalist I believe it's the correct form of the demonstrative adjective. Down with the WEF! I will not live in a pod and eat bugs!

[@tommyblackwell3760]

Well said, sir. Many such as you describe will even write it as "these united States", taking their cue from the Declaration of Independence, to wit the first sentence: "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America...."....the lack of capitalization on "united" indicating the sovereignty of the (capitalized) States.

[@willmosse3684]

It would be great to bring on Jackson Crawford for Old Norse, and Simon Roper for Old English. In terms of modern languages, I would love to see a bit on Romanian. I am learning it, and I feel it gets a bit left out in discussions of Romance languages 😢

[@veritasardens6547]

I am from India, aside from my mother tongue of Tamil which is an ancient classical language in its own right, I speak a handful of European languages to varying degrees of fluency. I am quite fluent in English and French, after that I speak Italian, Spanish and some Portuguese and Dutch aside from B2 level German. I work with most of these languages in the field of translation. However, somewhere along the way because of my huge love for French in which I completed my C1, I took to learning Latin and can speak it to a degree of fluency, I also read up some Ancient Greek when I am in the mood for it and used to practise speaking Latin with some friends of mine. I can understand spoken Latin like when Scorpio Martianus speaks it, I am a friend of Alessio Schiano, a friend of Scorpio Martianus who has his own Latin language school for children in the US. So yes, learning Latin and Ancient Greek has helped me immensely with my modern languages and has also helped me appreciate the intricacies in word formation and root words. Yes, there are those who tried to dissuade me from learning Latin but I did not listen to them because I love doing it, I do it even now when I feel like learning new vocabulary in the language.

[@Pedro_Colicigno]

Hey, i have a question mate. When I was in school (in brasil) my portuguese teacher mentioned some academic (gods know the name of the guy) who argued that portuguese is probably the closed language we have to classical latin, he argued about how the language grew arround the churches during the reconquista, unlike spanish that is a jumble of languages, so it was heavily influenced by church latin. So, my quesiton is that true? Or at least, what is your opinion.

[@SweetTaLe]

I learned Latin as my third language, and honestly it has been really fun and rewarding. Through my love for history I got obsessed with the language at the end of 2020, and here I am. I'm by no means fluent. My speaking skills are pretty poor and I am much better at reading and understanding. Possum aliquas res dicere Latine, sed plerumque potius est loqui Anglice quam Latine si volo explicare melius quid significo. I've also had someone say that I am wasting my time learning Latin and that "there's nothing more useless than knowing Latin", but y'know that's how it is for some people. I haven't actually thought of learning another dead language, but I've had my sight on some modern languages like Italian and Icelandic. But learning Latin has taught me that learning another language is a very taxing and time consuming task. I'm afraid if I take up another language either Latin or the one I'm learning will suffer because I need to divide my attention between many things. I'm not a very talented language learner and I feel like I should be better at Latin after 2+ years, but I am steadily learning.

[@iberius9937]

Looking forward to your dedicated video about how authors' biases carry over into their translations! I may not be fluent in Latin, but after making the mistake of attempting to use Loeb Classical Library dual-language editions of Horace and Ovid, for instance, I find that the English translations on the parallel text are simply horrendous and outdated, utterly failing to render the subtlety of the Latin and failing to capture the true spirit or flavor of a Roman thanks to the very archaic English used.

[@magnusosmond1835]

So many people say Latin is a dead language but don’t most if not all the people in the Vatican speak it. Also so many people say Scottish Gaelic is a dead language but I disagree you see it all the time you may not know it but you do like the names that start with Mac every name with Mac in it is Gaelic sense Mac is son in Gaelic I wish more Scots spoke Gaelic because one day it might actually be dead most people don’t even know the Scottish have a language besides English

[@jaroslavkyprianpolak]

First of all, thank you for this channel. It helps me to clarify how to actually approach language learning and what I did wrong in the past. Regarding dead languages, or perhaps in this case a language on the border between dead and artificial, as a convert to Orthodoxy I am regularly exposed to Church Slavonic and am trying to get a better grasp of it. It's a beautiful language, though certainly not used in the context of normal communication, but one that has influenced a number of Slavic languages and, in part, Romanian.

[@TadaNoEssai]

i always had this little spark for Egyptian, if i had to learn a dead lanuage it would be that one, but it really seems hard to find good resources like for Latin, even tho i'm sure there's planty if i just put enough time, like i did with Greenlandic which may seem non having many resources to learn but in reality there are quite a good number

[@cp1cupcake]

I'm pretty sure that, based on the Cambridge definition, my sister teaches a dead language. And there are around half a million people who are fluent in it today. To make it more confusing, there are a lot of minor languages today, like the one my sister teaches, which are basically just dialects of languages spoken my millions.

[@oyoo3323]

For a suggestion of another topic, since you mad this video, perhaps it is also worth making one about extinct languages too.

[@PhDMario]

As Spanish comes both from Greek and Latin, I had to learn a bit of both both as part of the common core study program of my highschool. However, it was just the most common etymological roots from both languages. That gave me a more profound understanding of my own language, as well as a base to understand medical and technical terms. It also made it considerably easier to learn French later in my life. So, from my personal experience I see a point in learning at least some aspects of dead languages when they are relevant to your environment.

[@SPVRINNA]

I've studied only the most basic stuff of Latin (completed a first year course at university using LLPSI) around the time I was getting a hang of Italian and Spanish, and while of course Latin still calls to me, it's hard to see the benefit in learning it over just learning another Romance Language like French or Neapolitan. Maybe one day, if there aren't any other romance languages to learn, but as it stands it just doesn't make as much sense to me. I'm studying to become a linguist with a specific interest in historical phonological development of romance languages, specifically Italian regional languages, so Latin is useful but ultimately unnecessary for me to know. I think if you have to ask "Should I learn Latin?" you probably shouldn't, since the people who really want to are going to, no matter what anyone else says.

[@thoranevans4832]

What do you think about learning a dead language as a pure hobby or interest? I've been learning Latin for a year now and I don't work in an academic field that uses it, I just love the language and how it works and want to read the literature in it well. I work as a business analyst

[@artawhirler]

Go for it! If you've already been studying Latin for a year (and you still like it!) then you're off to a good start!

[@litigioussociety4249]

Ancient Egyptian and Sumerian would be the most dead languages. The pronunciations of them is purely speculation. Likely many of the phonetics common to Semitic and European languages today are shared with them, but no direct links can be drawn. Pretty much every accent and dialect before 1800 is dead. We have some records of dialectical differences, but I don't believe we have any clear separations before the modern era. British English and American English for example have their own dictionaries now.

[@fisicogamer1902]

proto-indo-european. This language is at the same time so well-documented and so scarce in resources. I consider Latin as overrated, since we have many living descendants that took words from latin that learning latin looks like just a neat way to organize all of them in your brain. Ancient Greek , on the other hand, is a hidden gem: modern greek is very different on its pronunciation and grammar and the only living descendant(aside from some other small and rare greek descendants). Sure, the vocabulary looks similar, but the differences shine on your face long enough to halt understanding of the ancient meaning. Greeks can understand somewhat koine, anything remotely classic or homeric looks foreign to them. This doesn't happen to latin, though. With good teachers, a romance language speaker can master the latin vocabulary in a year. Speaking or writing with correct grammar automatically is another beast, though.

[@pjoter167]

I always wanted to learn either classical Latin or proto slavic, but everyone I told said that I shouldn't becouse its a dead language, I would love it if you covered them

[@unarealtaragionevole]

Metatron, besides Latin which dead language would you bring back and speak if you could? Personally, I have always liked the idea of bringing back the Dalmatian language. I think it would be cool to have another Romance-Slavic mixture similar to Romanian, and the limited examples I can find are all really nice to listen to.

