What is the Oldest Language Still in Use?

Question

Also how many and which languages are derived from it if any?

Answer 1

There may be languages older in history, but Tamil, an Indian language used in Tamil Nadu in India is said to be the continuously used oldest spoken language with a literary history dating back to the beginnings of the first millennium Languages such as Greek, Latin and Sanskrit are certainly more ancient but they are not practised as forms of speech in everyday matters . .
The second part of your question. All majorliterary languages of the Dravidian family viz Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada are either derived from Tamil or largely influenced by its structure, though all of them grew independently, reflecting the individual genius of the users. Thus Malayalam has, like Marathi and Bengali, has created new forms of literary genre. Does this help? Thank you

Answer 2

Hebrew. Its offsprings: another languages used by the Jewish diaspora: i.e. Yiddish, Ladino.

Latin, ancient Greek ale also very old, however, they are dead languages now.

Not sure, whether Chinese is not older than Hebrew. Modern Chinese uses still nearly the same script, but pronunciation differs significantly.

Update: the question was about the languages which are still in use. Latin is in use in the same way as, say, Sumerian - some people read it and even write - but there is no current language development.

Another question is if we are talking about writen languages only. If not, perhaps some indigenous Australian's languages are the oldest.

2nd update: modern scientific terminology is actually a mixture of ancient Greek and Latin, based on existing words.

Answer 3

the basque language of the pyranees is the oldest living language known. this language dates to the mesolithic era and has no living relatives and thus is a linguistic isolate. it is not known where it derived from; however, it is related to other prehistoric languages of the region such as tartessian, iberian, etc. Latin is a young language and younger than Greek which dates back to myceneaen times and before.

Answer 4

One is the language used by the Bushmen tribal peoples of Africa; they are believed to be the oldest, continual peoples on earth. The language is unique in that clicks are used in addition to the vowel/consanant sounds everyone else uses. Another language is Basque. (National Geographic has done quite a few articles on both groups)

Answer 5

latin is called a dead language, because its not used by everyday people (only really in churches).
In science, if you find a new plant,animal etc you have to describe it in Latin!!! You use it because there are no new words added or grammatical changes anymore.

As for the oldest language hmm Tamil, manderin?
I know Basque is the most unusal language, with no apparent origin.

Answer 6

Egyptian is the oldest language still spoken. There are still a few Coptic Christians who speak is as a first language.

Answer 7

I just came back from Malta and Maltese is said to be a mixture of old Phoenician, Arabic, Sicilian and French. Don't know but some of their ruins date back to 3000BC..so not sure if the language can compare to being that old

Answer 8

Chinese. It has changed very little for "thousands" of years. Latin (i.e., of classical literature) came into existance 1,000's of years AFTER Chinese. Modern Hebrew does not even closely resemble the ancient Semitic Language.

So, Chinese would be my guess...and I believe that it is an educated one at that.

There are older languages, but they are no longer in use.

Answer 9

HIndi or Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew.

I don't think there exists any "old" languages. It depends on how far back you want to go. Hebrew has been around for over 5 milleniums. So has Hindi.

Answer 10

ok not sure what its called galician i think - the language they speak in the basque country is older than latin suposedly how abt arabic? just a guess