Which world language has changed the least from its ancient form? Why?

Question

Some languages change constantly -- just try reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. Then (in English, for example, thanks to Shakespeare and the King James Bible), other languages have something happen that slows down that change. Which (living) language has been preserved at or near its ancient form for the longest?

Answer 1

Arabic more than most: because the language used for writing and formal discussions (television news broadcasts, etc.) is a literary language, it is has a fixed grammar (formally a fixed morphology, as the syntax - the order of words and how you link words together - has changed a bit) more or less the same as Arabic of the 8th Century AD. Of course, as with all world languages, there are lots of new words.

The reason for this is that the written language has to serve all Arabs, and the spoken dialects have become different from one another. So the Classical language is used in a modified form. This is also partly because all children started to learn to read by learning the Qur'an and the Hadiths (the traditions of the Prophet) as many still do. It has always been considered vital that this religious literature be understood, and this has influenced the development of the written language.

What do you mean by 'world language', though? Internationally important language or language from anywhere in the world?

If you mean the latter, Hebrew, is almost the same gramatically as it was in the 8th Century BC. This is because it was a reintroduced in the Ninteenth Century on the basis of Biblical Hebrew. But because the number of words in Biblical Hebrew is so small (5000 different words in the bible?) most of the words are new words.

Of European languages, Icelandic is probably the most conservative, the complex grammar of Old Norse being more or less preserved in Modern Icelandic. The pronunciation has changed, but conservative spelling rules have meant that Icelanders can still largely read Old Norse literature. In fact It's quite close to Anglo-Saxon, so that might give you an Idea of how conservative it is!

Greek was following more or less the same spelling rules as Classical Greek until the ninteenth century, when large changes were made to make it closer to the spoken language of Athens. The grammar has now changed quite a lot, though huge numbers of literary words from Classical Greek still exist alongside 'demotic' (colloquial) words. Like Arabic, Greek's conservative nature till recently was because the spoken and written languages had parted company.

Aramaic as spoken today (Turoyo in Turkey or New Western Aramaic in Ma'lula in Syria, for example) is very different from classical Aramaic, far more than Bedouin Arabic is from Classical Arabic.

And Sanskrit... it's a bit like Latin, a 'dead language'. Though some people still use it to communicate, I believe, its grammar and core vocabulary are frozen.

Answer 2

At first I thought it may be Latin but, Latin is now widely considered to be an extinct language, with very few fluent speakers and no native ones. So probably the Galician language which is still spoken by more than 3 million people, including most of the people in Galicia, as well as among the many Galician immigrants in the rest of Spain.
O the four "official" languages recognized in Spain, Galician is the one primarily taught and used in schools. The others being Castilian, Catalan, and Basque.
Galician has multiple dialects, yet mutual comprehension is total.
With the advent of democracy, Galician has been brought into the country's institutions, and it is now co-official with Spanish.
From the 8th century, Galician was the only language in spoken use, and Latin was used, to a decreasing extent, as a written language.

Answer 3

To my knowledge it is actually Greek.
A speaker of modern Greek will still be able to read Homer without a lot of dictionary-thumbing, where English, French and Germans would find it impossible to understand even a 12th century text in their language.

Nobody really seems to know why; there are all kinds of theories around, my own is that a "canonical" text helps, also a "standardization" and regular contact between the "dialect areas" of a language, where none of them is considered dominant, so everybody more or less has to stick to what the other guys will understand.

Answer 4

Middle English was the language of the people with no central written form. At the time of Chaecer, the language of state was French, and this remained until Edward VI who changed the language of state to English. I would guess that in the last 400 years, high (Queen's) English has changed little.
A language wil be best preserved by the legal system, and government, so find which language has existed in a written legislative form for longest and you will have your answer.

Answer 5

Tamil has changed the least from its ancient form. No doubt about it

Answer 6

Latin and that is why it is the dead language. Yes it is still known and even used but as a conversation language it can not be used.

Latin was and is a fixed language and did not allow for change so it had no choice but to die.

Answer 7

If you are a beginner who understands really tiny if any Spanish but you will like to find out a lot more then you have to take a program https://tr.im/Vs2up the on-line program of Spanish

Answer 8

Gaelic

Answer 9

According to research is Tamil

Answer 10

Tamil ofcoz