[@re1v3r]

Hey, Raph. Happy Friday! Thank you for spending your time to help out strangers. I think you're awesome, and I'm proud to have you in the U.S.A.

[@Sandalwoodrk]

I find ancient languages really fascinating but idk if I'd ever learn one cause I find modern languages even more so. I feel like I'd learn 100 languages before an ancient one naturally came up That being said If it became truly convenient for me to start studying one I'd choose Old English cause I love learning about the history of my native language

[@katathoombs]

Protip: if one wants to learn some of the dead Semitic languages, do begin with entry level Akkadian if only possible. If a strange script scares, it's a good choice: the cuneiform signs are a neat little extra, if they are used at all (as I've unfortunately heard some American professors do in their courses, _ie._ omit them entirely), the actual learning is done in the Latin script. The basics of the Semitic peculiarities in the grammar becomes familiar in an easily legible way. ...of course the three-radical system is better visualised in the Semitic abjads, but Akkadian's not written in them anyhow. It's quite easy to take up Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic and even Syriac after basic Akkadian. Arabic probably as well, but it's not exactly a dead language... ADDENDUM: if you'd like to have a chat on video in about Sumerian or the Semitic languages in several possible contexts, you could try to get a hold of either Dr. Josh & Evelyn from Digital Hammurabi about Sumerian or Hebrew, maybe even Akkadian, and maybe even Abu Khamr al-MaseeHee on the Semitic languages of which he is a passionate amateur linguist.

[@ReaperCH90]

Learning Latin as a teenager helped me a lot in better understanding the grammatics of my own native language German, and it helps me a lot in improving my French snd makes it very easy learning Italian to a usable level on my own without any teachers.

[@Rob1971ist]

I'd love to see a video on Etruscan

[@alexeysaphonov232]

The main consequence of absence of native speakers is nobody is in power to set a standard for the language. E.g. the speech about lorica segmentata in this video had measuremets in millimeters which were not known to Romans and even medival moncs the international system of units is from 1875. So for modern communication it is of limited use. Sure you can say e.g. computer or maybe ordinator(us), you can say facebook or, pardon mon francais, liber faciorum/i etc, but it is a patch on both classic and medival Latin. So main targets of dead languages is the past: literature, history, re-enactment, religion, etc.

[@goktimusprime]

Some people mistakenly use the term "dead language" to refer to ENDANGERED and EXTINCT languages. As correctly stated in this video, a dead language is still in current use but has no native speakers. An endangered language is one that is at risk of falling out of use, and an extinct language is one that has completely fallen out of usage. And there are different degrees of endangered languages, which are: * Vulnerable language: still spoken by children and adults but only in restricted domains (e.g. households or isolated communities, but not in schools, workplaces etc.). * Definitely Endangered language: no longer spoken by children as a native/household language. * Severely Endangered language: only spoken by adults; no children can speak it * Critically Endangered language: the youngest speakers are grandparents/elders; no parents or children can speak the language A language is considered extinct if there are no more speakers at all, native or non-native. Endangered and dead languages can be revived. e.g. Hebrew. While there are efforts to restore extinct languages, I am personally not aware of any successful examples. It would obviously be much more difficult to restore an extinct language due to the lack of existing resources to revive it. One factor that allowed Hebrew to be restored is that while it lost whole generations of speakers, it had copious amounts of written literature. There are many extinct languages which never had writing (e.g. indigenous Australian and indigenous American languages etc.) which would be far more difficult and arguably impossible to revive. Which is also why some people are trying to make records of endangered languages for prosterity; it's a literal race against time to make records of a language's vocabulary, grammar, syntax etc. when there are only a handful of elderly speakers who remain (who themselves may not even be native speakers).

