Language is our means of communication, wherever we
are, wherever we go. It would be so practical if we all spoke the same
language, yet its diversity is what underscores the uniqueness of each ethnicity
or group of people residing in one particular area. Language is closely
connected to tradition, ancestry, and history. It is the extra spicing of every
tale.
It was entirely by chance that I found the site of The Culture Trip which offers a concise list of ten languages labeled as being as old as the world to be still spoken today. Amazingly, Greek is not on the list – a deception to many people, no doubt!
To keep the story true to its source, I simply quote the content of The Culture Trip link that gives all the details of the top ten languages:
Hebrew, Tamil, Lithuanian, Farsi, Icelandic, Macedonian, Basque, Finnish, Georgian, and Irish Gaelic.
Language evolution is
like biological evolution – it happens minutely, generation by generation, so
there’s no distinct breaking point between one language and the next language
that develops from it. Therefore, it’s impossible to say that one language is
really older than any other one; they’re all as old as humanity itself. That
said, each of the languages below has a little something special—something
ancient—to differentiate it from the masses.
Hebrew
Hebrew is a funny case, since it essentially fell out of common usage around 400 CE and then remained preserved as a liturgical language for Jews across the world. However, along with the rise of Zionism in the 19th and 20th century, Hebrew went through a revival process to become the official language of Israel. While the modern version differs from the Biblical version, native speakers of Hebrew can fully comprehend what is written in the Old Testament and its connected texts. As the earliest speakers of Modern Hebrew often had Yiddish as their native language, Modern Hebrew has in many ways been influenced by this other Jewish language.
Hebrew
Hebrew is a funny case, since it essentially fell out of common usage around 400 CE and then remained preserved as a liturgical language for Jews across the world. However, along with the rise of Zionism in the 19th and 20th century, Hebrew went through a revival process to become the official language of Israel. While the modern version differs from the Biblical version, native speakers of Hebrew can fully comprehend what is written in the Old Testament and its connected texts. As the earliest speakers of Modern Hebrew often had Yiddish as their native language, Modern Hebrew has in many ways been influenced by this other Jewish language.
Tamil
Tamil, a language spoken
by about 78 million people and recognized as an official language in Sri Lanka and Singapore , is
the only classical language that has survived all the way through to the modern
world. Forming part of the Dravidian language family, which includes a
number of languages native mostly to southern and eastern India , it is
also the official language of the state of Tamil Nadu. Researchers have found
inscriptions in Tamil dating back to the third century BCE, and it has been in
continuous use ever since. Unlike Sanskrit, another ancient Indian language
that fell out of common usage around 600 BCE and became mostly a liturgical
language, Tamil has continued to develop and is now the 20th most commonly spoken language in the world.
Lithuanian
Lithuanian
The language family that
most European languages belong to is Indo-European, but they started splitting
apart from each other probably around 3500 BCE. They developed into dozens of
other languages like German, Italian, and English, gradually losing the
features that they had all shared. One language, however, up in the Baltic
language branch of the Indo-European family, retained more of the feature of
what linguists call Proto-Indo-European (PIE), which is the language that they
postulate was spoken around 3500 BCE. For whatever reason, Lithuanian has kept
more of the sounds and grammar rules from PIE than any of its linguistic
cousins, and can therefore be called one of the oldest languages in the world.
Farsi
In case you haven’t heard of Farsi, it’s a language spoken in modern-dayIran ,
Afghanistan , and Tajikistan ,
among other places. You’ve probably heard of Persian, and it probably conjures up pictures of genies
coming out of bottles. They’re actually the same language, under a different
name. Farsi is the direct descendant of Old Persian, which was the language of
the Persian Empire . Modern Persian took form
around 800 CE, and one of the things that differentiates it from many modern
languages is that it has changed relatively little since then. Speakers of
Persian today could pick up a piece of writing from 900 CE and read it with
considerably less difficulty than an English speaker could read, say,
Shakespeare.
Icelandic
Icelandic is another Indo-European language, this time from the North Germanic Branch (just for comparison, English is also a Germanic language, but from the West Germanic branch). Many Germanic languages have streamlined themselves and lost some of the features that other Indo-European languages have (you’ve probably never heard of a case, for example, unless you’ve studied Latin or a Slavic language), but Icelandic has developed much more conservatively and retained many of these features. Danish governance of the country from the 14th to the 20th century also had very little effect on the language, so it has mostly gone unchanged since Norse settlers brought it there when they came to the country, and Icelandic speakers can easily read the sagas written centuries ago.
