A handful of words in modern English can be traced back to pre-Roman times. Linguists have been able to demonstrate links between a few words in Amerindian languages and Asian languages, so these words must date back at least 10 000 years, to when there was a land bridge across the Bering Strait. What is the oldest known language, and what are the words that can be traced back furthest in time?
2006-09-17 12:38:27 · 9 answers · asked by zee_prime 6 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Well, the oldest attested languages are those that left written records--Egyptian at 5,200 years hold the record for this. If you want to talk about the oldest reconstructed language, well, that gets tricky, because it's hard to put a date on reconstructions: languages don't change at a consistant pace, so unless you can tie the ancestor language to an archaeological record, you can't know for sure how old it is. Indo-European has been estimated to be anywhere from six to eight thousand years old, depending on who you listen to.
The links between the Na-Dene languages of North America and the Sino-Tibetan languages of Asia were proposed in the 1980s, and if they're true it would make their ancestor language (called Dene-Caucasian) almost 11,000 years old. However, the evidence doesn't back the theory up--there are lots of similarities between the two groups of languages, but very few proto-words have been reconstructed; to really prove a proto-language existed, we'd have to reconstruct a lot more of it. So right now, that hypothesis is just a really cool idea, but it lacks back-up.
2006-09-17 15:38:48 · answer #1 · answered by Mekamorph 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
All languages change over time, so all languages are continually new. Even though we can find the origins of words in words that existed before, those words have changed in their pronunciation over time.
2006-09-18 23:43:36 · answer #2 · answered by drshorty 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Ma,Mummy,Mama,Mom,Moma,Mami,Mother,Mataa,Maatrushri,Mi or Ammi,Ma or Amma etc.These words r the oldest known words in any lanuage and the most wonder in these words inanylanguage is that all words strts 4m "M" in any language.
2006-09-17 20:09:51 · answer #3 · answered by dataradi777 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Well, one would have to know in which language God spoke to Adam....
Adam must have known is own name before ever speaking... and
human psychology which makes it that a person will repeat his own name as a recognition of one's self...
So, the first word must have been: Aaaaaadaaaaammmm
Make sence doesn't it ?
2006-09-18 02:03:10 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
the oldest religious book was Rigved in Sanskrit language it is Hindus language trust me it was written before 2 million years before there is a bridge near srilanka to india that book was written before that and that bridge is about 2 million years old.
It should be Mata(mummy) the oldest one.
2006-09-17 19:50:58 · answer #5 · answered by hemu_ma2001 2 · 0⤊ 2⤋
ok well in a resent serch of mine i found that chinese dates back 1000 years before the oldest known form of cuniform or any other language . can any one corroberate this. oh and please keep hebrew out of this it was used after the death of christ hence is definatly not any were near old enough.
2006-09-17 19:43:14 · answer #6 · answered by cha92107 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
the oldest language is hebrew since before romans,egyptians and noah
2006-09-17 19:52:13 · answer #7 · answered by nathan 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
ma or me or mu for mother and no or ne or na for no
2006-09-17 19:41:47 · answer #8 · answered by brinlarrr 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
agggghhhhh
2006-09-17 19:41:00 · answer #9 · answered by Maninblack 1 · 1⤊ 1⤋