[@EVPaddy]

I've learned only a little latin so far, but I think what is interesting when looking at the romance languages is, it gives you an understanding of the differences... i.E. ah Spanish adapted the word in this case while italian choses that one.

[@nazarnovitsky9868]

Thank You very much for new video !!! This is really interesting topic 😊 !

[@C_B_Hubbs]

Multi gratias tibi, Metatronus! Very good video on this topic. First I'll say, I would be interested in a video about the pre-Indo-European languages, both still spoken, such as Basque, and "dead" ones like Etruscan and the ones spoken in the Balkan/Greece region prior to Indo-European languages moving in. These languages I know little about but they are fascinating. As a native Anglophone, I can say that studying Latin as a living, spoken language has been an amazing journey for the past few years since I began. I was initially interested because I have prior interest in astronomy and other sciences, and wanted to know more about terminology and nomenclature. As I learned more, I was surprised to find how connected Latin was with my native language and many others, not just the Romance languages. I was also delighted to find a vibrant online community of Latin speakers and students, such as here on KZbin and elsewhere. I consider Latin to be an immortal language rather than a dead one. It has had an immensely positive influence on my life and enriched my understanding of the history and culture of not just the classical Mediterranean region, but other areas of influence and other time periods which used Latin for documentation, such as the Medieval and "Renascentia" periods. I have also become interested in the subject of linguistics in general, which is why I love this new Metatrons Academy channel so much!

[@WarLordXavier]

I have admittedly been thinking about learning Anglo-Saxon. There's a reading of Beowulf by Benjamin Bagby that really peaked my fascination with the language. Plus learning the origins of my native language could also help when writing

[@fearofworlds2527]

Etruscan is an absolutely fascinating language and a video on it would be great. The fact that it was the middleman between many Greek and Latin words and letters make it especially captivating. Not to mention how the letters would also go north to develop into the Runes of the Germanic languages.

[@krupam0]

Right now my priority is learning German. It's the logical choice as in my region it's the second most used foreign language for business. Unfortunately, I'm a massive introvert, so learning a language the normal way is just that much harder for me. But I'd love to learn Classical Latin someday. It's just that I feel it's too early to commit time to it if I'm barely functional with my third language. I also want to finish my conlang someday, or a few of them. The effort for that seems at least as big as learning a dead language.

[@DucaCremisi]

I speak Italian, English, Abruzzese and Spanish. And since I'm half Polish, it will be a language that I will learn, not bc I have to, but bc I'm passionate about my history and culture. And it's the same reason I want yo study Classical Latin and Old Greek. I'm scared of it of course, but the pure passion I have for history overcomes that fear entirely. If it will be possible in the future I will be more than willing to study Oscan and Etruscan, which are dead languages too. But I'm interested in Kashubian, Silesian and Old Polish. Just for pure passion and the excitement I get when I study the various etymological story behind words and phrases. Nel caso vedrai il commento, sarei felice di saper il tuo pensiero al riguardo, molto felice. Salve Metatron!

[@OVIDIUS.P]

Me personally I don't consider Latin dead, just evolved into 4-5 languages. I had Latin in school but you know as a teenager being told is a dead language, no point in learning it, I didn't pay to much attention to it. Funny enough I was able to understand it up to about 75%-80%(romanian native speaker)when watching the first season of Barbarians, the rest I just deducted out of the conversation. I only got my interest up to learn Latin after my DNA test(54% from the south of Italy😁), familly tree and after watching your cannel. So in that regard thank you😁. Salutem ex Ovidius ex Dacia Porolissensis, and now I'm relocated in Canada, imigrated 11 years ago(I have no ideea how to write this last part in Latin). I speak italian to well enough, and again funny enough I understand about 90% spanish aldo I never learned it. I always enjoy your videos, on both cannels. Slave

[@oyoo3323]

I doubt it would be easy to find one, but I'd actually be kind of interested in learning more about and hearing some Middle English. There are plenty examples of Old English on KZbin, and many speakers easy to find, but Middle English? Not so much. So I'd be happy to learn more about it.

