how did we come to have dead languages ?

how is it people forgot how to read the hieroglyphs and other such languages ?

seems real odd to me

like if everyone on the planet stopped speaking french all of a sudden no one would know anything about it in 100 years ?

languages die out probably because of all the speakers of that language starting to speak another language or the speakers actually died out.

but really...idk..

Languages evolve with the cultures and communitys that use them. With the death of some cultures, like the Mayans for example, comes the death of their language. 3000 years ago there was no communication with other cultures and peoples, so if a culture dies out, so does their language.

but it's not like there were years people didnt live in egypt

and they were in contact with greece

When I was learning how to speak Arabic from friends I was told by many narrow minded people that I was learning a dead language and it wouldn't get me anywhere. I speak better Arabic than my friends own children because I was interested and they weren't. I also enjoyed learning how to cook the old recipes from the elders. It's sad to see people that aren't interested in learning about their heritage.

Egypt was taken over, and as such the new language was formed.


To make it easier to understand, look at England. Once, it was Anglo Saxon speaking. Then it became under french rule, and it ebcame french speaking. The british slaves did not like this language, and started to form their own based on the french words, as well as additional slang and anglo saxon words. This became something of what we speak today.

We of English speaking do not speak the same as what we did even 100 years ago. With the times come new words, and the loss of old words. Language is ever evolving, changing, breaking and reforming.

Isn't Gaelic, I think it is, almost a dead language? There are only a limited of number of people left alive who speak it? Also, if there are still people who speak a language, but they speak it because they were interested and learned it as a foreign language, and there are no native speakers of it left, is it dead? I'd like to learn Gaelic. I'll have to put it on my to-do list. It'll be on about page 300 (but only because I write REALLY tiny!). <g>

Anyway, speaking of languages remember, "English does NOT borrow from other languages! English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them down and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."



(That was on a tee shirt I saw once. Some day I'm gonna have to get one.)

hahaha that's good Elfstone, and very accurate.

When people are persecuted to death and not allowed to practice their own native tongue or religion is one cause of dead languages.

The loss of of the Great Library of Alexandria burned with its hundreds thousands of books of human history and great knowledge, not only sucked booty, but made us dumber to the point that all we can do is wonder and speculate about these ancient mysteries.

When one culture invades the other, they wish to crush the morale of the existing people so they supress the teaching/learning and speaking/writing of whatever language existed there before the invasion.

The only reason that we even have Latin around today is thanks to the Catholic Church which copied it and spoke it after the fall of the Roman Empire and through the Dark Ages, it was given new 'life' during the Renaissance and hence was passed down to us through the enlightenment and now is used in science and medicine. Although it is not spoken by anyone it has proven to be a foundation for many languages and is a benifit to the scientific community.

Does it seem ridiculous, though, to anyone else when people use weird fragments of ancient languages to try to sound more intelligent? The example I'm thinking of is my old alma mater, the University of Missouri at Columbia. The official seal reads "Universitatis Missouriensis".

"Missouriensis" just makes me nuts! They've taken a poorly-understood word from and ancient Native American language (apparently it meant something along the lines of "of the big canoes", for example, "Missouri River" = "River of the big canoes") that no one can even agree on the correct historical pronounciation of, Anglicized it, and tacked on a Latin ending! How does this make the official seal look smarter? Just put "University of Missouri" for heaven's sake! Grrrr!

Okay, rant over. You can come out from under your computers now.

Elfstone you have a natural understanding to life itself because there is a saying - live the simple life and be happy.

your post is funny,lol

i hate it when people try to be smart, but fail in doing so.

Look in the U.S. Compare the way people from the Bronx in New York speak with someone from deep country in North Carolina or Virginia. They could say the exact things. And with some words, they wouldn't understand each other. Keep this separation and add about 1,000 years of generation after generation slowly adding their own slang and finding new words to describe things. And eventually you will get an entirely different language all together. This has happened throughout the exsistance of languages. To my knowledge of course.