"Revival" is used to mean increasing usage and esteem for a language that once had plenty of both within a certain community but subsequently became less used and/or less well-esteemed, in favour of another language. Nancy Dorian (1994) makes the distinction between revitalisation of a language, which is done when a language, although threatened, has still got some speakers left that can model the usage of the language and that remember how to pronounce it; and revival of a language, which is to bring back a language which has ceased to be spoken as a vernacular (whether recently or a long time ago), but which may still be used in "fossilized forms" by some individuals. She notes that revival is considerably harder and more rare than revitalisation, as it is hard to convince new learners of the urgency of learning a language that is not normally spoken by anyone. I would argue that the line may be hard to draw between the two: as registers dwindle one by one the language goes down the sliding scale towards what Dorian calls "fossilized forms", for instance in the form of dialectal words which have become part of the local variety of a dominant language, or as remembered prayers or slogans (such as the Khoisan motto of South Africa) of which the precise meaning may or may not be exactly clear. Indeed most scholars refer to both types simply as "revival" - even if it is good to consider the differences between the developmental processes of the respective "ideal types". For instance in the case of revival, the correct pronunciation of the language may be a matter of significant debate, as it was for Hebrew and for Cornish. In the case of revitalisation there may be more of a debate between rivalling dialects of a language, as for Quechua and for Irish and Scottish Gaelic.
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