Latin

[Cbsteffen]

Did Latin used to be the most influential language in the world? I only know that the language became extinct once English phased it out.

[computermanjd3]

That's not accurate!  Latin is not extinct, and English didn't phase it out.  Along with the Germanic languages (both are of the ancient Indo European language family, Latin branched out into the Romance languages like French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.  Latin was used primarily in the ancient Greek and Roman writings covering Julius Caesar's exploits, and  to the medieval era and beyond, was used as Church standard.  English derives primarily from the Germanic languages, but takes from Latin and almost every other language in the world - because several cultures each have a unique word for an item, e.g., rickshaw (Chinese), barbecue (Spanish), government (French).  If you want to talk about what's "phasing what out", look into Mandarin Chinese trammeling English as the world's most spoken language in the next 50 years.  And please do your homework before making such a glaringly untrue statement.  "Lingua Latina non mortua -- est aeterna." : (Latin is not dead -- it is eternal!)

[Cbsteffen]

That's not accurate!  Latin is not extinct, and English didn't phase it out.  Along with the Germanic languages (both are of the ancient Indo European language family, Latin branched out into the Romance languages like French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.  Latin was used primarily in the ancient Greek and Roman writings covering Julius Caesar's exploits, and  to the medieval era and beyond, was used as Church standard.  English derives primarily from the Germanic languages, but takes from Latin and almost every other language in the world - because several cultures each have a unique word for an item, e.g., rickshaw (Chinese), barbecue (Spanish), government (French).  If you want to talk about what's "phasing what out", look into Mandarin Chinese trammeling English as the world's most spoken language in the next 50 years.  And please do your homework before making such a glaringly untrue statement.  "Lingua Latina non mortua -- est aeterna." : (Latin is not dead -- it is eternal!)

Extinction in linguistics means that a language is no longer a mother tongue of anybody living non-eternally. Nobody I get to or have gotten to see in person speaks or has ever spoken Latin primarily, and I carefully skimmed through a page about language families in a dictionary and found a note saying that names of languages marked with an asterisk were and are still extinct, and Latin had an asterisk.