what is the oldest language in the world and why do we all not speak it?

Answer 1

Linguists do not know. The oldest recorded WRITTEN language is Sumerian. Before that no languages were written (as far as we know) and therefore, by definition, left traces only in the spoken languages which they evolved into.
It is now pretty much agreed that Homo Sapiens evolved in Africa and spread from there. Anthropologically speaking, the 'oldest' races of humans are - quite possibly - the Khoi-San peoples of Southern Africa. Their languages have features that linguists speculate make them likely to be extremely old:
1. They are extremely complex
2. They have (phonetic) systems that are significantly more complex than any other languages. (Among these features are the wide varety of speech sounds - up to 147 as opposed to 44 of Standard English. These include many 'click' sounds.)
The Khoi-San peoples were displaced by later herdsmen migrations and invasions over the last thousands of years and survive in small pockets in Botswana and elsewhere).

Answer 2

Somarian I think is the oldest known written language... it was found on clay tablets in the Mediterranean region. Language changes man- we don't speak it, because that was a language that was known thousands of years ago. All the people who knew how to pronounce it are now dead... it makes speaking tricky. In addition, there must have been language before that, but it's been lost- language change goes so quickly sometimes parents can't even understand their children!

Secretly though, I believe we do still speak the oldest language in the world- to an extent- and that's body language. Different cultures around the world do have different signs in body language, but the very basics, like the smile and the frown, the wrinkled brow for concentration- Possibly it was more important for them though, because spoken language may not have been so advanced right at the start of things, but I'm sure that the first homo sapiens used basic body language in much the same way that we do today :)

Answer 3

This is clearly a rant not a question, but Arabic is not in any way immune from change and modification over the years - its many 'dialects' diverge from each other more than the Slavic languages or Romance languages do. It's really just a sense of pan-Arabism (plus the common alphabet, common TV and radio stations and of course the Qur'an) that keeps the different 'dialects' of Arabic classified together and not as seperate languages. Mandarin Chinese has been around at least as long as Arabic. Has it evolved? Of course; all languages do. Yet they can still read manuscripts written before the Common Era. And it's spoken by more people than Arabic.

Answer 4

The oldest language was something that linguists might call Proto-Human or Proto-World. This language evolved and split into different dialects and different languages over time. In a sense, we all still speak it because all languages are evolved from it. The oldest written language is Sumerian, which died out about 3000 years ago.

Answer 5

I would think "Latin". Why is it not spoken? Because it is a "dead language". Why is it "dead"? Over time as people migrated and moved from country to country they developed thier own languages and the ones that I know that derived from latin that are most similar to each other are: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, and French, then English came about (More may have developed, but I am not quite sure). But it can still be learned and used for artifical ocsasions, but not in everday speech. If you want to know more go the source listed below.

olivia_buerkle, you are right, indeed "Latin" is a "dead langugage" and "sir_baggytrousers" makes an intersting point, but "Greek" was also old as latin and I think if not Lation, it evolved from greek and I have heard "Summerian" or heiroglyphics are the oldest recordings of a language.
We can't actually be sure on what the oldest language is, but we can only go so far back.

Answer 6

I don't know what the oldest language in the world is, but we don't speak it becuse languages are constantly evolving. Take the English language for example. It is changing every day. What we speak today is far removed from the days of shakespere !.

Answer 7

Sumerian is the oldest known language as an earlier answer explained. I believe the explanation offered in the Bible in Genesis chapter 11 verses 1 thru 9.

Answer 8

Welsh (a Celtic language) has a good claim to be the oldest language still in use. We don't all speak it because it is difficult and uses lateral consonants that are jolly hard to say.

Answer 9

We are still speaking the languages. They have evolved and will evolve in the future...

The oldest language? No one knows for sure because the history is based on written language, not spoken...

Answer 10

Ughh Uh Ug
stone-age