La drôle de vie des langues mortes

A dead language is one that has lost its vital functions: it is no longer transmitted to children, no longer used as a means of communication within a community, no longer evolves and no longer grows.

The vast majority of the thousands of lost languages throughout History are not dead but have simply vanished, leaving little or no written trace.

• Arawak spoken in the Caribbean upon Spanish arrival • Old Prussian spoken on the Polish Baltic coast, disappeared in the 18th century • Susquehannock Iroquoian language, vanished in the 18th century • Shuadit, a Judeo-Provençal language extinct in the 20th century • Umbindhamu from Australia and Yaghan from Tierra del Fuego, disappeared in the 21st century

Greek, Latin, and Hebrew survived because they are written languages, which allowed them to persist even after their spoken death and never completely disappear.

Dead languages no longer change and are frozen, allowing ideas to remain fixed in place. In a religious context, they carry an aura of the sacred and preserve doctrine with a clear separation between the sacred and the profane.

Dead languages provide access to writings from the ancient past, which constitute the famous historical sources essential to researchers.

• Dead languages no longer belong to anyone, so they belong to everyone • They form a reservoir of words and roots that anyone can use to form new words • In science, they are used to name new stars, animal or plant species, or formulate new concepts • These scientific names become universal, the same for everyone on the planet

A dead language is a sign of prestige that strikes the imagination. Brands use it to give class to their products, like Quo Vadis for notebooks or Audi for automobiles.

Religious texts are often written in an ancient language different from everyday speech. Religious words accomplish rituals, express an unchanging and immutable truth, are not subject to change.

Scrupulous pronunciation of each vowel and consonant is important for the ritual to achieve its goal, such as gaining a god's favor or warding off misfortune. If the everyday language evolves, sacred languages remain frozen in an ancient state.

• Sanskrit in India: language of sacred Hindu texts, remained frozen while Prakrits evolved into Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, and Bengali • Coptic in Egypt: used in Coptic Christian liturgy while Arabic is spoken daily • Hebrew: almost reserved for religious contexts in Jesus's time, replaced by Greek and Aramaic, preserved as the language of the Torah • Avestan: sacred language of Zoroastrianism, already extinct by the Sassanid era but used for the Avesta and still used by Zoroastrians 1,500 years later

When a religion spans multiple countries or even continents, the dead language serves to preserve and unify. Sharing the same sacred language (Hebrew in Judaism, Arabic in Islam, Latin in Catholicism) enables religious texts to circulate among communities.

In magic, speech is performative, meaning it performs an action and truly transforms reality. For this reason, everyday language is not used to avoid pronouncing magical formulas without realizing it.

• Ancient or exotic languages are always used in magic because the obscurity of the words' meaning adds to their power • In Antiquity, Greeks and Romans used Egyptian or Aramaic to cast spells • In Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling uses broken Latin mixed with Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic words • Spells like Expecto Patronum, Lumen, and Petrificus Totalus follow this tradition

Magical language often seeks to distort words from sacred texts like Hebrew or Greek, precisely because religious words are powerful. Kabbalah claims that manipulating the names of God enables miracles.

• Abracadabra: a formula of Aramaic or Hebrew origin whose precise meaning is unknown, possibly from Aramaic 'adhadda kedhabhra' meaning 'let the thing be destroyed' • Avada Kedavra: a death spell somewhat recalling Abracadabra • Magical formulas from ancient languages become completely incomprehensible over time

Unlike contemporary France marked by a monolingual ideology, most ancient literate societies saw different oral and written languages coexist—dead or living—with distinct uses.

Dead or ancient languages like Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Sanskrit live through the strength and prestige of their written tradition. Texts written in these languages are foundational to our societies, which were built upon them.

• In ancient Mesopotamia, writing was a skill transmitted within a caste of scribes, often hereditary • Written traces date back to around 3200 BCE in the era of Sumerian kingdoms with cuneiform writing • Around 2500 BCE, the Akkadians drew inspiration from Sumerian to develop their own writing but never stopped • By the early 2nd millennium, Sumerian had ceased to be spoken but continued to be written for centuries • Sumerian remained present in scientific and mythological texts and on royal inscriptions, with the last written trace in the 2nd century BCE, 3,000 years after its appearance

This dead language is synonymous with prestige, and elites and crowned heads boast of reading Sumerian. Prestige and association with gods and royalty wonderfully prolong a language's lifespan.