[@batmaninc2793]

"Latin is a dead language." Catholics: Stulti et caeci

[@razoo911]

for dead language you means there are no more native speakers, ofcourse still now days there are latin speakers, if im not wrong about 5000 peeoples who can speak Latin fluently and about 40k-50k peoples who can't speak latin but they can read it and understand it

[@MarioBishara]

Thank you for this great video, as an Egyptian Copt, I am all in favour of learning Coptic and reviving it even among the Coptic population, so I have some friends with whom I am working on that, but the real issue with Coptic is the very few teaching tools we have, compared to Latin, you have plenty of good Curricula, however Coptic requires an immense effort and political will even, since the Egyptian gov doesn't really like the idea of a multicultural society in the Arab Republic of Egypt, and you see already from the name how Copts are subjugated to cultural assimilation, although not as severe as it used to be or as it was in the Soviet Union for cultural minority, but pretty much they are hindering any advancements in that field, so the main problem for Coptic is the teaching method, the only 2 proper methods I know of are Ⲟⲩⲁⲓ, Ⲥⲛⲁⲩ, Ϣⲟⲙⲧ (one, two , three) by Christophe Rico and the Polis Institute in Jerusalem and a book called Ϯⲁⲥⲡⲓ ̀ⲛⲣⲉⲙⲉⲛⲭⲏⲙⲓ ̀ⲑⲃⲉ ⲛⲓⲢⲉⲙⲉⲛⲭⲓⲙⲓ (The Coptic language for Copts) by Bishop Demetrius, and while they are a bit similar to Lingua Latina per se Illustrata, and even Luke Ranieri made a couple of videos reading from the former, there is frankly nothing else other than religious texts with translinear translation, yes there has been individual efforts here and there, but they lack the systematic academic approach, I hope that is something which we will be able to change later. Another point I would like to add, frankly I don't like the definitions of a Dead Language, as simply a language which isn't spoken today or as a main language, is Esperanto and Interlingua dead languages then? I pretty much doubt it, a language which was written and of which we have an abundance of texts shouldn't really be considered dead, maybe mummified or latent would be a better term to describe them, so once you dive deeper it is fully nuanced and a dictionary's definition is very lacking, thanks again.

[@vittoriahawksworth8117]

Ciao Metraton, alla faccia del latino, ma lo parli benissimo… io dopo la terza media un pochino mi arrangiavo ma poi, nonostante abbia fatto il Classico, non più. N.B. Sono abbastanza vecchia da aver fatto latino in seconda e terza media. Una volta ho letto una storia curiosa su un giornale quando ancora vivevo in Italia, un giornalista voleva intervistare un prete in Cina ma non avevano nessuna lingua in comune e stavano per rinunciare quando il prete gli disse “amo Romam”… The journalist rose to the challenge…

[@leornendeealdenglisc]

Well said.

[@belstar1128]

Well latin is a well documented language but most dead languages don't have a lot of texts. like Etruscan or gaulish or many native American languages and Australian aboriginal languages.

[@disco.newton]

Thank you for the video. 10:00 Sanskrit or Etruscan would be interesting to me.

[@HonorAndWisdom]

Gothic is one extinct language that i've always found fascinating, and would love for you to talk about it. Also to be able to say that you speak Gothic to someone would be the coolest thing ever :P

[@Mhc-zp9kc]

I think there's nothing like "the most dead language", but it occurred to me some possibilities, i.e.: (1) a well attested isolate language or group of languages, especially with no significant known influences to modern languages; (2) a written language in a script very unlikely to be deciphered, hence impossible to know what it sounded like.

[@artawhirler]

Very useful video! Thanks!

[@cd21234]

There is always the reason to connect with a threatened language for fun and to connect with your culture. With KZbin and zoom, would it not fun to have the nightly news in Middle English? "Now, with sports is Ethelbert...how are those Jousting scores?"

