How to Save a Dying Language (2013)
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
There's a great book called Language in Thought and Action, by S. I. Hayakawa, where he discuss topics like this. I've put together some notes on that book if you happen to be interested: http://alvaroduran.com/language-in-though-and-action
I suppose you can try to bring a dead language back to life in a new community, but that's academic, artificial and distinct from natural languages. [Edit: I don't want to say it's black or white but that the discontinuity probably leaves at least a scar in the language and in the community depending on how carefully the revival operation is performed.]
How? If the evolution of language in continuous use with s community is natural, so is it's revival by one (e.g., spoken Hebrew.) Dividing human behavior into “natural” and “artificial” is arbitrary.
The difference between natural and artificial (or constructed) languages is well-defined in linguistics although there may be borderline cases.
Again, I don't want to claim that e.g. Hebrew would be somehow tainted as a language now, just that it has endured something very atypical.
that's a weird sentiment. it's even hard to respond to, because it's not even clear what your point is. languages dying is a metaphor and not a literal statement. they certainly do "die off". it seems to me that people who speak the language dying would affect the language, but it doesn't address why the language is not passed down to younger generations or other people. the answer to that question is more about the overall culture being removed. language is not just communication. it is a representation of culture. i would imagine that everywhere there is a dying language, there is also a dying culture and not just people dying.
I don't really know how to manage a normal job and hobbies but somehow be involved in this vanishing part of our history.
For example the _Kaddish_, one of the central Jewish prayers when praying with a minyan, is mostly in Aramaic.