eli5 how do languages like Aramaic, latin, ancient greek, etc just die out?
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Languages are like species. Some “die out” because they evolve into new forms. The three you mentioned all did that. Latin became the Romance languages. Greek is Greek. Modern Aramaic exists in parts of Iraq and Iran.
Others like Cornish (“Kernewek”) were *driven* to extinction (~250 years ago for Cornish), for several reasons: loss of “habitat,” “depredation” by colonizers, “competition” from other tongues, loss of “breeding ground” (young people not caring to learn). Modern Cornish is a reconstruction–and it’s only possible because it died out *recently,* so lots of useful literature survived (e.g. rhyming poetry.)
So, TL;DR: Languages *don’t* “just die out.” They linger. They evolve. Or they get slowly killed off. Unlike species, some languages even infect *other* languages. English uses a HUGE amount of vocab from Latin and Greek, despite being a Germanic language.
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