Why Is Latin Considered a “Dead Language”?

When I tell someone that I’m studying Ancient Greek and Latin, it is very common for the person with whom I am speaking to react with surprise at the fact that it is even possible to study Latin. They often say things like, “I thought Latin was a dead language!” with the implication that they thought nobody knew how to speak or even read Latin and it was impossible for anybody to learn. I most commonly receive this reaction from people who are of my own generation, who have had little exposure to Latin.

These reactions clearly stem from a misunderstanding of what linguists and classicists mean when they say that Latin is a “dead language.” In this article, I would like to address what the term “dead language” really means, why it is applied to Latin, and why the use of this descriptor in many ways masks a more complicated reality.

An entertaining anecdote

During my freshman year as an undergraduate at Indiana University Bloomington, I stayed in a dorm known as the Joseph A. Wright Quadrangle, which had its own eatery. One day, near the beginning of the second semester, while I was sitting at a table in this eatery eating, I overheard a conversation that a couple of male students were having with each other as they were sitting at the table next to mine.

One of the students said: “I took this elective last semester on classic literature and it was super easy, like, the easiest class I’ve ever taken. So I signed up for another class like that this semester, thinking it’d, you know, be a breeze, but I got in there and—I kid you not—the books these people were reading were in freaking Latin.”

“What?” the other student asked.

“Yeah, I’m not kidding,” the first student replied.

“How is that even possible? I thought Latin was, like, a dead language,” said the other one.

“That’s what I thought too, but, apparently these people, they know it and they’re reading books in it. I dropped that class so fast.”

Later that semester, I went to an interview for a job on campus and, before the interview, I was sitting in a lounge talking to a fellow student who was also interviewing for the job. When I mentioned that I was studying Ancient Greek and Latin, she looked very confused and asked, “I thought Latin was a dead language?”

I’ve gotten this same reaction several other times, so I feel I should post an explanation here for all the people who might be wondering what people mean when they say Latin is “dead.”

(By the way, in case you’re wondering how that job interview went, I didn’t even make it to the second round of interviews. I think it was because I came across as nervous and not very personable.)

ABOVE: Photograph from the IU website showing the interior of the Wright Quad eatery, where I overheard a couple of boys having a conversation about Latin

What we mean when we say something is a “dead language”

When linguists say that a language, such as Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Latin, or Old Norse, is “dead,” what they mean is that it is no longer spoken as a living vernacular; they don’t usually mean that no one knows how to speak the language at all.

Two thousand years ago, Latin was a living vernacular; there were people who grew up speaking Latin in the home as their first native language. It has been many hundreds of years, though, since the last time someone actually grew up speaking Latin this way. Everyone who currently knows Latin learned it at a relatively mature age from a teacher or from a textbook and there are only a few people who speak Latin on a daily basis as part of their everyday lives. (I’ll talk a bit about those people in a moment.)

Because of this, the rules of Latin grammar, morphology, and syntax cannot change; everyone learns these rules exactly the same from exactly the same kinds of sources. The language is, for the most part, frozen in time. This is what linguists really mean when they say that a language is “dead.”

ABOVE: Gravestone inscription dating to 1746 from St. Cuthbert’s Churchyard in Edinburgh with the Latin phrase “Memento mori,” which means “Remember that you must die”

Are Latin and Ancient Greek really “dead languages,” though?

The fact that Classical Latin and Ancient Greek are classified as dead languages, however, tends to obscure a lot of complexities. For one thing, it obscures the fact that both of these languages have living descendants that could, depending on your perspective, be seen as living forms of the languages themselves. This is especially the case with Greek, since Standard Modern Greek is in many ways closer to Classical Attic Greek than any of the Romance languages are to Classical Latin.

