does anyone know what the oldest spoken language in europe is.is it welsh?

Question

I was just wondering,cause im welsh and i speak it

Answer 1

who knows and good for you

Answer 2

All of the other answers are WRONG. Your question was SPOKEN language, NOT WRITTEN language. All spoken languages are equally old since all languages are in a constant state of change. In every language you can look back about 500 years and modern speakers would not really be able to understand the speech of that language. Remember, I'm talking about SPEECH and not written forms of the language. Writing changes much more slowly. So there is NO "oldest" spoken language in Europe. The spoken languages of Europe are all about 500 years old.

Now, if you want to talk about the modern languages of Europe that have written forms, the oldest is Greek, whose earliest written forms are about 3700 years old. No other European language comes even close.

Stupid answers so far: "The Gaelic languages were in Britain before the Indo-European languages took over". LOL. The Celtic languages ARE Indo-European languages. (That answer was from a "linguistics student". Time for him to retake some basic linguistics courses.) "Latin". LOL. The earliest written documents in Latin are only about 2700 years old, 1000 years younger than the oldest Greek documents. Basque is the ethnic group with the longest continuous history in Europe, but the earliest written documents in Basque are only a few centuries old. Sorry, but the oldest written documents in Welsh are not even as old as the earliest written documents in Irish. And there are older attestations of Continental Celtic (such as Gaulish). And Welsh settlement in Britain is not any older than Celtic settlement anywhere else in Europe because the Celts came out of southern Russia just like all the other Indo-European languages.

Answer 3

It's a funny thing, but when you think about it, all _spoken_ languages are equally old. They all change slowly, every generation having tiny differences in their speech that mean the language slowly changes. There's no point when you can say "a generation ago they spoke Old Welsh but now they speak Middle Welsh" - the names we give languages are normally related to the written languages which develop differently to spoken languages.

In Europe, there are four language families: Indo-European, Finno-Uralic (Lapp/Sami, Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian) and Caucasian (Georgian and some obscure languages like Ossetian). Basque is in a family of its own. Indo-European is the biggest group (it includes Latin, Greek, French, Italian, German, English, Russian, Armenian, Latvian, Welsh, Irish, and almost all other European languages, as well as Persian, Kurdish, Hindi/Urdu and Pashto) and because of their common descent from a common language (or group of languages) that scholars call proto-Indo-European, all Indo-European languages can be regarded as equally old. The same goes for the other language groups - all modern languages developed from earlier versions, splitting off from or approaching similar languages going back into pre-history. We have no reason to think that any of the four language groups came from outside Europe (the old idea of an Aryan invasion of Europe is not so often held by scholars now, though of course individual languages and peoples did move within Europe), so all are equally, unimaginably old.

Answer 4

Ancient Greek and Latin are now not commonly spoken so neither of them really qualify.
However - Like a golden apple of ancient mythology, Greek is the only language on its branch of the Indo-European family tree. Its closest relations are the Indo-Iranian languages, and Armenian. There are approximately 12,000,000 speakers

Greek is the official language in Greece and Cyprus. It is officially recognised in the Albanian districts of Saranda and Gjirokastër.
It is one of the official languages of the European Union.
The 'Modern' Greek alphabet has 24 letters, running from α to ω. What to Western alphabets is a semicolon ( ; ) in Greek denotes the question mark.

Greek is the oldest recorded language of Europe. There are clay tablets, from the second millennium BC, that contain records of trade between continental Greece and Crete.
The 19th and 20th centuries witnessed a struggle to establish a modern Greek language.
Eventually, Demotic, which was used mainly in speech, prevailed over Katharévousa used in literature and official documents.


The Celtic Branch
This is now the smallest branch. The languages originated in Central Europe and once dominated Western Europe (around 400BC). The people migrated across to the British Isles over 2000 years ago. Later, when the Germanic speaking Anglo Saxons arrived, the Celtic speakers were pushed into Wales (Welsh), Ireland (Irish Gaelic) and Scotland (Scottish Gaelic).

One group of Celts moved back to France. Their language became Breton spoken in the Brittany region of France. Breton is closer to Welsh than to French.

Other Celtic languages have became extinct. These include the original Cornish (from Cornwall in England and now ressurected by some who are lobbying for a 'Free Kernow), Gaulish (France), Cumbrian (Wales), Manx (Isle of Man), Pictish (Scotland) and Galatian (spoken in Anatolia by the Galatians mentioned in the Christian New Testament).

Welsh has the word order Verb-Subject-Object in a sentence. Irish has the third oldest literature in Europe (after Greek and Latin).

Answer 5

I found this link:
http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/oldest.html

Nobody seams to know, but Latin is definitely not the oldest. For the person who said you were a cabbage...what are they talking about. Welsh is an ancient language and may well be one of the first. The problem comes when you think of the oldest written language. There are languages that were spoken along time before it was written down, there is just not very much proof of it.

Answer 6

As you have found, the answer lies in the murk of prehistory. I would suggest that while Welsh and Finnish have a claim as pre-Indo European languages, Basque (or Euskara, as they term it) is probably the oldest because the Basque people predate the Finns or Welsh.

The National Geographic Genographic project dates the language to approximately 35,000 years ago and speculates that it may represent an ancient remnant of an earlier Cro-Magnon language spoken by those most remembered for their cave paintings in France and Spain.

Answer 7

I would think that Basque must be a prime candidate, as it was present in Europe before the arrival of Indo-Germanic languages (ie, English, Welsh and almost every European language) and its origins are still pretty unknown. For non-Indo-Germanic languages, you can date Hungarian and Finnish for example to around 1500 - 1000 BC, but Basque is the joker card in the European pack.

Answer 8

The language (I forget the name) from which Welsh, Cornish and Gaelic all stem - as a matter of fact so does Breton, spoken in Brittany - it's very like Cornish. These languages were established long before the Indo-European family of languages took over. There are no real documentations of which is the oldest, of course; but I'd say you can be pretty sure that Welsh, or at least the language it's derived from, is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, European language. Hope that helps!

Answer 9

Basque was spoken in Europe, before any Celtic language.
So welsh, which is a Celtic language, couldn't be the oldest language in Europe

Answer 10

I would imagine Greek, then Latin, but it is not spoken today. Also Egyptian is very old, but not European. I know that Welsh is one of the oldest, but I dont think it is the oldest.

Answer 11

Welsh and others Celtic languages like cornish and breton are indo-european languages.

However, Basque language is not indo-european and is certainly the oldest language in Europe.