When did the last native speaker die?

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Levike
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When did the last native speaker die?

Postby Levike » 2013-04-27, 20:03

When did the last native speaker die?

I mean when did Latin change so much that it was no longer
intelligeble with the Latin that we see in textbooks?

I know there wasn't a specific year but try to give a century or a period.
Thanks!
Last edited by Levike on 2013-04-27, 20:23, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: When did the last native speaker die?

Postby TheStrayCat » 2013-04-27, 20:13

I doubt there was a specific moment after which all varieties of was had been known as Larin suddenly became unintelligible to a hypothetical speaker of Latin. The process of transition was gradual with significant regional differences, as between today's Romance languages. So there's unlikely to be a clear-cut answer to such a question.

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Re: When did the last native speaker die?

Postby JackFrost » 2013-04-27, 20:27

Yep, in one aspect, Latin hasn't gone extinct yet since it's still living via daughter languages and the modern version, which is something that cannot be said for some other well-known ancient languages such as Sumerian and Hittite.

The time period when the varieties of Vulgar Latin were no longer generally mutual intelligible would be by the 9th century at the latest. Around that time, the clergy had to switch to a regional language since the attendees no longer were able to understand the Latin used in the masses.
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Re: When did the last native speaker die?

Postby Babelfish » 2013-05-03, 15:15

I agree with TheStrayCat. Since Latin gradually changed into several varieties which eventually became French, Romanian etc. this is a bit like asking when the last Homo Erectus died; today we can define a clear-cut difference, but the intermediate, transitional forms probably cannot be determined exclusively as either one or the other.
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Re: When did the last native speaker die?

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-05-03, 18:46

When dealing with dead languages that have live descendants, the line between them is always somewhat arbitrary. The cutoff between Old English and Middle English is conventionally put at 1066 because that's a meaningful date where it's thought that heavy French influence on the English language began. In practice, though, the English of the 11th and 12th centuries is a transitional period between Old English and the Middle English of Chaucer.
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