An extinct language is a language which is no longer natively spoken: it is estimated that one natural human language dies every two weeks. In a tiny number of cases, the extinct language is associated with an empire held in such high regard by remaining empires that it would remain in use for scientific, legal, or ecclesiastical functions. Long after their respective deaths, Latin and Ancient Greek have been mined for scientific neologisms. Old Church Slavonic, Avestan, Coptic, and Ge'ez are among the many extinct languages used for liturgical purposes.
In at least one case, Hebrew, a de facto extinct language has been revived to practical use. Other cases, such as Cornish are disputed, as they do not enjoy support as an autonomous country's official language.
Although Welsh is a minority language, support for the language grew during the second half of the 20th century, along with the rise of organisations such as the nationalist political party Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Language Society, Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg.
It seems that the rise of Welsh nationalism rallied supporters of the language, and the establishment of Welsh television and radio found a mass audience which was encouraged in the retention of its Welsh.
Welsh morphology has much in common with that of the other modern Insular Celtic languages, such as the use of initial consonant mutations, and the use of so-called "conjugated prepositions" (prepositions that fuse with the personal pronouns that are their object).
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