[@cd21234]

I've been listening to a podcast about the history of English, and it has been so entertaining and enlightening.

[@raylewis395]

I am fascinated with the idea of revived languages. Is it possible? I think it has happened only once, in the case of Hebrew, which was pretty much in the same position as Latin - a liturgical language, but not a first language for anyone. But this all changed when the newly established state of Israel decided that it should be its national language. There is a movement in Cornwall to bring Kernow back as a regional language - but could this ever be successful?

[@Pedro_Colicigno]

See, this is how you make a new roman empire, not that stuff the bald dude from ww2 wanted, lets start italy to use classical latin as a normal language in everyday life. Then we make modern armor for the police in the same stile of legionary armor.

[@stalhandske9649]

I recommend to follow closely the Irish language political program taking place right now. The language is at the moment in a rather bad spot despite some earlier revitalization programs, but if the ambitious aim of raising the number of everyday users (outside education) from current approximate of 83.000 to 250.000 by 2030, then there is hope that it could be done elsewhere To be honest though, Ireland has been independent for a hundred years now and even in those politically optimal conditions (homogenic demographics, national state interest to promote its native language), that century has seen the number of first language speakers gradually decline. What does that say of less than optimal situation? A tough nut to crack, certainly.

[@lovehex_scp]

Awsome video! What is some of the dead languages with the biggest body of work behind it?

[@himmel-erdeundzuruck5682]

There was a time when I was better in speaking latin than english. I could use that for my exam in church history, because I could read my source very fast. Second language: in Germany you learn your first language in the primary school, the second language you'll learn at age 12, and with THAT age I totally agree with you, that learning a dead language makes no sense. Why? because that's the worst time. Being in love for the first time (12-15), you will miss some important part of vocabulary and grammar. And you'll go on with bad marks for the rest of your school life. And you'll hate latin for this. That's a pity. Whereas latin taught at age 10 is far more efficient. You get through the main part of grammar before the usual teenager's distraction. Latin as first foreign language (by that time at age 10) was more useful than most people would ever think of. Those kids usually have better grades in total. Because they got used to regular learning (which is good for every subject), and to the structure of a language. To a language which still is quite present in other languages and in a lot of scientific words. And it opens the access to European history. And ancient science and philosophy. And by this to our logical systems. Yet of course as only foreign language - I even can't imagine how life would be without knowing a living foreign language. At school I learned English to C1, french to B2, Latin to B2, by this knowledge I could understand exchange students from Verona (where they speak very slowly) talking with each other - latin vocabulary, french word building, grammar a mixture of it - and well, to the italian pronounciation I got used quite easily, as I already knew how italians pronounce latin. Which does not mean I could speak italian by that time. But they knew german and english to level B2, so no problem at all. I think Italian schools are even better in languages than ours in Germany. And yet, our three languages (english and two out of latin, french, spanish, and russian) are already quite useful.

[@taijennex6829]

I am interested in learning Ancient Greek but not finding a lot of content on youtube as yet to help learn it, also not liking the idea of using an app to which I have to pay to unlock any lessons to learn any languages since I have done that many times and ended up wasting my time and money, learning languages any language to me should be free and accessible , it is a shame that every language I tried to learn was either not free, or not enough content , some ppl are teaching a language that they are not Native speakers of and don't even speak it properly enough to be teaching it to others , and some over complicate while teaching , sorry for my little rant ..but question is if you wanted to learn Ancient Greek , how can I learn it ?, I want to learn because I love Ancient Greek history and Architecture , the Philosophy and stories , the poetry , basically in love with Ancient Greece .

