There are many languages spoken around the world. In fact, these languages determine civilizations, society, culture and many other things. Our topic today is the languages that we call “dead languages”, although they were spoken in the past, they are no longer spoken today. These languages are no longer widely used and unknown to most people.
When you see these languages, you might say, “Is there such a language?” Even if you’ve heard of some of these languages, there are languages you’ve never heard of before. If you wish, without further ado, let’s move on to our list of dead languages that are no longer spoken.
Dead languages that are no longer spoken:
Latin
Latin, which has a deep-rooted history, was among the most enriched languages. This language, which started with the Roman Empire, later began to be spoken in the western Mediterranean coastal regions of Europe and Africa. Despite being a dead language today, Latin managed to become a preferred language in the great books and novels of that period without losing its attractiveness. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin, which started to die slowly in the 6th century, began to be less preferred for some reasons. The most important of these was that it had a complex grammatical structure.
Although Latin is a dead language today, 60% of English words come from Latin. For this reason, you can still hear many words of Latin origin in daily life, especially in the scientific community. However, in languages such as Portuguese, Italian, French, it is actually based on Latin. Today, there is only one country left that uses Latin as the main language. It’s the Vatican.
Sanskrit
Sanskrit, a religious language of Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, is actually known as an Indian subcontinent language. Sanskrit, which was used in the holy books written in the past, is now used almost non-existent. The Indian subcontinent also prefers this language only for religious rituals. Sanskrit is actually a language that is highly related to Indian literature. In retrospect, books like Ramama, Mohavharat, Vedas were written in Sanskrit. People in India actually know and believe this language, which is not used much today, as the language of God.
Just like Latin, Sanskrit continues to be used today, albeit quite sparingly. India was a country under Muslim control in the 11th century. However, after a while, the Muslim rulers abolished the Sanskrit language and replaced it with the Arabic language. Later, India began to be ruled by the British. At this time, the Sanskrit language changed to the English language. Many rulers who came like this tried to eradicate Sanskrit. Over time, they succeeded by doing this. Sanskrit has become a dead language over time. In fact, monarchs are not the only reason why Sanskrit is dying. Sanskrit, like Latin, is a rather complex language. It is quite difficult to read and understand, and you had to be a knowledgeable person to be able to speak this language. Even today, it takes quite a long time to learn this language.
Coptic Language
Let’s come to Coptic, the ancient Egyptian language. Coptic is known as the first language of Christianity and is used today as the Egyptian language. The language, which is a combination of Hieroglyphic, Demotic and Hieratic languages, was actually inspired by the Greek alphabet. Coptic is one of the languages that has its own poetry and literary genre.
When we turn to the history of Coptic, we see that it first left its place to the Arabic language. This language was not used properly by the Scholars, and with the Arab conquest of Egypt in the middle of the seventh century, the Coptic language began to die out. With a 1500-year-old origin, this language was slowly dying out, but still, thanks to some cultures, this language has been used as a church language for more than 300 years.
Biblical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew, which has a completely different structure from the Hebrew language, is a language that is rarely used today. This language was once known as the official language of the Israelites. In fact, it is known that education is still given in some public schools in Israel. Biblical Hebrew ceded itself to the regular Hebrew language after a period.
Biblical Hebrew is actually a much easier language to use than other dead languages. Hebrew has 100,000 words, while Biblical Hebrew has only 8,000. Biblical Hebrew first began to die out with the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.
ancient greek
Let’s come to ancient Greek, a language used by the greatest philosophers of the time. While this language is known as one of the main languages of western civilization, most of the English terms today actually come from the ancient Greek language. This language, which is preferred in many books, provides the basis for today’s terms related to information and technology.
This language, which started in the 9th century BC, continued to be used until the 6th century AD. Afterwards, it gradually declined and became a dead language.
Akkadian
This language, named after the city of Akkad, was spoken in Mesopotamia. Akkad, the central city of Mesopotamia, is one of the ancient languages. In fact, this language was found before the capital Akkad, and together with Akkad, the Babylonian and Chaldean peoples also spoke the Akkadian language. Known as the oldest Semitic language, this language is written in cuneiform.
The Akkadian language was used frequently in Mesopotamia between 2800 BC and 500 AD. After 500 AD, Aramaic language replaced Akkadian, and these languages were actually quite close to each other. But Aramaic was much easier to use than Akkadian. Therefore, it was preferred.
We have gathered together the dead languages that are rarely used today. In fact, even though we describe it as a dead language, most terms today are based on these languages. But unfortunately, these languages were not used centuries ago and they seem to disappear today. Have you heard of these languages before? If you haven’t heard, don’t forget to share your comments about these languages with us!
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