Which language, other than Hebrew, could be revived from a position with zero native speakers?

[Albert.Nik]

@Thisisnotausername Language and ethnicity revivals are mostly driven on pride and a requirement to connect to History. This could happen as a niche which could possibly become more popular in Tajikistan. Coming to Assyrian/Akkadian/Aramaic/Sumerian/Babylonian and Gutian,as most of the 20th century dictatorships,Saddam Hussein and his Ba'athist friends would be obsessed with Antiquity as well. It's evident in the Anthem "Ardulfurataini Watan" which was the anthem till the US provisional Govt was established after the invasion in 2003/4. That term itself means "Mesopotamia" or Land between the two rivers in Arabic. And such a Govt if left to thrive,could start processes of traditional Social engineering (not fully futuristic) to satisfy their Ego and revive these peoples and languages associated. Urartian could become a revived second language of the Armenians and again,to give themselves a good connection to their history.

 

[Arkenfolm]

@Thisisnotausername Language and ethnicity revivals are mostly driven on pride and a requirement to connect to History. This could happen as a niche which could possibly become more popular in Tajikistan. Coming to Assyrian/Akkadian/Aramaic/Sumerian/Babylonian and Gutian,as most of the 20th century dictatorships,Saddam Hussein and his Ba'athist friends would be obsessed with Antiquity as well. It's evident in the Anthem "Ardulfurataini Watan" which was the anthem till the US provisional Govt was established after the invasion in 2003/4. That term itself means "Mesopotamia" or Land between the two rivers in Arabic. And such a Govt if left to thrive,could start processes of traditional Social engineering (not fully futuristic) to satisfy their Ego and revive these peoples and languages associated. Urartian could become a revived second language of the Armenians and again,to give themselves a good connection to their history.

Assyria (the more famous neo-Assyrian Empire) and Babylon ironically used Aramaic as their main language rather than Akkadian which was increasingly used for ceremonial and religious purposes. While Aramaic is still a living language (and spoken by a significant minority of Iraqis before ISIS's rampage) the form of Aramaic used in Babylon was obviously very different than either the liturgical Syriac used Syriac churches or the neo-Aramaic spoken by various groups. But like Akkadian, I don't see Saddam ever doing much with it. Coming from his background of Arab nationalism and increasingly using Islamism toward the end of his rule (the guy was all about power), he'd probably be a bit hesistant about much more than some token uses of Imperial Aramaic or Akkadian.

Armenians of course have no need for the Urartian language, which doesn't even have a large corpus to draw from nor any reconstruction you can be confident of like with, say, Gothic. It would be close to a fictional language. A similar case (which actually happened OTL) is with Romanian nationalists (including some Juche inspired cranks linked to the Ceausescu dictatorship) who upon confronting the Dacian past of Romania, devised protochronism and some similar theories, like how Dacian is actually the original form of the Romance languages and that Romanian (its descendent) is thus the oldest Romance language and culture. Don't Armenian nationalists claim the Urartians were Armenians in every way shape and form anyway? Like how Kurdish nationalists claim the Gutians were ancient Kurds.

 

[Thisisnotausername]

@Thisisnotausername Language and ethnicity revivals are mostly driven on pride and a requirement to connect to History.

And most of them never get beyond a niche, a hobby. Can you name a single example of a dead language that isn't Hebrew being revived as the primary language of a region?

This could happen as a niche which could possibly become more popular in Tajikistan. Coming to Assyrian/Akkadian/Aramaic/Sumerian/Babylonian and Gutian,as most of the 20th century dictatorships,Saddam Hussein and his Ba'athist friends would be obsessed with Antiquity as well. It's evident in the Anthem "Ardulfurataini Watan" which was the anthem till the US provisional Govt was established after the invasion in 2003/4. That term itself means "Mesopotamia" or Land between the two rivers in Arabic. And such a Govt if left to thrive,could start processes of traditional Social engineering (not fully futuristic) to satisfy their Ego and revive these peoples and languages associated. Urartian could become a revived second language of the Armenians and again,to give themselves a good connection to their history.