Macedonian
The Slavic language family, which includes Russian, Polish, Czech, and Croatian, among others, is relatively young as far as languages go. They only started splitting off from their common ancestor, Common Slavic (or Proto-Slavic), when Cyril and Methodius standardized the language, creating what is now called Old Church Slavonic, and created an alphabet for it. They then took the language north with them in the 9th century as they went to convert the Slavs to Christianity. They came from somewhere just north ofGreece ,
probably in what is now known
as Macedonia (or the Republic
of Macedonia or FYROM),
and Macedonian (together with its very close relative Bulgarian) is the language that is most closely related to Old Church
Slavonic today.
Basque
The Basque language is the ultimate linguistic mystery. It is spoken natively by some of the Basque people who live inSpain and France , but it is completely
unrelated to any Romance language (which French and Spanish are) or indeed any
other language in the world. Linguists have postulated over the decades about
what it could be related to, but none of the theories have been able to hold
water. The only thing that’s clear is that it existed in that area before the
arrival of the Romance languages – that is before the Romans got there with
the Latin that would eventually develop into French and Spanish.
Finnish
Finnish may not have been written down until the 16th century, but as with any language, it has a history that stretches back far earlier than that. It is a member of the Finno-Ugric language family, which also includes Estonian, Hungarian, and several smaller languages spoken by minority groups acrossSiberia .
Despite that, Finnish includes
many loan words, which were adopted into Finnish from other language families
over the centuries. In many cases, Finnish has retained these loan words closer
to their original form than the language that they came from. The word for
mother, aiti, for example, comes from Gothic – which, of course, is no
longer spoken. The word for king, kuningas, comes from the old Germanic
word *kuningaz – which no longer exists in any Germanic language.
Georgian
TheCaucasus
region is a real hotbed for linguists.
The main languages of the three south Caucasian countries, Armenia, Azerbaijan,
and Georgia, come from three entirely different language families –
respectively Indo-European, Turkic, and Kartvelian. Georgian is the biggest
Kartvelian language, and it is the only Caucasian language with an ancient literary tradition. Its
beautiful and unique alphabet is also quite old – it is thought to have been
adapted from Aramaic as far back as the third century AD. While not a language
island in the same sense as Basque, there are only four Kartvelian languages,
all spoken by minorities within Georgia ,
and they are all unrelated to any other languages in the world.
Farsi
In case you haven’t heard of Farsi, it’s a language spoken in modern-day
Icelandic
Icelandic is another Indo-European language, this time from the North Germanic Branch (just for comparison, English is also a Germanic language, but from the West Germanic branch). Many Germanic languages have streamlined themselves and lost some of the features that other Indo-European languages have (you’ve probably never heard of a case, for example, unless you’ve studied Latin or a Slavic language), but Icelandic has developed much more conservatively and retained many of these features. Danish governance of the country from the 14th to the 20th century also had very little effect on the language, so it has mostly gone unchanged since Norse settlers brought it there when they came to the country, and Icelandic speakers can easily read the sagas written centuries ago.
Macedonian
The Slavic language family, which includes Russian, Polish, Czech, and Croatian, among others, is relatively young as far as languages go. They only started splitting off from their common ancestor, Common Slavic (or Proto-Slavic), when Cyril and Methodius standardized the language, creating what is now called Old Church Slavonic, and created an alphabet for it. They then took the language north with them in the 9th century as they went to convert the Slavs to Christianity. They came from somewhere just north of
Basque
The Basque language is the ultimate linguistic mystery. It is spoken natively by some of the Basque people who live in
Finnish
Finnish may not have been written down until the 16th century, but as with any language, it has a history that stretches back far earlier than that. It is a member of the Finno-Ugric language family, which also includes Estonian, Hungarian, and several smaller languages spoken by minority groups across
Georgian
The
Irish Gaelic
Although Irish Gaelic is only spoken as a native language by a small majority of Irish people nowadays, it has a long history behind it. It is a member of the Celtic branch of Indo-European languages, and it existed on the islands that are nowGreat Britain and Ireland well before the Germanic
influences arrived. Irish Gaelic was the language from which Scottish
Gaelic and Manx (which used to be spoken on the Isle of Man) arose, but the
fact that really lands it on this list is that it has the oldest vernacular
literature of any language in Western Europe .
While the rest of Europe was speaking their
own languages and writing in Latin, the Irish decided that
they wanted to write in their own language instead.
Although Irish Gaelic is only spoken as a native language by a small majority of Irish people nowadays, it has a long history behind it. It is a member of the Celtic branch of Indo-European languages, and it existed on the islands that are now
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