Extinct leid
An extinct leid is a leid that no longer haes any speakers. Extinct leids may be contrasted with dead leids, which ar no longer spoken bi anyone as his or her main leids.
[edit] Leid loss
Normally the transition frae a dead to an extinct leid occurs when a leid undergoes leid daith while being directly replaced bi a different ane. For example, Native American leids wur replaced bi Inglis, French, Portuguese, or Spainyie as a result o colonization. The Coptic leid, replaced bi Arabic in its native Egyp, wis ance thought to be extinct.
Leid extinction may also occur when a leid evolves into a new leid or family o leids. An example o this wis Auld Inglis, a forerunner o Modern Inglis.
By contrast to an extinct language which no longer haes any speakers, a dead leid may remain in uise for scientific, legal, or ecclesiastical functions. Old Church Slavonic, Avestan, Coptic, Biblical Hebrew, Ge'ez, Latin, an Sanskrit ar among the mony dead leids usied as sacred leids.
Alternatively, a language is said to be extinct if, although it is known to have been spoken by people in the past, modern scholarship cannot reconstruct it to the point that it is possible to write in it or translate into it with confidence (say, a simple dialogue or a short tale written in a modern language); whereas a language is referred to as dead, but not extinct, if it is sufficiently known at present to permit such routine use, even though it has no modern speakers. By these definitions Proto-Indo-European (of which only conjectural reconstructions of lexicon and grammar exist) is an extinct language, and Classical Latin and Old Tupi are dead, but not extinct languages.
A language that has living native speakers is called a modern language. Ethnologue records 6,912 living languages kent.
Hebrew is an example o a nearly extinct spoken leid (bi the first definition 'boon) that became a lingua franca an a liturgical leid that haes been revived to become a living spoken leid. There ar other attempts at leid revival. For example, young school children uise Sanskrit in revived leid in Mathoor village (Indie). In general, the success o these attempts haes been subject to debate, as it is not clear they will ever become the common native leid o a community o speakers.
It is believed that 90% o the circa 7,000 leids currently spoken in the warld will hae become extinct bi 2050, as the warld's leid system haes reached a crisis an is dramatically restructurin.