The scholar B. E. Newton offers a comparison of Ancient Greek and Standard Modern Greek in his paper “Ancient and Modern Greek,” published in October 1960 in the journal Greece & Rome, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 124–127. He begins by remarking on just how similar the languages are to each other, saying:

“Perhaps the most amazing thing about Greek is that in the period over which our written records extend—in over three millennia, since the decipherment of Linear B—it has changed so little. Whereas a student of Latin would be ill-equipped to read a modern Italian newspaper, a person with a good working knowledge of classical Greek would not only find an Athenian newspaper intelligible for the most part, but would be amazed at the remarkable likenesses between the ancient and modern languages.”

There is no consensus on whether Ancient and Modern Greek should be considered separate languages that are closely related to each other or merely different forms of the same language. Even a single person may not consistently describe their relationship in the same manner. For instance, at various points, I have personally described Ancient and Modern Greek as separate languages, but, on other occasions, I have described them as different forms of the same language.

Modern Greek is very much a living language. It has approximately 13.5 million native speakers worldwide and is an official language of two countries (i.e., Greece and Kypros).

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing where the Greek language is spoken today

The development of the Romance languages

The situation with Latin is quite different from the situation with Greek, but a similar argument can be made. By the time Augustus adopted the title of Princeps in 27 BCE, thereby marking the beginning of the Roman Principate, the Roman Empire had conquered most of western Europe. The empire expanded its European territories over the next couple centuries. The emperor Claudius (ruled 41 – 54 CE) began the conquest of southern Britain and the emperor Trajan (ruled 98 – 117 CE) conquered Dacia (i.e., modern-day Romania).

The Roman Empire ruled these territories for several centuries. The Romans sent Latin-speaking colonists into many of the territories they had conquered and imposed Latin onto the indigenous populations. Over time, local dialects of vernacular Latin developed. (This mostly happened in western European and North African territories closer to Italy. The Greek language remained dominant throughout the Roman Empire’s eastern Mediterranean territories throughout the empire’s history and afterward.)

The Roman Empire eventually lost control of its territories in western Europe in the fifth century CE. It managed to reconquer all of Italy and parts of southern Spain in the sixth century CE, but lost control of these territories again not long afterwards, this time permanently. Even though the Romans lost control of these territories, however, most of the people living in them continued speaking various local dialects of vernacular Latin.

ABOVE: Map from this Reddit page showing the sprawling territorial extent of the Roman Empire in 125 CE during the rule of the emperor Hadrian

Without Roman state control, these local dialects increasingly diverged both from Classical Latin and from each other. By roughly the eighth century CE or thereabouts, they were beginning to develop into early forms of the Romance languages. The six most widely spoken Romance languages today are: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, French, and Catalan.

Put together, these Romance languages currently have over a billion speakers worldwide. Spanish alone has approximately 489 million native speakers, making it the second most widely spoken native language on the planet, after Mandarin Chinese. Portuguese has approximately 250 million native speakers, making it the sixth most widely spoken native language on the planet and the third most widely spoken native European language. On top of this, French has 76.8 million native speakers, Italian has 67 million native speakers, Romanian has between 24 and 26 million native speakers, and Catalan has 4.1 million native speakers.

Of all the Romance languages, Italian is (unsurprisingly) the most similar to Classical Latin, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Catalan. Of all the Romance languages, French is the one that has diverged the most from Classical Latin, since French has been significantly influenced by Gaulish (i.e., the native Celtic language of the people who lived in France before it was conquered by the Romans) and Old Frankish (i.e., the Germanic language spoken by the Franks, who settled in France in late antiquity).

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the Romance languages that were spoken in Europe in the twentieth century

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the countries in Europe where Romance languages are spoken today

The Romance languages as modern dialects of Latin?

Most people are accustomed to thinking of the Romance languages as separate languages, distinct from each other and from Classical Latin. This is certainly true to some extent. The Romance languages are all more closely related to each other than they are to Classical Latin, but, for the most part, they are still mutually unintelligible with each other (although Spanish and Portuguese speakers can often understand each other’s languages with difficulty).