[@AthanasiosJapan]

Χαίρε! I am Greek. All Greeks study Ancient Greek in school to a degree. Those who focus on humanities study more. While Ancient Greek studied in Greece is taught with modern Greek pronunciation, thus making it not very authentic, it does make it quite practical, since more than 10 million Greeks can understand Ancient Greek, if spoken with modern Greek pronunciation. The game Assasin's Creed Odyssey has NPCs who speak in ancient Greek (with modern Greek pronunciation) and I can understand a big percentage of those dialogues. There are plenty of books for studying Ancient Greek and many bilingual books, most of the available for free on internet.

[@monikalala3810]

I had to learn Latin in Austriam Highschool and I hated it. Although I was quite good. But I forgot about it, because I never needed it. If anything it helped me learn English, because of all the Latin vocabulary in English. But for law school and medical school it is still required in Austria. I got back to it, as my daughter had to decide about her high school. But then I discovered Japanese. Now that is much more interesting!

[@Twisted_Logic]

Old English has been something that's fascinated me since I was a teenager. There's something about how it sounds spoken that just feels nice to me. Maybe because I studied German in high school? I've never taken the plunge to actually try learning it, though. Not even really sure where I'd start if I did. I went to university for engineering, which left little time for such radically unrelated electives. Not to mention that I'm pretty sure my school only offered Spanish and French

[@thoranevans4832]

I felt the exact same about Latin, since I had studied Spanish in high school. I'm around intermediate in the language rn, and I have a degree in statistics and have only been learning it for almost a year now. I think if you truly love Old English and are interested in reading the literature and have a genuine passion in it for itself, then absolutely go for it. I know learning Latin has been incredibly rewarding for me. I don't really know how one would start self-teaching Old English, but there are some people here on KZbin that talk about just that. Just my thoughts

[@markhorton3994]

Where to start with Old English is simple for me. Get a copy of Beowolf with side by side Old and Modern English and study it thoroughly. We had them in high school almost as long ago as Beowolf was written. I don't have a clue about the next step.

[@patrickbauer1671]

Many years ago when i asked a friend about latin he replied:" It is a language that is only written and read but not spoken. " That frustrated me so much and i dont know if it was his personal view or the stance of the school he was in. How can you read and write but not speak a language.....

[@seamussc]

Fazoli's is an Italian fast food restaraunt. Probably the only non-pizza fast food chain restaurant that I know of in the US. It's extremely inexpensive but also low quality... but hey there were times as a broke college student I appreciated it just the same lol.

[@randomdegenerate3841]

Could you please make a video about what we know about the Etruscan language and what we do not?

[@manuelramospetruchena4620]

Spanish native speaker, English fluent, and my kids go to an italian second-language school. I know I'll have to learn Italian... But would you recommend Latin first? At least to know the basics. I was learning Russian, but that came into a hault. What would be better to go to first?

[@Glegionar]

But still, even though I agree with the definition of "dead language", is Latin really a dead language? Because I find myself struggling to accept that latin is a dead language, simply because, I mean, looking at its history, people didn't simply stop talking it. They actually continued to speak it and it's just evolved going forward, becoming the today's romance languages (I would put ecclesiastical latin in this pot too). At this point, I mean, even the "italian volgare" is considered a dead language? Not sure if I can say the same thing for ancient Greek, but for example, Etruscan fits in the definition of "dead language": people still spoke it around the first century A.D. (I believe emperor Tiberius spoke fluently in etruscan, but I might be wrong on this), but then it just disappeared. It didn't evolve in anything, it simply disappeared, because people spoke latin, and we can say the same thing for many other languages (probably most of the meso-american languages fit in here). So yeah, I don't know, I really don't feel right saying that latin is a dead language.

[@vladprus4019]

I've seen definition of a dead language "language that is no longer developping" - like, you can learn it, but there is no natural evolution anymore and it's stagnant. Idk how well this fits.

