An
extinct language
An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers, especially if the language has no living descendants. In contrast, a dead language is one that is no longer the native language of any community, even if it is still in use, li ...
may be narrowly defined as a
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
with no
native speaker
Native Speaker may refer to:
* ''Native Speaker'' (novel), a 1995 novel by Chang-Rae Lee
* ''Native Speaker'' (album), a 2011 album by Canadian band Braids
* Native speaker, a person using their first language or mother tongue
{{disambigua ...
s and no
descendant languages. Under this definition, a language becomes extinct upon the death of its last native speaker, the
terminal speaker
Within the linguistic study of endangered languages, sociolinguists distinguish between different speaker types based on the type of competence they have acquired of the endangered language. Often when a community is gradually shifting away from ...
. A language like
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
is not extinct in this sense, because it evolved into the modern
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...
; it is impossible to state when Latin became extinct because there is a diachronic continuum (compare
synchronic continuum) between ancestors
Late Latin
Late Latin ( la, Latinitas serior) is the scholarly name for the form of Literary Latin of late antiquity.Roberts (1996), p. 537. English dictionary definitions of Late Latin date this period from the , and continuing into the 7th century in t ...
and
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
on the one hand and descendants like
Old French
Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...
and
Old Italian
Italian (''italiano'' or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Together with Sardinian, Italian is the least divergent language from Latin. Spoken by about 85 m ...
on the other; any cutoff date for distinguishing ancestor from descendant is arbitrary. For many languages which have become extinct in recent centuries, attestation of usage is datable in the
historical record
Recorded history or written history describes the historical events that have been recorded in a written form or other documented communication which are subsequently evaluated by historians using the historical method. For broader world his ...
, and sometimes the terminal speaker is identifiable. In other cases, historians and
historical linguists
Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include:
# to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages
# ...
may infer an estimated date of extinction from other events in the history of the
sprachraum
In linguistics, a sprachraum (; , "language area", plural sprachräume) is a geographical region where a common first language (mother tongue), with dialect varieties, or group of languages is spoken.
Characteristics
Many sprachräume are separ ...
.
List
21st century
20th century
19th century
18th century
17th century
16th century
15th century
14th century
13th century
11th and 12th centuries
10th century
9th century
8th century
7th century
6th century
5th century
4th century
3rd century
2nd century
1st century
1st century BCE
2nd century BCE
3rd century BCE
4th century BCE
5th century BCE
6th century BCE
7th century BCE
2nd millennium BCE
Unknown date
See also
* Extinct language
An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers, especially if the language has no living descendants. In contrast, a dead language is one that is no longer the native language of any community, even if it is still in use, li ...
* Language death
In linguistics, language death occurs when a language loses its last native speaker. By extension, language extinction is when the language is no longer known, including by second-language speakers. Other similar terms include linguicide, the deat ...
* Lists of endangered languages
Lists of endangered languages are mainly based on the definitions used by UNESCO. In order to be listed, a language must be classified as "endangered" in a cited academic source. Researchers have concluded that in less than one hundred years, alm ...
* Lists of extinct languages
*List of languages by time of extinction
----
*List of extinct languages of Africa
* List of extinct languages of Asia
* List of extinct languages in Central America and the Caribbean
* List of extinct languages of Europe
* List of extinct languag ...
Notes
References
{{reflist, 2
Lists of extinct languages