World`s oldest language?
68The definition of language, varies by what you want to emphasize. There are languages that are no longer spoken, do they qualify as a valid language in the comparison of the oldest language.
So we have to define what we are comparing when we want to state that this or that language is the oldest.
The oldest language was created about 100,000 BC it's name has never been defined as we are unsure which of the living languages are its decendant.
The oldest written language probably Sumerian or Egyptian wins because they developed a writing system first (both start appearing in about 3200 BC).
If your criteria is that it is a current living language then perhaps Tamil, unless you insist that the language was written down then the oldest living language would probably be Chinese.
As you can see the answer is dependant on the bias of the question.
The best answer is that the oldest language is a dead language that was never written down, so we will never know what it sounded like or the thoughts of those who spoke it.
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I think it is possible that mesoptamia's languge was probably arabic but the writing is diffrent because it changed overtime. And i say that because the best arabic writers are from iraq( mesopatamia)
Arabic is a recent language, based on older languages, an early example emerges around 512 AD. developing from about a spoken form in use around 4 AD. so as far as languages go it is fairly recent although it is one of the top ten languages in the world coming in at #6.
The people of ancient Mesopotamia spoke a number of languages, including Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Phoenician, Semitic, and Sumerian.
The script that was used to write many of the ancient Mesopotamian languages was called cuneiform, that wedgeshaped writing on clay tablets you may have seen before.
Cuneiform was used to write several languages just as the alphabet we use today to write English is also used to write most of the modern languages such as French, Spanish, German.
What about the languages of the Australian Aboriginal people? Archaeology proves they lived in the country for 50,000 years in a largely unchanged culture until the European invasion. This put their age back much farther than any example given here.
I did meantion languages from 100,000BC, older than what you are mentioning. But, the oldest languages were never written down so, other than the idea that our ancestors must have communicated with each other some how, there is nothing out there to indicate which one was the first. The first language will be the one that goes along with the oldest fossil discovered that we think may have been our ancestor. And as we are all be able to trace our roots to them, the changes we have made to the language they spoke, would probably upset them as much as the changes our kids are making to our mother tongue.
arabic is the oldest language
they found in cave in the desert of sina between egypt and plastine an arabic writes
I think Hebrew may be a contender. It is spoken pretty much the way it was derived when referencing the scrolls used in any synagogue today. That may be the link since the scrolls used in Jewish services were copied verbatim over the centuries at least since the destruction of the 2nd Temple by the Romans about the time of Jesus or most probably centuries before that time.
What is the oldest European language. Gaul as a formal language seems to predate everything else but is dead and gone. Welsh is the Celtic language closest the Gaul and therefore could be the oldest living language in Europe. But Ancient Greek is pretty old too. I don't think it's Basque despite the insistence of the Basques and there appears to be little evidence to support their argument.
and it was the language of Adam the father of humans . The vocabularies of this language goes more than on hundred million . Other languages vocabularies are in thousands only
Arabic Language is the oldest language in the world . It was the language of Adam the father of humans . The vocabularies of this language goes more than on hundred million . Other languages vocabularies are in thousands only . Greek language has borrowed thousnds of words from Arabic and most of the spoken languages of the world have borrowed from Arabic . Now the alphabets of Greek , latin and english alphabets are borrowed from Arabic . Everybody knows this fact . Numbers used in Europe and the whole world are Arabic numerals . No language in the world has that amount of poetry except Arabic . It is the language of Poetry . No language on earth has poetry similar to Arabic poetry .
john i would like u to give me examble words of arabic influence in the Greek language.
I think TAMIL is the oldest language in the world.John tamil has high amount of poetry than arabic.tamil is the mather of dravidian languages.kumari(lemuria) contenent is known as the birth place of human race.There are evidenses proving that the tamil kingdom pandiya had their capital in ThenKumari & kapadapuram which is located Lemuria contenent.The numerals were orginated only from India and not from the arabic countries.During
merging of lemuria contenent ancient tamil literatures were merged into sea.If under sea researches were done these hidden truths will come out.john I am very sorry.Don't think bad of me.The god name
ADAM->ADVAM->ADAVAN-In tamil ,the god of fire.
