When did Latin become known as an "extinct language"?

gdec1

Late Latin developed into various Romance languages by the 9th century. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the official, national language of Vatican City, Latin is now widely considered to be an extinct language, with very few fluent speakers and almost no native ones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin Aug 26 06, 3:38 PM

Baloo55th

The concept of 'extinct language' is fairly modern, and will date from whenever it was that people started studying languages as opposed to learning them. As gdec says, Ecclesiastical Latin is still in use in a very small state. High Latin (the stuff used by Cicero in his orations) is extinct, but Low Latin has evolved into Italian (and French and Spanish, etc, but they're much further away from the original and with far more outside influence), which is regarded by some as Modern Latin. Aug 26 06, 3:54 PM

lanfranco

Latin remained the language of much scholarly discourse until well into the 18th century (as I know to my ongoing irritation). However, significant works of literature in various vernaculars were being published in the 13th and 14th centuries, and Middle English had pretty much replaced both Latin and Anglo-Norman French as the court language in England by the end of the 14th century. Whether or not people used the term "extinct," once the majority of even relatively well-educated people no longer spoke or even used Latin on a regular basis, then the language can be said to have been moribund. Aug 26 06, 4:02 PM

Bodie999

The simple fact is that the Latin language never became extinct. The languages that were old and medieval English or ancient and medieval greek became modern English and Modern Greek and there is never any suggestion that "English" or "Greek" became extinct. Latin has been continuously spoken by the people of what were the western and Danubian provinces of the Roman Empire ever since they became part of the empire and were romanised. Today those provices are France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Romania and many smaller enclaves around the mediterranean. The languages that Latin replaced: Gaulish, Iberian Dialects, Etruscan, Dacian etc etc are truly extinct languages. I think the issue here is that the different names given to Latin and its modern variants gives the impression that at some stage the version known as Latin suddenly became extinct. This is a fallacy - the language remained in continuous use and adapted/changed like everything. Jun 30 07, 12:58 AM