The Choco languages (also Chocoan , Chocó , Chokó ) are a small family of Native American languages spread across Colombia and Panama .
53-486: Choco consists of six known branches, all but two of which are extinct. Anserma, Arma, and Sinúfana are extinct . The Emberá group consists of two languages mainly in Colombia with over 60,000 speakers that lie within a fairly mutually intelligible dialect continuum . Ethnologue divides this into six languages. Kaufman (1994) considers the term Cholo to be vague and condescending. Noanamá has some 6,000 speakers on
106-518: A dead language is a language that no longer has any first-language speakers, but does have second-language speakers or is used fluently in written form, such as Latin . A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group ; these languages are often undergoing a process of revitalisation . Languages that have first-language speakers are known as modern or living languages to contrast them with dead languages, especially in educational contexts. In
159-434: A vernacular language . The revival of Hebrew has been largely successful due to extraordinarily favourable conditions, notably the creation of a nation state (modern Israel in 1948) in which it became the official language, as well as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda 's extreme dedication to the revival of the language, by creating new words for the modern terms Hebrew lacked. Revival attempts for minor extinct languages with no status as
212-594: A day-to-day language. Sanskrit remains as the only liturgical link language which connects the different strains of Hinduism that are present across India . The de facto position that Sanskrit enjoyed, as the principal language of Hinduism, enabled its survival not only in India, but also in other areas, where Hinduism thrived like Southeast Asia . Old Tamil is the language of the Shaiva (Devaram) and Vaishnava ( Divya Prabhandham ) scriptures. Most of Carnatic Music
265-643: A few rites, rituals, and ceremonies. This did not include the Roman Liturgy of the Mass. The Catholic Church , long before the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), had accepted and promoted the use of the non-vernacular liturgical languages listed above; while vernacular (i.e. modern or native) languages were also used liturgically throughout history; usually as a special concession given to religious orders conducting missionary activity. In
318-420: A historical language may remain in use as a literary or liturgical language long after it ceases to be spoken natively. Such languages are sometimes also referred to as "dead languages", but more typically as classical languages . The most prominent Western example of such a language is Latin , and comparable cases are found throughout world history due to the universal tendency to retain a historical stage of
371-407: A language as the liturgical language . In a view that prioritizes written representation over natural language acquisition and evolution, historical languages with living descendants that have undergone significant language change may be considered "extinct", especially in cases where they did not leave a corpus of literature or liturgy that remained in widespread use (see corpus language ), as
424-509: A liturgical language typically have more modest results. The Cornish language revival has proven at least partially successful: after a century of effort there are 3,500 claimed native speakers, enough for UNESCO to change its classification from "extinct" to "critically endangered". A Livonian language revival movement to promote the use of the Livonian language has managed to train a few hundred people to have some knowledge of it. This
477-518: A new generation of native speakers. The optimistic neologism " sleeping beauty languages" has been used to express such a hope, though scholars usually refer to such languages as dormant. In practice, this has only happened on a large scale successfully once: the revival of the Hebrew language . Hebrew had survived for millennia since the Babylonian exile as a liturgical language, but not as
530-416: A sacred language becomes an important cultural investment, and their use of the tongue is perceived to give them access to a body of knowledge that untrained laypeople cannot (or should not) access. Because sacred languages are ascribed with virtues that the vernacular is not seen to have, these typically preserve characteristics lost in the course of language development. In some cases, the sacred language
583-416: A substantial trace as a substrate in the language that replaces it. There have, however, also been cases where the language of higher prestige did not displace the native language but left a superstrate influence. The French language for example shows evidence both of a Celtic substrate and a Frankish superstrate. Institutions such as the education system, as well as (often global) forms of media such as
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#1732776581465636-772: A translation of the Qur'an's message. Salah and other rituals are also conducted in Classical Arabic for this reason. Scholars of Islam must learn and interpret the Qur'an in classical Arabic. According to the four accepted Sunni schools of jurisprudence , it is a requirement for sermons ( khutbah ) to be delivered completely in classical Arabic . The core of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew , referred to by some Jews as Lashon Hakodesh ( לשון הקודש , "Language of Holiness"). Hebrew (and in
689-658: Is a dead language , while in others, it may simply reflect archaic forms of a living language . For instance, 17th-century elements of the English language remain current in Protestant Christian worship through the use of the King James Bible from 1611, or older versions of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer . In more extreme cases, the language has changed so much from the language of
