Which language is older?

Question

Spanish or English?

Answer 1

English is considered the older of the two. English as a distinct language goes back to around the year 500 AD. That was Old English, and a modern English Speaker would maybe recognize one word in five. It would essentially be unintelligible today, but it was definitely English.

Spanish as a distict language goes back to around 1200 AD, during the Reconquista of Spain from the Moors. The predecessors of current Spanish had evolved from Latin, which remained the "official" language in the area after the fall of the Roman Empire. Conquests by Visigoths and Moors kept the area in turmoil and kept a single language from coalescing. The Reconquista (reconquring from the Moors) gave a unity to the area, and the Castilian version arose as the leading language.

Answer 2

This isn't easy to answer, since languages as we know it today is not what it was in the past. Many of them split from other former languages.

Many linguists do date languages to when they split from their parent tongue. For instance, French and Spanish are both descended from Latin, so their age is determined by when they evolved into separate languages (between 400-700 AD). Some languages like Greek and Basque are considered older because they never "split" into daughter languages (although both have dialects), and so maintain their status as a "language." In that criteria, there may be a language with the world record of being spoken the longest without having spawned daughter languages - but no one could tell you which one it is.

Even with this criteria, the situation is still murky. It's true that there was a spoken form of Greek in 1500 BC during the Bronze Age, but if a Bronze Age Greek was transported to Modern Athens, he or she would probably not be able to understand Modern Greek. Even speakers of Classical Greek (500 BC) are lost in Athens unless they have also learned Modern Greek. Speakers of Modern English have trouble with Shakespeare from just 500 years ago.

Languages are continuously evolving over time, and probably most languages, even conservative ones, require special training in order for modern speakers to fully understand older texts. In the final analysis, most modern languages are equally young.

English speakers have moved all over the world, but even if English only arrived on a continent in the 19th century, it does not negate the fact that some form of English was spoken in the 6th century AD in England. Even Welsh has moved a bit, the oldest language still spoken in Britian. Establishing foot holds in Patagonia (Argentina) and Canada - however, this language still originated in Britain.

Some people base their answer on which language got written down first. If you're counting absolute oldest, probably Sumerian or Egyptian wins because they developed a writing system first (both start appearing in about 3200 BC). If you're counting surviving languages, Chinese is often cited (first written in 1500 BC), but Greek is a possible tie because it was written in Linear B beginning ca. 1500 BC.*

Between the two languages in your question, English as we know today is the oldest of the two.


Sorry, to much informations. I couldn't just pick one since all languages are always evolving, changing, and borrowing from other lauguages.

Answer 3

Spanish because of Spain. Spanish was alredy spoken before they found U.S.A. or any other place that speaks english!

Answer 4

English.......

Answer 5

spanish coz english is spoken for only last 1000 or 1500 years and it is still very young

Answer 6

Beautiful Spanish because it was created in Spain where Christopher Columbus had sailed to.

Answer 7

I think spanish?

Answer 8

Depends what you mean by English. Chaucer spoke English, but you wouldn't recognize it.

Answer 9

old english

Answer 10

spanish i believe