John dear i believe that you don't know what you are talking about, the Greek language never took words from any other, on the other hand others took words from the Greeks, if it was not such an important and old language then why the New Testament was written in Greek ? It needed such a reach language to express religion. Now when it comes to the Arabic language i have the right to speak, you see i live in the Arab world the last 4 years and i must say that they took many words from us the Greeks, and let me tell you about the English vocabulary, it took more than 20.000 words from the Greek Vocabulary cause and many other languages did the same because they were so pure in tongue, so, :) i guess you have to be Greek to understand the meaning of this ancient language and its importance, according to my research it is the one of the oldest languages in the world, and i must say that a lot of people wished they were at least 1/8 Greek, no matter what the world has jealousy towards us :) WHAT EVERRRRRRRR
Lithuanian is the oldest living language in EU 100%.
tamil is the oldest language spoken in lemuria continent before lakhs of years
Tamil - lakhs of years - over exaggeration friend
i am a tamilian
as for as the oldest language, there are many languages in the world for context , tamil is one among them
greek too have other language words, indeed tamil and greek has also many words
GK - greek Tamil - TL
GK palaios means old
TL palaia means old
GK palaios has a doublet tele
TL palaia has a doublet tholai
GK palaios derived from *kwal
TL tholai derived from thol
Greek mythological king pandion, tamil's one of the famous kingdom Pandian kingdom in the south of the ruled
greek mythology has a fish eyed goddess athena
tamil mythology has a fish eyed goddess meenakshi
the other name of the pandian kings is minavan
the pandion king of greek pointed out by mythologies ruled in crete where the proto civilization of greek existed "minoan civilization" since ruled by the mythological king "mino"
athena - meenakshi
pandion - pandian
minoan(minos) - minavan of pandians
egyptians called greek ancestor minoans as capthor,
the other name of the tamil pandian kings was capthoran , since they ruled their country from the capital called "capthapuram" which was as per mythology destroyed around 2000bc by natural disaster
persian is the oldest
The four oldest languages of the world are, Pushto, Persian. Sanskrit and Hebrew. See the stone errected in Washington Dc for that. Seeing is believing.
tamil is oldest language in world.
we celebrate world tamizh classical conferance for nine time.
did any other language have done.
tamil is a oldest language in world..........
hello guys most who say arabic or tamil or english persian or the oldest is not true. Well arabic is derived from arhamic tamil derived from sanskrit and persian derived for hewbrew. Well one way arhamic is also derived from hebrew. So understandably most morden language are derived from no ancient language when u call hebrew or sanskrit are ancient languages how come arabic becomes adams language. Well who wants to give a opinion should also prove it. For example go the website of arabic studies and how arabic as derived.
Linguists look at this issue a bit differently. Ancestors to modern language families are often defined as "proto" langauges. An example would be "proto-indoeuropen." These proto languages are "constructed" by deconstructing current languages using core vocabulary, etc. If the word for "mother" and "father" and "brother" are very similar across languages then it is reasonable to assume there is a genetic link among these languages. The same holds true with grammar, etc.
As a linguist i completely agree with DTR0005. Although this whole discussion has been interesting. But lets always remember to be unbiased.
What i have derived from my 60 years of research,is that, the firt language used by humans in this world, which is still in use and will continue to be in practice, is the language of sound. The language sound has been given a form (writing) and while you read the writings, you have to make the sound, either loud of in your mind.
As the sound is writing in many forms, it depends on the reader/listener how he interprete it and what words and understanding he derives after listening to that sound.
