What is the oldest language (still spoken today) in Europe?

Answer 1

There is no real answer to this question, as living languages are constantly changing. The English spoken today is already different form that written by Shakespeare, let alone Chaucer; the further back you go, the bigger the differences, and this is the same for all languages.

There is no doubt that an ancestor of modern Greek was spoken in Greece more than 2500 years ago - but it wouldn't be accurate to say that today's Greeks speak the language of Homer. This is in spite of attempts to make Modern Greek more "pure", by bringing back into use words and forms that derive from Classical Greek, but had been replaced over the centuries with "demotic" forms of speech.

I'm sure that similar claims about Basque, Lithuanian, etc would meet the same objections.

Latin has been preserved to an extent in the form recorded 2000 years ago - but no-one really uses it as a living language, and even when people do speak it they don't agree how it should be pronounced, or how it was pronounced by the Romans.

Hebrew was similarly preserved for religious purposes, but has been successfully revived as a living language - though not in Europe of course, Israel being in Asia - but again, Modern Hebrew will not be the same as the language of the Israelites (which had anyway fallen out of everyday use by the time of Jesus, whospoke Aramaic).

Every generation adopts and adapts the speech of the older people around them. Many of the words we use every single day can be shown to have been handed down over more than a hundred generations, and preserve an unbroken link back before the time of written reords. The study of word origins is caled etymology, and is fascinating! For me, at least!

Sorry, no simple answer, but hope this helps.

Answer 2

And I'll take your question to mean spoken then, spoken now, and spoken during the intervening years.

That's a really hard question. I mean, we can find out which is the oldest still-spoken language to be written down - that's Greek. But spoken? You can't rely on writings to determine what was spoken. Some languages were spoken for millenia before they were ever written.

But the oldest spoken? I think it's Greek, Albanian or Basque.

Albanian wasn't written until about 500 years ago, but scholars think it pre-dates Greek. Evidence shows that it may have existed as a language for thousands of years, well before the first century BC.

As for Basque - people were speaking Basque in what's now Spain in the 2nd century BC, and probably before.

There was a very old form of Greek being spoken 1500 BC.

As for Welch, which I believe someone mentioned - that's the oldest language in Britain, but not in Europe.

Answer 3

Greek has a documented history dating back 3500 years. Homer wrote both the Iliad and the Odyssey around 800 BC. The language has evolved somewhat in form, but look at English - compare Chaucer or Shakespeare to the English that is spoken today.

Hebrew is not native to Europe, but rather the Middle East (Asia), and was only brought back into use in 1947 after being a dead language for centuries.

The origins of the Basque language are unknown. Since it is unrelated to other local languages, and there are no written records dating back that far, they have been unable to trace it back to its beginning. They were able to trace it back to an earlier version (Aquitanian) which was around before the time of the Romans (as indicated by Latin inscriptions), but it is impossible to date the language's origin. Written records are the most accurate method, and for Basque there just aren't any.

Answer 4

greek is the oldest written european language and an indoeuropean language (grammic A and B about 3.500 years ago). we dont really know if other idoeuropeans arrived in europe before the greeks, we dont have good knowledge of any languages before them, because there can only be written proof and therefore other europeans and their languages are firstly mentioned by the greeks (since they wrote first). there is evidence that some of the indoeuropeans arrived in europe more or less around the same era, those are greeks, celts, illyrians and others. ofcourse europe was inhabited before, but there are mostly archeological traces of the previous inhabiters, not very entlightening linguistic evidence. it is considered very possible that the basque language is a child of the iberian languages (perhaps related to other mediterrenean languages too, like minoic, that have vanished, or better, assimilated) that existed already before the comming of europeans, but it isnt certain. Ungarian and finnish languages arrived in europe far far later. So did german and slavic languages, wich are indoeuropean languages also.
PS. in case i comfused u, indoeuropean is a large language family that contains most of the european languages and many asiatic ones like iranian, armenian, indian dialekts, and many more. at some point the first indoeuropean language split into daughter languages, some of wich split too later and build further familys.

Answer 5

Albanian or Basque . It can't be Greek language because the spoken Greek today is different from the Greek language used in ancient time.

Answer 6

Modern Greek (Demotic Greek to be technical) is still recognisably derived fromClassis Greek (sometimes called kathoorevesa, 'clean Greek') In the village of Olympia high in the mountains of Kefalos and very isolated they still speak what is recognisably Doric Greek.
Some might want to argue that the Celtic languages (still spoken) such as Erse, Welsh, Gaelic, Mansk, Bretton and Basque have a similar antiquity. Evidence is difficult to find.

Answer 7

My guess would be Basque, which seems to predate the Indo-European languages in Europe.

I gather it's hard to date though, because it has no known relatives. But it's probably older than Greek, and definitely older than any of the other languages named. The Celts probably killed off all the speakers of languages related to Basque whne they moved in.

Hebrew is not a European language, and it can hardly be said to be "STILL" spoken. It may be older than Basque though.

Answer 8

There is two languages that can contest this title. Lithuanian which is the closest modern language to Indo-European or, as many have said, Basque.

Answer 9

Finno-Ugrian languages and/or Basque.

Answer 10

A lot of nonsense is still spoken nowadays....often by people on TV. Nonsense is still spouted by politicians to this day