What is the criteria to define a certain language as a "dead language"?

BRY2K

In linguistics, language death (also language extinction, linguistic extinction, and sometimes pejoratively as linguicide) is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language idiom is decreased. Total language death occurs when there are no speakers of a given language idiom remaining in a population where the idiom was previously used (i.e. when all native speakers die). Language death may affect any language idiom, including dialects and languages. A language is often declared to be dead even before the last native speaker of the language has died. If there are only a few elderly speakers of a language remaining, and they no longer use that language for communication, then the language is effectively dead. A language that has reached such a reduced stage of use is generally considered moribund. The process of attrition occurs when intergenerational transmission of a "heritage language", mother tongue or native language has effectively stopped. This is rarely a sudden event, but a slow process of each generation learning less and less of the language, until its use is relegated to the domain of traditional use, such as in poetry and song. For example, a family's adults may speak in an older native language, but when they have children, they may not pass on this language, and therefore the language dies in that family. One example of this process reaching its conclusion is that of the Dalmatian language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death Jul 15 08, 3:55 AM

Arpeggionist

So is Ladino "dead" or just moribund? Jul 15 08, 4:33 AM

truefaithmom

It does not appear to fall into either category as it is experiencing a revival. See question #97563 about the revival of dead languages. Currently, speakers are almost exclusively Sephardic Jews, principally those in or from Thessaloniki (modern Greece) Istanbul and Izmir (modern Turkey Like most other Jewish languages besides Hebrew, Ladino is in serious danger of language extinction because most native speakers today are elderly, many of whom had immigrated to Israel where the language has not been transmitted to their children or grandchildren. However, it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardic communities, especially in music. In some countries, especially expatriate communities in Latin America, there is also a danger of extinction due to the risk of dialect levelling, that is, assimilation into modern Castilian Spanish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladino_language Jul 15 08, 12:49 PM