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▲ AnimalMuppet 2 hours ago

> nor would anyone be able to understand your language.

Greek and Latin are still understood. I don't know if the Chinese spoken today resembles Chinese from 2000 years ago, but maybe some of the written language would be understandable. Both Hebrew and Tamil are comprehensible that far back, and farther. Arabic goes nearly that far back.

Of course, that's six languages out of... how many do we speak?

▲ben_w 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Greek and Latin are still understood.

Nerds specifically kept the archaic forms alive, but they'd also tell you that Latin and ancient Greek were not static for their whole existence (Attic != Homeric != Koine), and modern Greek is somewhat different from what is taught as "ancient" Greek.

Treat Latin and (ancient) Greek like you would Quenya or Esperanto.

If this were to happen with English, I'd expect us to keep Chaucer, Shakespeare, and enough to understand Victorian literature, but it's anyone's guess if modern English would survive at all.

Arabic… kinda? It has an international standard form, but from what I've been told the language also comes with local dialects which can be difficult to mutually comprehend (though this is also the same with English just by going from central London to Sheffield).