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According to some definitions an extinct language is a language which no longer has any speakers [1], whereas a dead language is a language which is no longer spoken by anyone as their main language.[2] Normally this conversion to an extinct language occurs when a language undergoes language death while being directly replaced by a different one. For example Coptic, which was replaced by Arabic, and many Native American languages, which were replaced by English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. Language extinction also occurs when a language undergoes rapid evolution or assimilation until it eventually gives birth to an offspring, i.e., a dissimilar language or family of languages[citation needed]. Such is the case with Old English which is the parent of Modern English. In some cases, an extinct language remains in use for scientific, legal, or ecclesiastical functions. Old Church Slavonic, Avestan, Coptic, Old Tibetan and Ge'ez are among the many extinct languages used as sacred languages. Alternatively, a language is said to be extinct if, although it is known to have been spoken by people in the past, modern scholarship cannot reconstruct it to the point that it is possible to write in it or translate into it with confidence (say, a simple dialogue or a short tale written in a modern language); whereas a language is referred to as dead, but not extinct, if it is sufficiently known at present to permit such routine use, even though it has no modern speakers. By these definitions Indo-European (of which only conjectural reconstructions of lexicon and grammar exist) is an extinct language, and Latin, Hebrew, and Old Tupi are dead, but not extinct languages.
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