#there are some native speakers of Latin but they’re few and far betweenand only speak it with their parents generally

[transthomastaylor]

I mean, if we call a language dead when it no longer changes, then Latin isn’t really dead. Latin has been changed immeasurable throughout the ages, and any modern Latin writer or speaker owes a debt to various authors from various times — many of which wrote Latin in a way completely foreign to the likes of Cicero or Caesar! Add to this Erasmus and other humanists’ efforts to bring more Greek proverbs into Latin, or the scholastics philosophising using words like liberum arbitrium or, rather weirder, ipsitas. This tradition is kept alive by places like the Neo-Latin Lexicon, which does indeed collect and even makes up modern words for the modern world.

Even when you write or speak Latin, you are doing so in a context, and that context is not the same as an ancient Roman who was raised speaking it as their native language. Therefore the things you say and the ways you say it will necessarily be different. This is evolution! It’s no longer done by communities of native speakers, but it is being done, nonetheless.

Generally, however, excessive novelty is frowned upon in Latin communities (at least the ones that I can stomach), but the fact remains that it can’t be avoided entirely. The use of the ablative supine is noticeably greater in Neo-Latin communities than in classical texts, and so is the disparity between use of vel and aut. Discere often acquires a fourth principal part, something it didn’t have in ancient times (as far as I’m aware). Pellicula (‘little pelt’) now means movie or video. The syntax and vocabulary a person uses can sometimes tell you which era of literature they’ve engrossed themself in the most. These things may all seem like mistakes, and that may be true, but for those who end up studying 20th-21st century Latin literature hundreds of years from now, it’ll all just be a part of this era’s peculiarities :)

Can we un-dead-language-ify latin? Like can I learn Latin with my friends and then we make slang and now Latin is an alive language? Like technically? Just learn Latin and make slang & sayings and now there's new Latin sayings and slang and then bam! People are using Latin as a modern language it's not dead anymore!

Linguists let me know please