“a “dead” language like Latin, is still spoken by some...especially if they want the Americans to NOT understand them.”
Funny you say that as my mother’s family is Irish, and even after many, many generations of being in the US, they still teach their children a form of a Celtic language. My mother moved away so I never got that privilege, but there were still many words that slipped in. Stranger still is that while being in the South they adopted Christianity, many old polytheist cultural idioms still exist in the families. Some of it tongue in check, but much of it instinctive.
Cheek=Check. **coffee!**
Polytheistic idioms still in Celtic language.
St. Patrick was taken captive by the Irish in 401 A.D. He converted Ireland in the late century. So, these families' polytheist idioms extend back to the fifth century? Their idioms go back 1,600 years?
I know that the "wearin' o' the green" goes way back, but not that far. Just saying.