Most people would probably say that this mutual unintelligibility makes the Romance languages separate languages and not dialects. The difference between a “dialect” and a “language,” however, is pretty hazy. Notably, the Romance languages are about as closely related to each other as modern Chinese “dialects” are to each other. Likewise, the Romance languages are about as closely related to Classical Latin as modern Chinese dialects are to Classical Chinese.

There’s an argument to be made that, if we are going to consider Mandarin and Cantonese “dialects” of “Chinese,” rather than completely distinct languages, we should also consider Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, French, and Catalan dialects of Latin.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the distribution of modern Chinese “dialects”

Classical Latin and Classical Greek in the modern world

Even if we accept the premise that the Romance languages are not truly dialects of Latin, but entirely separate languages, more classical varieties of Latin are still being used today. Ecclesiastical Latin is the official language of the Roman Catholic Church. It is very similar to Classical Latin and primarily only differs from it in that it is pronounced using modern Italian pronunciation of the letters.

In fact, Latin liturgical rite Catholic mass was conducted exclusively in Ecclesiastical Latin until the Second Vatican Council (lasted 1962 – 1965) declared that mass could be conducted in vernacular languages. Today, mass is still sometimes conducted in Latin in some places, particularly in Vatican City itself.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the elevation of the chalice after a traditional Latin liturgical rite Catholic Missa Solemnis, or “Solemn Mass”

There are also whole contemporary language movements that advocate what they call “Living Latin” and “Living Ancient Greek.” Supporters of these movements hold that Latin and Ancient Greek should be taught as though they were living languages. These supporters generally hold that students should be taught how to hold everyday conversations in Latin and Ancient Greek and, at the more advanced levels, should take classes taught primarily or exclusively in the languages.

One of the most influential people involved in the Living Latin movement was Reginald Foster, an eccentric Catholic priest and Carmelite friar who worked as a Latinist for the Latin Letters Office of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See in Vatican City from 1970 until 2009.

Foster taught Living Latin at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and was known for teaching free immersive Latin classes over the summer. Even after he retired, Foster continued teaching his immersive summer Latin classes in Milwaukee. He died on Christmas of last year at the age of eighty-one.

ABOVE: Photograph of Reginald Foster from this article in The Leaven

Over the past few decades, the number of organizations devoted to Living Latin and Living Ancient Greek has greatly expanded. In 1998, the Italian Latin scholar Luigi Miraglia founded a college in the city of Rome known as the Accademia Vivarium Novum, where all classes are taught entirely in either Classical Latin or Classical Greek and all students are required to speak exclusively in these languages, even when they are outside of class.

In 2010, Jason Pedicone and Eric Hewett, two former students of Reginald Foster, founded the Paideia Institute for Humanistic Study, which has now become one of the largest existing organizations dedicated specifically to the promotion of the study of so-called “classical languages.” As they discuss on their website, the Paideia Institute strongly favors the use of Living Latin and Living Ancient Greek over more traditional methods of instruction.

Some people have translated modern children’s novels into Classical Latin. For instance, Peter Needham has published translations of the first two Harry Potter books into Latin, Alexander Lenard has published a translation of Winnie the Pooh into Latin, and Mark Walker has published a translation of The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien into Latin. Latin fans have also created an entire Latin-language Wikipedia, known as “Vicipædia,” which currently has 135,541 content pages, according to its official “census” page.

There are also resources for people interested in Living Latin and Living Ancient Greek on YouTube. Luke Ranieri, who does the YouTube channels ScorpioMartianus and polýMATHY, is involved in the Living Latin and Living Ancient Greek movements. He speaks both Latin and Ancient Greek extremely fluently on a daily basis and he has hundreds of videos with lessons on Latin and Ancient Greek, recorded conversations in Latin and Ancient Greek, contemporary songs translated into Latin and Ancient Greek, reviews of the Latin used in popular media such as movies, television shows, and video games, and so on.