742-436: Is a list of languages reported as having become extinct since 2010. For a more complete list, see Lists of extinct languages . Liturgical language A sacred language , holy language or liturgical language is a language that is cultivated and used primarily for religious reasons (like church service ) by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives. Some religions, or parts of them, regard
795-500: Is a major tenet of the Catholic Traditionalist movement. Meanwhile, the numerous Eastern Catholic Churches in union with Rome each have their own respective parent-language. Eastern Orthodox churches vary in their use of liturgical languages. Koine Greek and Church Slavonic are the main sacred languages used in communion. Other languages are also permitted for liturgical worship, and each country often has
848-729: Is derived from Sanskrit . In Thailand , Pali is transliterated into the Thai alphabet , resulting in a Thai pronunciation of the Pali language. Something similar also happens in Myanmar, where Pali is also transliterated into the Burmese alphabet , also resulting in a Burmese pronunciation of Pali. Mahayana Buddhism, now only followed by a small minority in South Asia makes little use of its original language, Sanskrit, mostly using versions of
901-553: Is in Telugu . Amaravati Stupa . It is dated to 2nd century BCE and is probably, the name of a stonemason. Its structural and grammatical analysis played a key role in studying Indus script by Iravatham Mahadevan . Several personal names and place names traceable to Telugu roots are found in various Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions of 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. Many Hindu epics were also composed in Telugu. Some examples are
954-540: Is the case with Old English or Old High German relative to their contemporary descendants, English and German. Some degree of misunderstanding can result from designating languages such as Old English and Old High German as extinct, or Latin dead, while ignoring their evolution as a language or as many languages. This is expressed in the apparent paradox "Latin is a dead language, but Latin never died." A language such as Etruscan , for example, can be said to be both extinct and dead: inscriptions are ill understood even by
1007-522: Is the language of the Qur'an . Muslims believe the Qur'an as divine revelation —it is a sacred and eternal document, and as such it is believed to be the direct word of God . Thus Muslims hold that the Qur'an is only truly the Qur'an if it is precisely as it was revealed—i.e., in Classical Arabic. Translations of the Qur'an into other languages are therefore not treated as the Qur'an itself; rather, they are seen as interpretive texts, which attempt to communicate
1060-438: Is used, Judith Simmer-Brown explains that a tantric Vajrayana text is often written in an obscure twilight language so that it cannot be understood by anyone without the verbal explanation of a qualified teacher . Old Tamil was used for Sangam epics of Buddhist and Jain philosophy. Christian rites, rituals, and ceremonies are not celebrated in one single sacred language. Most churches which trace their origin to
1113-636: The Bhagavatam , the Upanishads , the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata , and various other liturgical texts such as the Sahasranama , Chamakam , and Rudram . Sanskrit is also the tongue of Hindu rituals. It also has secular literature along with its religious canon. Most Hindu theologians of later centuries continued to prefer to write in Sanskrit even when it was no longer spoken as
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#17327765814651166-579: The Reformation in England , when the Protestant authorities banned the use of Latin liturgy, various schools obtained a dispensation to continue to use Latin, for educational purposes. From the end of the 16th century, in coastal Croatia , the local vernacular language began to replace Church Slavonic as the liturgical language. This change occurred because Church Slavonic, which had been used in
1219-442: The cross in three different languages, thereby sanctifying them as the first languages to proclaim Christ's divinity. These are: Liturgical languages are those which hold precedence within liturgy due to tradition and dispensation. Many of these languages have evolved from languages which were at one point vernacular, while some are intentional constructions by ecclesial authorities. These include: The extensive use of Greek in
1272-676: The glagolitic liturgical books published in Rome , was becoming increasingly difficult to understand. This difficulty arose from linguistic reforms that adapted the Church Slavonic of Croatian recension used in Croatia to the norms of Church Slavonic used in Russia. For example, the vernacular was used to ask the bride and groom if they accepted their marriage vows. Jesuit missionaries to China initially obtained permission to translate
1325-478: The modern period , languages have typically become extinct as a result of the process of cultural assimilation leading to language shift , and the gradual abandonment of a native language in favor of a foreign lingua franca , largely those of European countries. As of the 2000s, a total of roughly 7,000 natively spoken languages existed worldwide. Most of these are minor languages in danger of extinction; one estimate published in 2004 expected that some 90% of
1378-671: The sacred texts that the liturgy is barely comprehensible without special training. For example, the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church remained in Latin after the Council of Tours in 813 ordered preaching in local Romance or German, because Latin was no longer understood. Similarly, Old Church Slavonic is incomprehensible to speakers of modern Slavic languages , unless they study it. Sacred languages are distinct from divine languages , which are languages ascribed to
1431-501: The "kill the Indian, save the man" policy of American Indian boarding schools and other measures was to prevent Native Americans from transmitting their native language to the next generation and to punish children who spoke the language of their culture of origin. The French vergonha policy likewise had the aim of eradicating minority languages. Language revival is the attempt to re-introduce an extinct language in everyday use by