I see no reason for the Tajiks or Armenians to abandon their languages for these dead and obscure ones. Such languages might be revived as hobby languages a la Manx or Cornish, but they're not going to replace the primary languages of those countries, which is what OP is looking for.

As for an Iraqi government imposing Akkadian on its population, well, frankly, it's not going to work. Sticking lines in your national anthem is easy. Forcing a population to conduct their lives and business in a dead language is infinitely harder, and is a classic example of the sort of wacky dictatorial decree that gets immediately reversed the minute the autocrat responsible leaves office.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

Probably not very plausible, but maybe when the European Economic Community was being set up, the leaders could agree to have official documentation done in Latin, to put all the countries on an equal footing, and to help guard against disagreements over the provisions of treaties (i.e., if the French and German versions disagree, see what the Latin version says, because that's the official one). Plus Latin already had a cultural prestige and a highly-regarded body of literature and was still being taught in many institutions, all of which would make reviving it easier compared to other languages which literally nobody speaks anymore.

 

[Albert.Nik]

And most of them never get beyond a niche, a hobby. Can you name a single example of a dead language that isn't Hebrew being revived as the primary language of a region?

I see no reason for the Tajiks or Armenians to abandon their languages for these dead and obscure ones. Such languages might be revived as hobby languages a la Manx or Cornish, but they're not going to replace the primary languages of those countries, which is what OP is looking for.

As for an Iraqi government imposing Akkadian on its population, well, frankly, it's not going to work. Sticking lines in your national anthem is easy. Forcing a population to conduct their lives and business in a dead language is infinitely harder, and is a classic example of the sort of wacky dictatorial decree that gets immediately reversed the minute the autocrat responsible leaves office.

I didn't mean these languages being revived as a daily spoken language but a revival which could help them become more prominent within their regions. As for Hebrew,I agree about the purpose.
As for my case,examples would be:
Iraq: Arabic would be the daily life language. However the ancient Fertile crescent languages could be present in special reserves or/and be learnt by people as second/third languages.
Tajikistan:Same case. Sogdian becomes a second language or so for all people whereas Tajik is known to everyone and daily life happens in it and so does official purposes.
Armenia: Urartian and Hurrian could be a second language which Armenians could be fluent in while the daily life happens in Armenian itself.
In this case,coming to Sanskrit,many Hindus rely on pseudoscience like Indigenous Aryan theory and that Sanskrit is the first language from which all languages of the World including Dravidian break out of. To the scientifically sound,it sounds like a creationist myth but it parades as science among the Indian Far religious right. However,large scale spoken Sanskrit revival is very impractical as the language is quite difficult to be used for daily life. As I said,Classical Sanskrit was never a spoken language among the masses. The original Vedic language is an identical twin of Avestan and Old Persian.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

Here's a crazy idea: the Austrian Hapsburgs, in order to have a neutral language for their domains, conduct all their official business in Latin, and make Latin the official language of their bureaucracy. (This would probably be quite popular with their non-German subjects, since the Germans would no longer have so much of an advantage in getting government jobs.) When mass education comes in, they further mandate that all children are to be taught Latin, and that secondary and higher education is all to be done in that language. Consequently, Latin becomes the lingua franca for the Hapsburg Empire, and, as knowledge of the language increasingly becomes necessary for social and professional advancement, those parents who can do so start teaching their children Latin at a younger and younger age. Eventually a situation arises where many of the Hapsburg Empire's subjects are raised bilingual, speaking both Latin and their national language with equal fluency.

