1

The main site has a tag for that has been used for questions about (for example) hieroglyphs, North-Germanic languages (including Old Norse), Classical Latin and grammaticality in dead languages in general.

The tag wiki says:

Languages that lack native speakers but formerly had native speakers.

This definition does not mention older variants of languages that still exist (e.g. Middle English). Is the tag meant to include these older language variants?

4
  • It is probably a meta tag that isn't actually useful.
    – curiousdannii Mod
    Aug 10, 2017 at 1:58
  • 1
    @curiousdannii "meta tag" I understand to be about the type of question, such as "reference request", "list of languages", (not existent here) "homework" or (not here, but on Math SE for example) "proof verification". "dead languages" isn't a type of question, but a type of languages; I do find it useful in that it is a reasonably well-shaped area which has experts and which people might search for - as opposed to a meta tag like "homework", which isn't really helpful in finding questions.
    – Natalie Clarius
    Aug 11, 2017 at 8:45
  • @lemontree Maybe "meta" isn't quite the right word in SE lingo. But I doubt it is that useful. Who specialises in dead languages as a whole? Language description, historical linguistics, language revitalisation, and the classical languages are all well defined fields, but I don't think dead languages is. And in most of the questions it really doesn't add anything.
    – curiousdannii Mod
    Aug 11, 2017 at 9:53
  • @curiousdannii If you think the tag should be deleted altogether, it's best to raise this as a new discussion here on meta. For the sake of the current question, let's focus on how the tag should be used given now that it is still existent.
    – Natalie Clarius
    Aug 11, 2017 at 11:41

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

I don't know how it was originally intended and the tag wiki is rather short so I can only tell from usage:
So far, the tag has only been used for languages that are now extinct rather than for languages which developped further into modern variants. The latter are usually taged with and possibly a speicfic tag like .
So I'd go for a new tag , possibly used together with , or .

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .