Can Parent and Daughter co-exist?

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

stevegus at aye.net writes:

>Much depends on what your definition is of language "death."

-- the general definition is that a "dead" language is one which is not
learned naturally -- that is, in infancy, from one's parents/caregivers.
Instead it's learned after the acquisition of the mother tongue -- usually in
school or some equivalent.  Such languages may endure as scholastic _lingua
franca_, but that's a different matter.

The only case of language death being reversed that I know of is Modern
Hebrew.

>Looked at with the proper mental squint, written English is as much a dead
>language as Latin is.

-- this is a gross exaggeration.  The _spelling_ of written English is
archaic (non-phonetic) because it became standardized during a massive
sound-shift, but using modern pronunciation it can be read aloud and
understood by any native speaker of the language.