When is a language considered dead?
Language death
In linguistics, language death occurs when a language loses its last native speaker. By extension, language extinction is when the language is no longer known, including by second-language speakers. Other similar terms include linguicide,[1] the death of a language from natural or political causes, and rarely glottophagy,[2] the absorption or replacement of a minor language by a major language.
Historical language
The International Organization for Standardization (sometimes by means of a registration authority) maintains and publishes standards for languages, among other things: the ISO 639-3 standards for languages include type H, for historical languages, part of a five-way typology to classify languages. Besides the historic languages, there are also ISO 639-3 classifications for living languages (languages with currently living native speakers), extinct languages (for languages whose last native speaker died within the last few centuries), ancient languages (whose last attested native speaker died more than a millennium ago), and constructed languages (which may or may not have native speakers). Old English is an example of a historic language. The ISO 639 language code for Old English is codice_1. A further ISO 639-3 criterion for historic languages is that they have a distinct literature from their descendant languages: in the example of Old English, Beowulf and other works of Old English literature form a distinct body of material.