1484-519: The 20th century, Vatican II set out to protect the use of Latin as a liturgical language. To a large degree, its prescription was disregarded and the vernacular not only became standard, but was generally used exclusively in the liturgy. Latin, which remains the chief language of the Latin liturgical rites and of Catholic canon law , but the use of liturgical Latin is now discouraged. The use of vernacular language in liturgical practice after 1964 created controversy, and opposition to liturgical vernacular
1537-590: The Amukthamalayada, Basava Purana, Andhra Mahabharatam, and the Ranganatha Ramayanamu. Apart from Sanskrit, several Hindu spiritual works were composed in the various regional languages of India such as Hindi , Assamese , Awadhi , Bhojpuri , Bengali , Odia , Maithili , Punjabi , Gujarati , Kannada , Malayalam , Marathi , Tulu , as well as Old Javanese , and Balinese of Southeast Asia . Classical Arabic , or Qur'anic Arabic,
1590-602: The Apostles continue to use the standard languages of the first few centuries AD. Many Christian churches make a distinction between a sacred language, a liturgical language, and a vernacular language. The three most important languages in the early Christian era were Latin , Greek , and Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic ). The phrase " Jesus, King of the Jews " is reported in the Gospel of John as having been inscribed upon
1643-468: The Internet, television, and print media play a significant role in the process of language loss. For example, when people migrate to a new country, their children attend school in the country, and the schools are likely to teach them in the majority language of the country rather than their parents' native language. Language death can also be the explicit goal of government policy. For example, part of
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1696-554: The Panama-Colombia border. Internal classification by Jolkesky (2016): ( † = extinct) Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Guahibo , Kamsa , Paez , Tukano , Witoto-Okaina , Yaruro , Chibchan , and Bora-Muinane language families due to contact. Genetic links between Choco and Chibchan had been proposed by Lehmann (1920). However, similarities are few, some of which may be related to
1749-585: The Roman Missal into Classical Chinese , a scholarly form of the language. However, this permission was later revoked amid the Chinese Rites controversy . In contrast, among the Algonquin and Iroquois peoples, missionaries were allowed to translate certain parts of the Mass into their native languages. In the 20th century, Pope Pius XII granted permission for a few vernaculars to be used in
1802-542: The Roman Liturgy has continued, in theory; it was used extensively on a regular basis during the Papal Mass , which has not been celebrated for some time. By the reign of Pope Damasus I , the continuous use of Greek in the Roman Liturgy had come to be replaced in part by Latin. Gradually, the Roman Liturgy took on more and more Latin until, generally, only a few words of Hebrew (e.g. Dominus Deus sabaoth ) and Greek (e.g. Kyrie eleison ) remained. The adoption of Latin
1855-577: The adoption of maize cultivation from neighbors. Choco has been included in a number of hypothetical phylum relationships: Loukotka (1968) lists the following basic vocabulary items for the Chocó languages. For reconstructions of Proto-Chocó and Proto-Emberá by Constenla and Margery (1991), see the corresponding Spanish article . Extinct language An extinct language is a language with no living descendants that no longer has any first-language or second-language speakers. In contrast,
1908-697: The case of a few texts such as the Kaddish , Aramaic ) remains the traditional language of Jewish religious services . Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic are used extensively by the Orthodox for writing religious texts. Among the Sephardim , Ladino was used for translations such as the Ferrara Bible . It was also used during the Sephardi liturgy. Ladino is also often referred to as Judeo-Spanish , as it
1961-550: The currently spoken languages will have become extinct by 2050. Normally the transition from a spoken to an extinct language occurs when a language undergoes language death by being directly replaced by a different one. For example, many Native American languages were replaced by Dutch , English , French , Portuguese , or Spanish as a result of European colonization of the Americas . In contrast to an extinct language, which no longer has any speakers, or any written use,
2014-577: The divine (i.e. God or gods) and may not necessarily be natural languages. The concept, as expressed by the name of a script, for example in Dēvanāgarī , the name of a script that roughly means "[script] of the city of gods ", and is used to write many Indian languages . When the Buddha 's sutras were first written down, probably in Pali , there were around 20 schools, each with their own version derived from
2067-496: The dominant lingua francas of world commerce: English, Mandarin Chinese , Spanish, and French. In their study of contact-induced language change, American linguists Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman (1991) stated that in situations of cultural pressure (where populations are forced to speak a dominant language), three linguistic outcomes may occur: first – and most commonly – a subordinate population may shift abruptly to
2120-453: The dominant language, leaving the native language to a sudden linguistic death. Second, the more gradual process of language death may occur over several generations. The third and most rare outcome is for the pressured group to maintain as much of its native language as possible, while borrowing elements of the dominant language's grammar (replacing all, or portions of, the grammar of the original language). A now disappeared language may leave