I can write a word - cantinopi - no one has ever heard this word or read it, yet it made a sound that may be identical to any of the thousands of language that exist and at last with the help of the sound, this word will have some meaning, depending of how you interprete it.
i don't are
well, i think (according to research) that the correct answer is early egyptian. some people say that there is only one kind of egyptian, but they are uninformed. before the egyptian we know today was invented, there was a simpler way to write, read, and speak in egyptian. this way only lasted a few hundred years until it was remade and formed into the language we know today as egyptian.
Tamil is oldest language in world.
God of first langaug , only one people speak THEY are
ALBANIAN . Every language you find to other language similar or same to other country or people similar .ONLY ONE ALBANIA LANGUAGE ,NO ONE SIMILAR ORE SAME TO OTHER PEOPLE
FACT-Any language on the world (old) you find Albanian words
FACT-Albanian people they cant develop Albanian language from all languages on world .
(Old) Albanian - Living legacy of a dead language?
According to the central hypothesis of a project undertaken by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, Old Albanian had a significant influence on the development of many Balkan languages. Intensive research now aims to confirm this theory. This little-known language is being researched using all available texts before a comparison with other Balkan languages is carried out. The outcome of this work will include the compilation of a lexicon providing an overview of all Old Albanian verbs.
Different languages in the same geographical area often reveal certain similarities, despite there being no evidence of a common origin. This phenomenon, known as "Sprachbund", is also evident in the Balkan region where the Albanian, Greek, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Romanian languages display common words and structures. The question is whether these languages have influenced one another, or whether one specific language has been decisive in shaping the evolution of the others?
A project by the Department of Linguistics at the University of Vienna aims to prove that (Old) Albanian was a major influence on the other Balkan languages. Linguist Dr. Stefan Schumacher and his colleague Dr. Joachim Matzinger are undertaking pioneering research in two key areas. The initial stage involves an in-depth examination of Old Albanian, as research into this language is extremely scarce in comparison to modern Albanian. This includes an analysis of the Old Albanian verbal system using all available written sources - the first study of its kind. In the second stage, the results are compared with the verbal systems of the other Balkan languages to establish where similarities occur.
Influences from Albania
As project leader Dr. Schumacher explains, the research is already bearing fruit: "So far, our work has shown that Old Albanian contained numerous modal levels that allowed the speaker to express a particular stance to what was being said. Compared to the existing knowledge and literature, these modal levels are actually more extensive and more nuanced than previously thought. We have also discovered a great many verbal forms that are now obsolete or have been lost through restructuring - until now, these forms have barely even been recognized or, at best, have been classified incorrectly." These verbal forms are crucial to explaining the linguistic history of Albanian and its internal usage.
However, they can also shed light on the reciprocal relationship between Albanian and its neighbouring languages. The researchers are following various leads which suggest that Albanian played a key role in the Balkan Sprachbund. For example, it is likely that Albanian is the source of the suffixed definite article in Romanian, Bulgarian and Macedonian, as this has been a feature of Albanian since ancient times.
Literature
This project is based on the entire body of available Old Albanian literature dating from between the 16th and 18th centuries. This will prove a real challenge for the researchers as it comprises 1,500 pages of text, each of which must be analysed extremely carefully. Dr. Matzinger comments: "Until now, very little research has been carried out on these texts, as we are dealing almost exclusively with Catholic religious literature that was first forgotten and then became taboo, particularly during the Communist era. Following the fall of Communism, this literature has once again emerged from the shadows, but, so far, there has been a lack of money and of background knowledge about Catholicism."
Due to their role in the FWF project, these old texts are receiving a new lease of life and taking their place as part of Austria's rich tradition of research into this area - indeed, the Austrian professor Norbert Jokl, who was killed by the Nazis, is known as the "father of Albanology". Jokl would no doubt have been proud to witness the first complete representation of the Old Albanian verbal system in the form of the lexicon that is to be produced at the conclusion of the research. This will provide a foundation for all future investigations into the verbal system of Albanian and will also prove invaluable to Indo-European studies and linguistics as a whole.