[@Glegionar]

@@vladprus4019 You see, probably this definition of "dead language" is a good definition as well, but still I don't see the latin as a "dead language", not anymore (I used to, like probably 95% of the planet). I mean, nobody stopped speaking latin ever! It simply evolved. Italian, French etc. are instances of latin that developed so much that they've become a whole new language, but they still come directly from latin. I don't know if you get what I mean. It's like a string. If the romance languages are each one of them a string, if I start pulling those strings going back in time, eventually I'll go back to the one, big string which is "latin". That string was never severed (dead).

[@barihong5629]

Old Chinese lang Ancient Egyptian lang, Proto-Germanic & Proto-Turkic lang's, & Proto-Uralic, & Sumerian (I want to give here Elamite, ols', but we have no many infos about it) lang's. Edi: I forget - YAGHAN LANG, my fovourite

[@aetherial87]

I'd be curious to learn about whatever the oldest language we know some vocabulary/grammar/etc of is. Or maybe just the oldest where we know something of what it sounded like.

[@iberius9937]

Grātiās plūrimās ut semper, sodālē. Latīne est sānē līngua vīva!

[@veritasardens6547]

Nobis est pensum latine colloquendo vitam ducere, latine vivit quum id loquimur!

[@Plasmaspy]

Cornish has started to interest me since it aparently went extinct as a community language but people are trying to revive it and one side of my family is from Cornwall. I'd be interested in your opinion on constructed languages like na'vi or klingon.

[@jobyDiaz_1776]

Is Icelandic like old norse language?

[@xiaofei89]

Do you have two channels? Because I’m pretty sure I subscribed to your channel last week and it appears as if I didn’t.

[@vincentiusrex]

My old Latin teacher always used to say, "Do I look dead to you??" Lingua mea non mortua est!

[@sicko_the_ew]

Until relatively recently, to practice law at an advanced level (at least in some fields) in South Africa and Sri Lanka (which are/were the last two Roman Law domains - as in the Codex of Justinian _is_ the law, unless it's been altered by legislation, custom etc.) it was necessary to know Latin. ("Recent", here, means maybe 100 or more years ago, but not a truly long time ago). Well it was Roman-Dutch law, but quite a lot of the great jurists wrote their original works in Latin, too. (Although the more modern ones got all radical and switched to Dutch.) What about the Netherlands, then? Surely they're also part of this thing they started? No. These days their common law is based on the Code Napoleon, because they spent some crucial years as a French colony. ( Said to provoke someone, maybe.) Before they went Napoleonic, the Dutch ended upas the first truly modern state in Northern Europe, but with medieaval laws. These weren't very good for commerce. So the solution they came up with was to remember that Batavia had been a part of the Roman Empire, _ergo_ Roman Law was the law of of the Isle of Batavia, and hence, the Netherlands. Then they sent scholars to Italian universities, to find out what the law was, these days, and so it developed from there. (It was Roman law, as understood in terms of the glosses of the Glossators, or Ultramontani, and it was studied in Latin. So to truly be an expert, required being an expert in Latin.)

[@lumm0x267]

The world needs more Coptic speakers tbh

[@corinna007]

There are a bunch of languages I'd like to learn; in terms of dead languages I would like to learn Old English and Old Norse.

[@zakr911]

Please cover Iberian. Iberian swordplay seems to be not as popular in the historical fencing community and I can't image that Iberian is as popular as a language in comparison.

[@linguisticanthropologist8112]

Another reason to learn a dead language if it is your heritage language. This does not seem to occur much in Europe, but in the Americas, there are very many Native American languages that no longer have first-language speakers, but have been well-enough documented so that someone can learn them.

[@himfalathiel4012]

I'm interested in Latin and Old English, but I've never had a chance to study them.

[@evaldocarvalho2404]

Your latin is perfect, congratulations.

[@SergiiTorchukUA]

Yep, in the matter of fact, I came hear in order to find some clues on learning some proper Latin))

[@nymphrodellsalavin]

"These United States" was said historically but it's pretty old-fashioned. It made me chuckle

[@insanemakaioshin]

9:10 - Hardly any written record would be my guess.