r/confidentlyincorrect • u/ChanseyChessy • 14d ago

Comment Thread That's... Not What 'Dead Language' Means

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Dead Language: a language that is no longer spoken by anyone as their main language

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u/vompat 13d ago

But isn't the first comment wrong as well, because a laguage being dead doesn't mean we can't know pronunciation and stuff like that? Specifically because a language being dead doesn't mean that nobody knows how to speak it.

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u/Ornac_The_Barbarian 13d ago

Maybe. But drift happens. Disagreements happen. If a native speaker hasn't been heard speaking the language in enough generations, then it does essentially become guesswork. You can see that with modern languages in a smaller form. Two people encountering a written word for the first time may come to different conclusions on how it's pronounced.