[LordGronk]

it has a steady liturgical use and children are raised to understand it in church, along with small spoken revival groups here in the states so, while not exactly living, I would say it’s in a far better state in its community than Latin post vatican 2. But note, I never said it was alive. Just that it’s not as dead as, say, Sumerian (in fact it’s about as alive amongst the coptic community I know as Sumerian was at the time Akkadian was spoken, as a language of identity and education)

[retrac]

That is why I compared it to Latin. It sees steady liturgical use, and in some pockets, children are still raised to understand it in Church, along with spoken revival groups. That is to say, Latin is dead.

[LordGronk]

I would say Coptic and Latin are not exactly a 1 to 1 comparison, primarily because today coptic is attached to a specific ethnic identity and the attempts at community revival that come with that. Of course one might argue that there are Latin revival groups too but equating organised families and expat communities that function like the Copts (or similar groups like the Mandaeans) with, say, internet organised neo-pagans that have little continuity or an organisation like the Catholic Church that solely uses Latin for official documents and discourages its use is, at best, a comparison that lacks any sort of diachronic subtlety.

[ClaraForm]

As a Copt who speaks but doesn't understand very much of what I say, my father can speak it, as does anyone who has a liturgical inclination. I can always go learn more of it, and it will likely remain as alive as it currently is for the foreseeable future. It's impossible to be devout without speaking it, it's impossible to connect to our identity without seeking to be devout.

Just supporting what you're saying.

[retrac]

Coptic is used actively. It remains important. It is spoken by its community, it is very religiously and culturally significant. Sanskrit may have been a better analogy than Latin. And I thank you for your perspective. I was only debating a fairly technical linguistic point.

A living language is a language that is used to teach children how to peel vegetables, that people shout when they stub their toe, and a language lovers whisper together. If none of that is going on, if it is used only in some contexts, by people who start learning it after they already know another language (their native language), then it is probably a dead language.

Perhaps "dead" sounds pejorative, it is meant to be descriptive. Does that intense degree of language use occur? If no one speaks a language as their first, primary language, then the language is generally considered "dead" - even if hundreds of thousands of people use it every day. Another way of looking at it: if Coptic is still used in a thousand years, would it be recognizable? Or would it be like how Latin and Sanskrit are nearly unchanged, since they were last living languages? Living languages evolve.