「媒库文选」拉丁语是一种死语言吗？
参考消息2021-06-21 16:28
参考消息网6月21日报道
Is Latin a Dead Language？
拉丁语是一种死语言吗？
Benjamin Plackett 本杰明·普莱克特
The Latin language used to be spoken all over the Roman Empire. But no country officially speaks it now， at least not in its classic form. So， did Latin really peter out when the Roman Empire ceased to exist？
The answer to the question of when Latin， ancient Rome's language， died is a complicated one. There's no date in the annals of history to mark the end of Latin as a spoken language， and some would argue that's because it never really died.
The Vatican may still deliver some masses in Latin， but virtually no one in Italy is using Latin on a day-to-day basis. Nevertheless， this doesn't equate to the death of Latin， said Tim Pulju， a senior lecturer in linguistics and classics at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
“Latin didn't really stop being spoken，”Pulju told Live Science. “It continued to be spoken natively by people in Italy， Gaul， Spain and elsewhere， but like all living languages， it changed over time.”
Crucially， the alterations to Latin were particular to the many different regions of the old Roman Empire， and over time these differences grew to create entirely new but closely related languages. Those new languages are what we now refer to as the Romance languages， which include French， Italian， Portuguese， Romanian and Spanish.
Such linguistic evolutions happen with every language. Take English， for example.“English has been spoken in England for over a millennium， but it has changed over time， as is obvious if you compare present-day English to Elizabethan English，as seen in Shakespeare，” Pulju said. “Elizabethan English， from about four centuries ago， is still mostly comprehensible to us， but Chaucer's English， dating from the 14th century， is much less so. And the English of‘Beowulf，’ from about the year 1000， is so different from modern English [it's] not comprehensible to us today.” But no one would say English is a dead language —it simply changed very gradually over a long period of time.
The only difference between English and Latin is that old English developed into modern English and modern English alone， whereas classical Latin diversified and gave rise to a number of different languages. That's why people tend to think， perhaps erroneously， of Latin as an extinct language.
Languages can go extinct， though; sometimes native speakers of a language all die， or over time their first language switches until eventually there are no fluent speakers left. UNESCO estimates that at least half of the world's 7，000 languages spoken today will be extinct before the end of this century.
So， when did Latin die？ It didn't，it simply evolved.
拉丁语曾经在罗马帝国全境使用。但现在没有任何国家以它为官方语言，至少不是以它的古典形式。那么，拉丁语真的随着罗马帝国的不复存在而逐渐消亡了吗？
关于古罗马语言拉丁语于何时死亡的问题，答案是复杂的。史册上没有哪个日期标志着拉丁语作为一种口头语言的终结，而有的人认为这是因为它从来不曾真的消亡。
梵蒂冈可能仍然使用拉丁语举行一些弥撒，但意大利几乎没有人在日常生活中使用拉丁语。然而，新罕布什尔州达特茅斯学院的语言学与古典文学高级讲师蒂姆·普柳说，这并不等同于拉丁语的消亡。
“拉丁语并没有真的停止被使用，”普柳对趣味科学网站记者说，“在意大利、高卢、西班牙和其他地方，它继续被人们在本地使用，但像所有活语言一样，它也随着时间发生了变化。”
至关重要的是，古罗马帝国的许多不同地区对拉丁语各有各的改动，随着时间的推移，这些差异逐渐形成了全新但紧密相关的语言。这些新的语言就是我们现在所说的罗曼语族，包括法语、意大利语、葡萄牙语、罗马尼亚语和西班牙语。
这样的语言演变发生在所有语言上。以英语为例，普柳说，“英语在英格兰使用了上千年，但它随时间发生了变化，如果把现在的英语与莎士比亚作品中的伊丽莎白时代英语进行比较，这是显而易见的”。他说：“大约400年前的伊丽莎白时代英语是我们仍基本能懂的，但14世纪的乔叟时代英语就远没有那么容易懂了。而公元1000年左右的‘贝奥武甫’时代英语则与现代英语大相径庭，是今天的我们根本不懂的。”但没有人会说英语是一种死语言——它只是在很长的一段时间里发生了非常缓慢的变化。
英语与拉丁语的唯一不同在于，古代英语发展成为现代英语，而且只发展成为现代英语一种语言，而古典拉丁语却走向多样化，形成了多种不同的语言。这就是为什么人们往往会认为拉丁语是一种消亡的语言，而这也许是错误的。
不过，语言是可能消亡的；有时以某种语言为母语的人全部离开人世，或者随着时间的推移，他们改换了母语，直到最后没人能流利地说这种语言。据国际教科文组织估计，现在世界上使用的7000种语言中有至少半数将在本世纪结束前消亡。
那么，拉丁语是何时死亡的？它没有，它只是发生了演变。（王雷译自6月1日美国趣味科学网站）
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