Can Parent and Daughter co-exist?

[Steve Gustafson]

JoatSimeon at aol.com scripsit:

> Latin "died" by becoming dozens of
> dialects which gradually lost mutual comprehensibility.  The process is
> gradual and cannot be given sharp dates, by its nature.

> Latin was alive in 100 AD.  It was dead in 1000 AD.  That's about as close
> as you can get.

Much depends on what your definition is of language "death."  It seems to me
that a language can be a learnt language, or even a learned language, while
still "living," in that people continue to use it for something other than
an intellectual exercise.

There are many examples that make bright lines hard to draw.  You have
languages that maintain a traditional written syntax where the underlying
speech patterns have profoundly changed.  (French surely, and English
perhaps)  You have languages that maintain a traditional written form where
the underlying sound system has drastically changed, no doubt to the point
of [hypothetical] mutual unintelligibility.  (French, English, Gaelic,
Burmese, Tibetan).  Looked at with the proper mental squint, written English
is as much a dead language as Latin is.  The spread of 'USA Today' prose
style and the popularity of the Living Bible suggest that more contemporary
speakers than we might suspect cannot understand classical English without
special study.

In 1000 A.D., there were communities of men and women who spoke Latin to one
another on a daily basis, even if few of them learned the language as their
mother tongue.  Hundreds of authors continued to write original Latin texts.
Latin continued to evolve new vocabulary and syntactical devices until at
least the 1400-1500 period, where a puristic movement more or less forced
the language into premature death by insisting on Roman models as the
arbiters of good style.

The resulting Latin might be more intelligible to Cicero, but it was
artificially cut off, both from developments in contemporary vernaculars,
and from the specialized vocabularies of the professions that used to write
or speak Latin in their daily labours.  It was at this time that the
language began to wither like a cut flower.

--
Glande accelerata velocior; machina tractore viae ferreae
potentior; alta aedificia uno saltu insilire valens.