Scientific Contact
Dr. Stefan Schumacher
University of Vienna
Institute of Linguistics / Indo-European Studies
Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Ring 1
1010 Wien, Austria
T +43 / 1 / 4277 - 41 753
M +43 / 676 / 79 73 521
E stefan.schumacher@univie.ac.at
Austrian Science Fund FWF
Mag. Stefan Bernhardt
Copy Editing & Distribution
PR&D - Public Relations for Research & Education
Campus Vienna Biocenter 2
1030 Wien, Austria
T +43 / 1 / 505 70 44
E contact@prd.at
According to language academies, about 3,000 tongues are spoken today throughout the earth. Some are spoken by hundreds of millions of persons, others by fewer than a thousand. Though the ideas expressed and communicated may be basically the same, there are many ways to express them. The Bible history alone explains the origin of this strange diversity in human communication.
Up until some point after the global Flood, all mankind “continued to be of one language [literally, “lip”] and of one set of words.” (Ge 11:1) The Bible indicates that the language later called Hebrew was that original “one language.” (See HEBREW, II.) As will be shown, this does not mean that all other languages stemmed from and are related to Hebrew but that Hebrew preceded all other languages.
The Genesis account describes the uniting of some part of the post-Flood human family in a project that opposed God’s will as stated to Noah and his sons. (Ge 9:1) Instead of spreading out and ‘filling the earth,’ they determined to centralize human society, concentrating their residence on a site in what became known as the Plains of Shinar in Mesopotamia. Evidently this was also to become a religious center, with a religious tower.—Ge 11:2-4.
Almighty God gave their presumptuous project a setback by breaking up their unity of action, accomplishing this by confusing their common language. This made impossible any coordinated work on their project and led to their scattering to all parts of the globe. The confusion of their language would also hinder or slow down future progress in a wrong direction, a God-defying direction, since it would limit mankind’s ability to combine its intellectual and physical powers in ambitious schemes and also make it difficult to draw upon the accumulated knowledge of the different language groups formed—knowledge, not from God, but gained through human experience and research. (Compare Ec 7:29; De 32:5.) So, while it introduced a major divisive factor into human society, the confusion of human speech actually benefited human society in retarding the attainment of dangerous and hurtful goals. (Ge 11:5-9; compare Isa 8:9, 10.) One has only to consider certain developments in our own times, resulting from accumulated secular knowledge and man’s misuse thereof, to realize what God foresaw long ago would develop if the effort at Babel were allowed to go unhindered.
Philology, the comparative study of languages, generally classifies languages into distinct “families.” The “parent” language of each major family usually has not been identified; much less is there any evidence pointing to any one “parent” language as the source of all the thousands of tongues now spoken. The Bible record does not say that all languages descended, or branched off, from Hebrew. In what is commonly called the Table of Nations (Ge 10), the descendants of Noah’s sons (Shem, Ham, and Japheth) are listed and in each case are grouped ‘according to their families, according to their tongues, in their lands, by their nations.’ (Ge 10:5, 20, 31, 32) It appears, therefore, that, when miraculously confusing human language, Jehovah God produced, not dialects of Hebrew, but a number of completely new languages, each capable of expressing the full range of human feeling and thought.
Thus, after God confused their language, not only did the builders at Babel lack “one set of words” (Ge 11:1), one common vocabulary, but they also lacked a common grammar, a common way of expressing the relationship between words. Professor S. R. Driver stated: “Languages, however, differ not only in grammar and roots, but also . . . in the manner in which ideas are built up into a sentence. Different races do not think in the same way; and consequently the forms taken by the sentence in different languages are not the same.” (A Dictionary of the Bible, edited by J. Hastings, 1905, Vol. IV, p. 791) Thus, different languages require quite different thought patterns, making it difficult for a new learner to ‘think in the language.’ (Compare 1Co 14:10, 11.) This is also why a literal translation of something said or written in an unfamiliar language may seem illogical, often causing persons to say, “But it doesn’t make sense!” So, it appears that, when Jehovah God confused the speech of those at Babel, he first blotted out all memory of their previous common language and then introduced into their minds not only new vocabularies but also changed thought patterns, producing new grammars.—Compare Isa 33:19; Eze 3:4-6.