ABOVE: Screenshot of the main page of the Latin-language Wikipedia, taken on 29 June 2021

Some problems with the Living Latin and Living Ancient Greek movements

For my own part, I can certainly see why some people—especially people who are enthusiastic about learning languages in general—might be really enthusiastic about the Living Latin and Living Ancient Greek movements, but, as of the time I am writing this, I have never personally gotten involved with either of them, for a couple reasons.

The first reason is because I tend to be very pragmatic. The primary reason why I’m learning Latin and Ancient Greek is to read historical texts written in those languages—not to speak them with people on a daily basis. I personally think that becoming a fluent speaker in a dead language that most people can’t even read might be fun, but it would also involve a truly enormous amount of time and effort and probably bring very little practical return.

The second reason why I’m not currently very interested in Living Latin or Living Ancient Greek is because the political associations of the Living Latin and Living Ancient Greek movements tend to drive me off. So-called “classical languages” already tend to attract a fairly conservative crowd in general, but the Living Latin and Living Ancient Greek movements in particular tend to attract the most conservative of the conservative.

A very large number of the people who want to bring back spoken Latin are either extremely conservative Catholics, extreme ultra-nationalists who fantasize about bringing back the Roman Empire, or both. There are, of course, other people involved in the Living Latin movement who aren’t extremely conservative Catholics or ultra-nationalists. Nonetheless, the reactionaries have enough institutional influence within the movement to deter me from wanting to get personally involved in it.

For instance, the Accademia Vivarium Novum, which I mentioned earlier, is an intensely conservative Catholic school. Luigi Miraglia founded the college with the explicit idea that European culture is in decline and that it needs to be revitalized through the study of Latin and Ancient Greek, which he and the college regard as superior languages with superior literatures.

The college’s main program only admits male students. Moreover, in addition to only speaking Latin and Ancient Greek, all students and professors at the Accademia Vivarium Novum are required to live what the college itself describes as a “monastic” lifestyle, heavily influenced by the Jesuit Order and the Legionaries of Christ.

According to the college’s official rules, all students and faculty are required to stay in the college’s own lodgings, abstain from all forms of smoking and alcohol, follow a strict dress code, and generally uphold traditional Catholic notions of purity. All forms of swearing and obscene language are strictly prohibited in all contexts, as are all films that contain any form of swearing or obscenity and all forms of music other than “classical music.”

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of the Villa Falconieri, where the Accademia Vivarium Novum is located

The Paideia Institute, which, as I mentioned earlier, was originally founded by two students of Reginald Foster, has had a long history since its founding of discrimination against women, people of color, people from working class backgrounds, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. The organization also has a long history of endemic problems with sexual harassment and worker exploitation.

A big moment came on 1 October 2019, when the Sportula, an organization that awards grants to classics students, published a statement on Medium that began with these words:

“The Sportula believes that the Paideia Institute and its affiliated programs create an environment that is hostile to people of color, women, students from working-class backgrounds, the LGBTQ community, and other marginalized groups. We have heard from members of our community about misogynistic, racist, sexist, and discriminatory practices by the Paideia Institute.”

The statement goes on to describe in detail a whole series of specific policies and reported incidents that it believes support its allegations of misogyny, racism, and discrimination.

Following the release of the Sportula’s statement, the Society for Classical Studies announced that it was cutting all funding for programs run by Paideia. Yale University considered cutting ties with the organization as well.

ABOVE: Logo of the Paideia Institute for Humanistic Study

Conclusion

Classical Latin is certainly a dead language in the sense that no one alive today speaks it natively as their first language. As I think I have established here, however, this classification tends to hide a lot of complexity.

Languages derived from Classical Latin—whose relationship to it is similar to the relationship modern Chinese “dialects” have to Classical Chinese—are still widely spoken. Meanwhile, some people do, in fact, speak Classical Latin on an everyday or close to everyday basis, some people are still writing works in Classical Latin and translating works into it, and it is possible to learn Classical Latin in the same manner that one would learn a living language.

Thus, Latin is “dead,” but, in many ways, it is also alive.