Vendit Vidit Vicit!

"How Latin Outlived The Romans" provides the reader with a brief outline on the language's origin, evolution, and common uses today. It is believed that the pure size of the Roman empire at it's peak is a heavy contributing factor to the survival of Latin, as it woud have been mixed with the dialect of various conquered lands to produce many new languages. Furthermore, frequently-used terms of law, biology, medicine, initialisms, and Christianity derive straight from Latin i.e. (no pun intended) "in loco parentis", a law term referring to those having responsibility of a certain child "in place of the parent". Where the article does mention a certain boundary that classical Latin has today, as much of the original vocabulary is irrelevant to modern day vernacular, it follows with an entertaining short story, filled with commonly used latin mottos and phrases, evidence of the language's prevalence.

I  am introduced yet again to the entertaining view of Adam Pulford on the Latin language and it's place in our world. There was a certain line that really enlightened me and made me look at the term "dead" (when referring to language) in a new way. "Ultimately, it is clear that Latin isn’t dead – because languages do not live and die, but rather evolve and disperse their influence into ‘new’ languages" (Pulford, 2011).
        Evolve. Evolution. Like the evolution of man-kind. The "Evolution" of the Latin is passionately discussed amongst believers and non-believers alike of it's existence as a "living" language. But here they talk, as do I, as if it's matter of alive or dead. We are doing an  injustice to the language by discussing it's existence not only as if there were no grey area, but in the wrong manner altogether. Pulford is right. There is no need for such terms when really "evolved", the one so poorly misunderstood, is most apt of all. Regarding man-kind, we don't declare the neanderthals of prehistoric times as exstinct (the equivalent of "dead" in reference to language), we simply state that they are the former us. That we are the result, the evolved form. What if Latin is the same? It's not extinct, no not by a long shot. But do we see our hairy ancestors running around exactly as they were millenia ago? No! Just as we shouldn't expect to see Latin exactly as it was years past.

So I pose this question to any and all, Is Latin nothing more or less than just, evolved? Are the terms of my question, "dead" and "alive" irrelevant altogether?

Pulford, A. (2011) How Latin Outlived the Romans. Retrieved on April 8, 2012 from http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/09/how-latin-outlived-the-romans/