Hebrew was spoken until the 4th century, ceased to be spoken but was 'resurrected' in the 20th century. Throughout these centuries of obscurity, it served as a scholarly, literary, and religious language, as well as an identity foundation and a language of commerce among different Jewish communities.

Hebrew did not exclude using other native languages like Yiddish and Ladino in writing. This transition made it possible to restore its oral use relatively recently because it was not quite dead.

• In the Middle Ages, scribes and monks committed to the written tradition of Latin while Romance languages commonly spoken evolved from Vulgar Latin • In the 9th century, the Carolingian Renaissance asserted and reinforced the distinction between Latin and Romance • Latin and Romance languages shared written and oral forms, each finding its place in both • Romance languages became the cultural vehicle for artists, writers, and troubadours

Latin became the language of writing par excellence, devoted to other intellectual fields: law, science, religion, and history. Universal and shared by all educated Europeans, it is the learned and scholarly language, that of the Church and the University.

• Classical Latin remained frozen and people even returned to the 'true' Latin of Virgil and Cicero • Unlike vulgar languages subject to the tyranny of usage and the decay of human things, Latin possessed grammatica, grammar • This set of fixed rules protected it from variability and kept it stable • Latin kept some defenders who saw Latin grammar as a liberation from the tyranny of usage

Beyond their sacred value, Romance languages evolved increasingly and were heard every day. In France, the earliest written Romance French text known is 'The Oaths of Strasbourg' dating from 842.

• Spoken language, Romance, also had writings and created French • Written language, Latin, was also spoken and contributed to French • Paris's student quarter bears the name of Latin Quarter because students heard clerks, professors, and students speaking Latin • Latin experienced significant variations and lexical and stylistic evolutions • In French, 20% of words are actually borrowings from Latin, including very modern words like 'ordinateur'

For centuries, people were not really monolingual and genuinely had at least two complete languages with distinct and complementary uses.

In the Renaissance, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were recognized as 'the three ancient languages,' increasingly taught and shared in humanist circles within the Republic of Letters.

It was also during the Renaissance that these languages began to be called 'dead.' This trend accelerated in the 17th century when French replaced Latin in legal and scientific uses, supported by the monarchy.

• Ronsard, champion of the French language, writes in the 'Franciade' that French is a 'flourishing', 'lively', 'natural' language • Conversely, the Latin language appears 'dead', 'mute', buried under the silence of centuries • Descartes writes his 'Discourse on Method' in 1637 in French, though he later translates it into Latin • The debate concerns which deserves more merit, Latin or French

Even Ronsard acknowledges that Latin can remain an international language for the learned, provided it is 'good living Latin' and not ancient Latin. This use will truly continue, competing with English and French until the 20th century.

In 1829, the Vatimesnil ordinance introduced the study of living languages in schools. This reform definitively traced the boundary between living and dead languages.

Nowadays, the school system remains the last bastion to democratize 'dead' languages, but they have lost much of their status and become optional. Their teaching has diminished as living languages are prioritized.

Vatican II (1962–1965) did not suppress Latin but gave primary rank to current languages in each country. This decision marks a major turning point in Latin's place within the Catholic Church.

One cannot deny the fundamental role of dead or ancient languages in past societies. Even in imaginary worlds, Fantasy authors reproduce this phenomenon with languages like High Valyrian in Game of Thrones, Quenya of the elves in Middle-earth, or Ellylon of the Elder Folk in The Witcher.

Dead and ancient languages have exactly the same functions in fantasy worlds as in our world: serving the sacred aura of a religion, magical power, royal prestige, or the reflections of a small elite of scholars.

Game of Thrones has its High Valyrian, a dead language that fulfills the same roles of prestige, power, and social distinction as ancient languages in our history.

• Middle-earth uses the Quenya of the elves • The Witcher uses the Ellyon of the Elder Folk • These universes also use the Latin of our own history • Latin in an imaginary universe is not shocking because it fulfills exactly the same functions

Did you study dead languages in school? Have they inspired your imagination in films, anime, or songs? Feel free to share in the comments, because dead languages continue to fascinate and influence our contemporary cultures.