We find, for example, that certain languages are monosyllabic (made up of words of only one syllable), such as Chinese. By contrast, the vocabularies of a number of other languages are formed largely by agglutination, that is, by joining words placed side by side, as in the German word Hausfriedensbruch, which means literally “house peace breakage,” or, in a form more understandable to the English-speaking mind, “trespass.” In some languages syntax, the order of the words in the sentence, is very important; in others it matters little. So, too, some languages have many conjugations (verb forms); others, such as Chinese, have none. Countless differences could be cited, each requiring an adjustment in mental patterns, often with great effort.
Apparently the original languages resulting from divine action at Babel in course of time produced related dialects, and the dialects frequently developed into separate languages, their relationship to their “sister” dialects or to the “parent” language sometimes becoming almost indistinguishable. Even Shem’s descendants, who apparently did not figure among the crowd at Babel, came to speak not only Hebrew but also Aramaean, Akkadian, and Arabic. Historically, various factors have contributed to the change in languages: separation due to distance or geographic barriers, wars and conquests, a breakdown in communications, and immigration by those of another language. Because of such factors ancient major languages have fragmented, certain tongues have partially merged with others, and some languages have disappeared completely and have been replaced by those of the invading conquerors.
Language research provides evidence in harmony with the preceding information. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica says: “The earliest records of written language, the only linguistic fossils man can hope to have, go back no more than about 4,000 or 5,000 years.” (1985, Vol. 22, p. 567) An article in Science Illustrated of July 1948 (p. 63) states: “Older forms of the languages known today were far more difficult than their modern descendants . . . man appears not to have begun with a simple speech, and gradually made it more complex, but rather to have gotten hold of a tremendously knotty speech somewhere in the unrecorded past, and gradually simplified it to the modern forms.” Linguist Dr. Mason also points out that “the idea that ‘savages’ speak in a series of grunts, and are unable to express many ‘civilized’ concepts, is very wrong,” and that “many of the languages of non-literate peoples are far more complex than modern European ones.” (Science News Letter, September 3, 1955, p. 148) The evidence is thus against any evolutionary origin of speech or of ancient languages.
Concerning the focal point from which the spreading of ancient languages began, Sir Henry Rawlinson, Oriental language scholar, observed: “If we were to be thus guided by the mere intersection of linguistic paths, and independently of all reference to the scriptural record, we should still be led to fix on the plains of Shinar, as the focus from which the various lines had radiated.”—The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britian and Ireland, London, 1855, Vol. 15, p. 232.
Among the major “families” listed by modern philologists are: Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asian, Japanese and Korean, Dravidian, Malayo-Polynesian, and Black African. There are many tongues that till now defy classification. Within each of the major families there are many subdivisions, or smaller families. Thus, the Indo-European family includes Germanic, Romance (Italic), Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Celti
Research by Dr Loganathan, Malaysia, reveals that Sumerian is Archaic Tamil...The Tamils migrated to Sumeria. European languages are pretty young compared to Tamil. Pythagoras learnt his maths in India...the Greeks learnt a lot of things from India and gave greek names to them...over the years...it 'became' Greek invention...
tamil is the oldest language in the world.because so many age gone before sangam age and going on before 2000bc or 3000bc i will say i have and avidance also
Rmnathan 4 years ago
Yes, we will never know about the oldest language. May be the same language evolved into thousands of languages spoken world over today. As language is the one that is responsible for the present level of development of humanity, we need to be greatful to those who invented the first language.