Languages That Came Back from the Dead (feat. @LingoLizard)

Brb changing my channel name to Lingó Lizárd

Aren't you forgetting another classical language used as a liturgical language in the Christian world and whose influence into the Western civilization (derived from its role as the official language of the Roman Empire) simply cannot be understated? Yes, I am speaking about Koine Greek.

Livonian, a Finnic language spoken in Latvia, went without a native speaker for only 7 years. The last speaker died in 2013 but in 2020, the child of two revitalization activists is now the sole L1 speaker

True story: when Manx was officially declared a dead language by UNESCO in the early 2000s, a group of schoolchildren at a Manx-speaking school wrote letters to UNESCO in Manx, asking them: "If Manx is a dead language, then what language are we writing in?"

That trolling about Latin is so hillarious.

Etruscan is not a dead language and calling it such is a lie fabricated by Joseph Mayton, Etruscan is actually still spoken in Italy as the primary vernacular. My source? Joseph Mayton.

Most of us in the Arab World (Gen Z and Millennials) grew up watching cartoons which are mainly dubbed into Standard Arabic so in my case I was actually learning it ALONGSIDE my dialect albeit with a slower rate. I remember uttering some Standard Arabic when I was like... 3yo or something (even before going to school!) resulting in the weird situation where you learn Classical Arabic from SpongeBob

While technically not extinct (although two of the three main varieties are fully extinct), I'm proud that my university is taking even a small part in the revival of the Ainu language. It has AFAIK the only university Ainu language course outside of Japan. I took it as a minor, it was very interesting

Australian linguist Jakelin Troy advocates using the term 'sleeping' instead of 'dead' for Australia's indigenous languages for exactly the reasons you explain at the end of this video - 'dead' is far too final a word, and really hurts the public image of revival and revitalisation.

If Etruscan is dead and Manx is undead, Esperanto is Frankenstein's monster, I guess.

I honestly hope Coptic is revived purely for linguistics-nerd reasons. Having a direct descendent of the language of Ancient Egypt still being spoken today would be super cool, and the alphabet is just wonderful. Even without a revitalisation, the fact it still exists as a liturgical language at all is great

I feel like Hebrew deserved more than a passing mention, as it is perhaps the best example of a revived language: a language that had 0 native speakers for nearly 2,000 years, used only for liturgical purposes that today has millions of native speakers and is the main language of an entire country

I investigated the claims of native Coptic speakers today and as far as I could tell, a village near Luxor is teaching kids the language as a second language, that's it. Now that is unusual indeed, as most Copts don't really learn the language (aside from a few words and phrases) with the exception of the clergy (who are already grown ups by then). After all, even church services are mostly conducted in Arabic today and most church material has been produced in Arabic for the last thousand years. I suspect people picked up on the story of this attempt at teaching kids the language at school and misunderstood it to be the language still having native speakers. https://youtu.be/Ggnpx5ZGzFc?si=ATW401ET9rr5cipt This is a link about the story. The village's name is Ziniya, and as the lady in the middle of the video says, some families in the village are sending their kids to church so thy can learn writing in Coptic as well as basic phrases and expressions in Coptic.

As a Catholic, I appreciate the attempts to absolutely trigger me

I can't believe Tommy Tallarico proved that Coptic still has native speakers

That point you made about Coptic possibly having some remaining habitual speakers can probably be applied to MSA as well. I've always found it crazy that the official language of 20ish countries apparently has ZERO native speakers. I would've thought that at least some people would've tried to raise their children in it, especially considering the prestige it carries.

The case for Hebrew is quite complicated as well, because all the time it was dead it was used as a liturgical language, and at least since the middle ages it was used for poetry as well. The transition that happened at the end of the 19th century mostly added vocabulary, and allowed it to be used ask a language for commerce, followed by it getting L1 speakers and becoming fully revitalised.

As a Coptic person working to become more fluent in my own ancestral and liturgical language I hope we one day find success 🙏🏼 Coptic did die out as a non liturgical tongue in the 17th century but revival efforts in the late 19th century happened and yes I can confirm at least two families do speak it thanks to this revival, it is also taught to kids in a village in Luxor Egypt called Al Zayniyyah who learn both Coptic and Arabic growing up. Ofc there’s Copts everywhere trying to learn it independently too we’re in a new era where we might see another revival

Dodging Latin was easily the funniest bit in this video

What about the revival of Wiradjuri in NSW, an Aboriginal language which had (almost) died out completely, but is now being revived, along with quite a number of other Aboriginal languages.