 

[Hvalrossen]

Probably not very plausible, but maybe when the European Economic Community was being set up, the leaders could agree to have official documentation done in Latin, to put all the countries on an equal footing, and to help guard against disagreements over the provisions of treaties (i.e., if the French and German versions disagree, see what the Latin version says, because that's the official one). Plus Latin already had a cultural prestige and a highly-regarded body of literature and was still being taught in many institutions, all of which would make reviving it easier compared to other languages which literally nobody speaks anymore.

Would not Romance languages have an advantage due to Latin being their predecessor? With Germanic or Slavic languages have more input from non Latin sources than Romance languages do.

 

[JJohnson]

My vote for a revived language is Biblical Greek with a bunch of Hebrew loan words. I grew up Church of Christ, and went to a CoC college. My religious teachers generally spoke both Greek and Hebrew. It is not hard to me to imagine a world where one of the many similar evangelical groups in the 1880s decide only to use the Bible in its original language. Concentrate these people in one area like the Amish and have it a tenant that services are done in Koine Greek. Give it some time and a desire to show purity, and I could see Greek being used in daily life. The question then becomes where to get the all the other words needed. One choice is the loan words from English. Another choice would be to borrow from the other language taught, Hebrew. Yet another choice is either modern Greek or another dialect of Greek.

Maybe even Ancient Greek so we can have a distinct genitive and dative case again.

 

[JJohnson]

Irish and Yiddish were never dead languages to begin with. Not to mention, Irish is an official language in Ireland and is taught in Irish schools.

You are correct, though for Irish, it continues its decline in usage in favor of English, which is sad. It's a beautiful language to listen to. Yiddish, as far as I know, is not an official language of any country, province/state, or county/Kreis/etc. Is it a recognized/protected minority language in Europe?

As for Irish, you could come up with a timeline wherein its revival goes better and it becomes a majority language, or at least, not a receding language.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

Would not Romance languages have an advantage due to Latin being their predecessor? With Germanic or Slavic languages have more input from non Latin sources than Romance languages do.

Sure, it wouldn't be 100% equal for everyone, but it would be more equal than using German, which is what they did historically. Plus, I don't think Romance-speakers were ever that important a part of the Austrian Empire... Maybe in the decades after the Napoleonic wars, when the Hapsburgs were given control of Venetia, but before and after that period, it was mostly Germanic, Slavic, and Hungarian speakers, with Romance languages being spoken by a very small minority.

 

[Rockydroid]

My vote for a revived language is Biblical Greek with a bunch of Hebrew loan words. I grew up Church of Christ, and went to a CoC college. My religious teachers generally spoke both Greek and Hebrew. It is not hard to me to imagine a world where one of the many similar evangelical groups in the 1880s decide only to use the Bible in its original language. Concentrate these people in one area like the Amish and have it a tenant that services are done in Koine Greek. Give it some time and a desire to show purity, and I could see Greek being used in daily life. The question then becomes where to get the all the other words needed. One choice is the loan words from English. Another choice would be to borrow from the other language taught, Hebrew. Yet another choice is either modern Greek or another dialect of Greek.

Biblical Greek, imo, is the more likely one. The POD for this wouldn't be too hard and though limited, it is entirely feasible. As for modern words, is there any reason why modern Greek couldn't be relied on as a primary source for loan words? If you ask me, if we were to revive classical Latin, I would use Romance words for the modern loan words especially if a word is a cognate among two or more romance words. Though the issue is that many of those romance words are loan words from non-Romance languages.

 

[MakiRoc]

Here's a crazy idea: the Austrian Hapsburgs, in order to have a neutral language for their domains, conduct all their official business in Latin, and make Latin the official language of their bureaucracy.

Not such a crazy idea. I know Croatia under the Hapsburgs used Latin as an official language of government up till the middle of the 19th century.

 

[BlondieBC]

Biblical Greek, imo, is the more likely one. The POD for this wouldn't be too hard and though limited, it is entirely feasible. As for modern words, is there any reason why modern Greek couldn't be relied on as a primary source for loan words? If you ask me, if we were to revive classical Latin, I would use Romance words for the modern loan words especially if a word is a cognate among two or more romance words. Though the issue is that many of those romance words are loan words from non-Romance languages.

