"No," he said, "being a
dead language, it grows in appropriateness.
"Have you learned anything at Redmond except
dead languages and geometry and such trash?" queried Aunt Jamesina.
It is full of inscriptions in the
dead languages, which fact makes me think Hercules could not have traveled much, else he would not have kept a journal.
The
dead languages were taught with such thoroughness that an old boy seldom thought of Homer or Virgil in after life without a qualm of boredom; and though in the common room at dinner one or two bolder spirits suggested that mathematics were of increasing importance, the general feeling was that they were a less noble study than the classics.
"No, sir--ladies do not often study the
dead languages."
If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the
dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.
One of the traits of the new spirit is the inquisition it fixed on our scholastic devotion to the
dead languages. The ancient languages, with great beauty of structure, contain wonderful remains of genius, which draw, and always will draw, certain likeminded men,-- Greek men, and Roman men,--in all countries, to their study; but by a wonderful drowsiness of usage they had exacted the study of all men.
A handy domestic experience is found in the 1950 'Jayatu Sanskritam' movement in Kathmandu that enabled Sanskrit students to go against the Ranas as feudals when their demands for better facilities were met with the Rana prime minister's words that 'Sanskrit was a
dead language'.
Swamy further said that Vaiko had grossly insulted the nation by stating that Sanskrit is a
dead language and it is useless to learn it, when Article 351 mandates the Sanskrit vocabulary should be used in Hindi.
It felt hidebound as a
dead language, pith dried on a sapless tree.
A
dead language, however, is closed and ceases to develop.
When it comes to Judeo-Spanish (also labeled Ladino, Sephardic, and Djudeo-espanyol), the catalogue lists 110,000 speakers, that it is spoken in Israel, Salonika, and Turkey and, with regards to it legal status, that "it is not recognized anywhere." Ladino shares this lack of legal recognition with Coptic (deemed a
dead language) Aramaic, Corsican, and Romani.