2173-548: The language in question must be conceptualized as frozen in time at a particular state of its history. This is accomplished by periodizing English and German as Old; for Latin, an apt clarifying adjective is Classical, which also normally includes designation of high or formal register . Minor languages are endangered mostly due to economic and cultural globalization , cultural assimilation, and development. With increasing economic integration on national and regional scales, people find it easier to communicate and conduct business in
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2226-622: The language of their sacred texts as in itself sacred. These include Hebrew in Judaism , Arabic in Islam and Sanskrit in Hinduism , and Punjabi in Sikhism . By contrast Christianity and Buddhism do not generally regard their sacred languages as sacred in themselves. Akkadian was a long used liturgical language. A sacred language is often the language which was spoken and written in
2279-408: The language of worship that they would not give to their native tongues. In the case of sacred texts, there is a fear of losing authenticity and accuracy by a translation or re-translation, and difficulties in achieving acceptance for a new version of a text. A sacred language is typically vested with a solemnity and dignity that the vernacular lacks. Consequently, the training of clergy in the use of
2332-725: The liturgical services in their own language. This has led to a wide variety of languages used for liturgical worship, but there is still uniformity in the liturgical worship itself. Liturgical languages used in the Eastern Orthodox Church include (but are not limited to): Koine Greek , Church Slavonic , Romanian , Georgian , Arabic , Ukrainian , Bulgarian , Serbian , English , German , Spanish , French , Polish , Portuguese , Italian , Albanian , Finnish , Swedish , Chinese , Estonian , Korean , Japanese , and multiple African languages. Oriental Orthodox churches outside their ancestral lands regularly pray in
2385-894: The local language. In East Asia , Classical Chinese is mainly used. In Japan, texts are written in Chinese characters and read out or recited with the Japanese pronunciations of their constituent characters. In Vajrayana Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism is the main surviving school, and Classical Tibetan is the main language used for study, although the Tibetan Buddhist canon was also translated into other languages, such as Mongolian and Manchu . Many items of Sanskrit Buddhist literature have been preserved because they were exported to Tibet, with copies of unknown ancient Sanskrit texts surfacing in Tibet as recently as 2003. Sanskrit
2438-539: The local vernacular, but some clergymen and communities prefer to retain their traditional language or use a combination of languages. Many Anabaptist groups, such as the Amish , use High German in their worship despite not speaking it amongst themselves. Hinduism is traditionally considered to have Sanskrit as its primary liturgical language. Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas , Bhagavad Gita , Puranas like
2491-446: The most knowledgeable scholars, and the language ceased to be used in any form long ago, so that there have been no speakers, native or non-native, for many centuries. In contrast, Old English, Old High German and Latin never ceased evolving as living languages, thus they did not become extinct as Etruscan did. Through time Latin underwent both common and divergent changes in phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon, and continues today as
2544-420: The native language of hundreds of millions of people, renamed as different Romance languages and dialects (French, Italian, Spanish, Corsican , Asturian , Ladin , etc.). Similarly, Old English and Old High German never died, but developed into various forms of modern English and German, as well as other related tongues still spoken (e.g. Scots from Old English and Yiddish from Old High German). With regard to
2597-575: The original. The present Pāli Canon originates from the Tamrashatiya school . The Chinese and Tibetan canons mainly derive from the Sarvastivada , originally written in Sanskrit , of which fragments remain. The texts were translated into Chinese and Tibetan . Theravada Buddhism uses Pali as its main liturgical language and prefers that scripture be studied in the original Pali. Pali
2650-517: The society in which a religion's sacred texts were first set down; these texts thereafter become fixed and holy, remaining frozen and immune to later linguistic developments. (An exception to this is Lucumí , a ritual lexicon of the Cuban strain of the Santería religion, with no standardized form .) Once a language becomes associated with religious worship, its believers may ascribe virtues to
2703-492: The written language, skills in reading or writing Etruscan are all but non-existent, but trained people can understand and write Old English, Old High German, and Latin. Latin differs from the Germanic counterparts in that an approximation of its ancient form is still employed to some extent liturgically. This last observation illustrates that for Latin, Old English, or Old High German to be described accurately as dead or extinct,
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#17327765814652756-569: Was further fostered when the Vetus Latina (old Latin) version of the Bible was edited and parts retranslated from the original Hebrew and Greek by Saint Jerome in his Vulgate . Latin continued as the western Church's language of liturgy and communication. In the mid-16th century the Council of Trent rejected a proposal to introduce national languages as this was seen, among other reasons, as potentially divisive to Catholic unity. During
2809-583: Was valued in Tibet as the elegant language of the gods. Although in Tibetan Buddhist deity yoga the rest of the sadhana is generally recited in Tibetan, the mantra portion of the practice is usually retained in its original Sanskrit. In Nepal , the Newar Buddhist form of Vajrayana is a storehouse of ancient Sanskrit Buddhist texts , many of which are now only extant in Nepal . Whatever language
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