If memory serves me right, my professor said that Biblical Greek was so far from modern Greek that he could not read a newspaper. The example he gave was for the Biblical Greek word for baptism. The only modern Greek usage he saw for that word was for a car wash. So I don't know how hard it would be to graft modern Greek into old Greek. I guess it would be similar to using reviving 200 AD Latin, but only using the words we have in a small sample of classical Latin writings plus modern Spanish term that have been "Latinized".

Also, since these people only needed to learn enough Greek to read the Bible, I believe the base vocabulary being taught was the words used in the new testament. So this would mean that we would be missing almost all the words used in a kitchen environment (spoon, steak, grill, etc).

 

[Rockydroid]

If memory serves me right, my professor said that Biblical Greek was so far from modern Greek that he could not read a newspaper. The example he gave was for the Biblical Greek word for baptism. The only modern Greek usage he saw for that word was for a car wash. So I don't know how hard it would be to graft modern Greek into old Greek. I guess it would be similar to using reviving 200 AD Latin, but only using the words we have in a small sample of classical Latin writings plus modern Spanish term that have been "Latinized".

Also, since these people only needed to learn enough Greek to read the Bible, I believe the base vocabulary being taught was the words used in the new testament. So this would mean that we would be missing almost all the words used in a kitchen environment (spoon, steak, grill, etc).

Do we have samples of secular usages of Kione Greek?

 

[Zwinglian]

Also, since these people only needed to learn enough Greek to read the Bible, I believe the base vocabulary being taught was the words used in the new testament. So this would mean that we would be missing almost all the words used in a kitchen environment (spoon, steak, grill, etc).

If they used the Septuagint for the Old Testament their vocabulary would be expanded a lot

Do we have samples of secular usages of Kione Greek?

Plenty, it was the most used language in the eastern Mediterranean for a long time

 

[Rockydroid]

If they used the Septuagint for the Old Testament their vocabulary would be expanded a lot

Plenty, it was the most used language in the eastern Mediterranean for a long time

Gevin that I can see it easily pulling a Hebrew style revival. It won't be a "purist" language but then again English has a ton of Latin influences and still seems to be considered a Germanic language.

 

[Albert.Nik]

Okay,I suddenly remembered,how about a case for revival of Aveatan language in parts of India and Iran? Anyway,who were the people's who spoke Avestan? A late offshoot of Proto-Indo-Iranians? It's neither Eastern nor Western Iranian and is an identical twin to Vedic Sanskrit(Probably the same language but a different dialect). But V.Sanskrit is classified as Indo-Aryan and not Iranian. Later Sanskrit is far from Avestan so it would qualify for a different classification.

 

[Rockydroid]

Are there any Mesoamerican languages that can be revived? Maybe language tied to Nahuatl languages?

 

[Kirook]

Several villages in India reportedly use Sanskrit as their first language, and the Indian census states over 14,000 people use Sanskrit as their first language. Maybe certain social groups in India could adopt it more widely in the future, or tribal peoples (probably ones who aren't Christian/Muslim) who are losing/have lost their native language? I don't think it would ever amount to more than 1% of India's population speaking Sanskrit natively though.

That would still mean there would be over 10 million Sanskrit speakers in the world.

 

[sahaidak]

When mass education comes in, they further mandate that all children are to be taught Latin, and that secondary and higher education is all to be done in that language.

Secondary and higher education was offered primarily in Latin (at least in Austrian Galicia) till 1848 and 1817, respectively. Of course, it was before the era of mass education, and Latin was replaced by vernaculars precisely to make education more accessible. However, even when Latin was the principal medium of instruction in the Habsburg Empire's post-primary schools, it was not seen as a language to be employed in everyday situations, but rather as a language of the classroom and textbook.