What term describes a language with no native speakers still used in some contexts?

A language with no native speakers that remains in some restricted use is called a dead language.

“Dead” describes the loss of native-language transmission, not necessarily the disappearance of every written or spoken use. Latin, for example, ceased to be anyone’s first language but remained important in Catholic liturgy, scholarship, law, science, and education. A dead language can therefore survive as a learned or ceremonial language.

The term is often contrasted with “living language,” which has native speakers, and “endangered language,” which still has native speakers but risks losing them. “Extinct language” is sometimes used broadly as a synonym for dead language, though some linguists reserve “extinct” for a language no longer known or used at all.

Language death usually follows language shift: a community adopts a socially or economically dominant language, children stop learning the older language, and intergenerational transmission ends. Revival can sometimes create new native speakers, as happened on a large scale with Hebrew.