Comment on Game designed to save dying Aboriginal language wins global awards

• Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  This might not be totally the right definition, but I think it is:

  Latin is dead, but we still understand it. There’s no one left who speaks it really, but we know how to use it.

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  • mobyduck648@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Isn’t the ‘dead’ part more that nobody speaks it as a mother tongue any more, so it doesn’t really evolve like a living language would even though it’s still spoken in specific contexts? I think it contrasts with an extinct language which nobody speaks for any reason.

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• scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I’m just guessing what they meant but I took it as the difference between:

  1. saving = getting enough people to keep speaking it that it remains a living language

  2. preserving = documenting it for posterity so that it is not utterly forgotten for all time

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