What is the most ancient of languages?

Answer 1

The oldest languages found in written form are Sumerian and Ancient Egyptian, both of which are 5000-odd years old. Basque seems to have changed little since before the Indoeuropean languages began to be spoken in Europe and includes words such as "the stone that cuts" for "knife" and "top of the cave" for "ceiling", so that appears to date from the Stone Age. Older languages can be reconstructed from existing ancient languages: for instance, the ancestor of most European and South Asian languages, proto-Indoeuropean, which seems to have been spoken somewhere between 7000 and 3000 years ago according to most scholars. Older than this are the common ancestor of Arabic, Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian and Berber, which was spoken probably about 12000 years ago. There is more controversial theory which links many of the ancestral languages themselves together as descendents of a language which has been labelled Nostratic, which is supposed to have been spoken around 15000 years ago.

Members of Homo sapiens sapiens, our subspecies, always seem to have had the necessary throat and mouth structure to produce language, and although it is sometimes claimed that Neandertals lack this, modern humans with similar apparent impediments can still speak, and this does not rule out sign language in any case. This would extend the possibility of language back hundreds of millenia, but there's no way of knowing.

Answer 2

Body Language!!!

Answer 3

Chinese written language - the pictograms which form the essence of the Chinese language have been used since 14th-11th century B.C.E. The actual words used with thise pictograms have changed radically since then, and different dialect groups use words that are totally different, but the written language is understood by all to mean the same thing.

Answer 4

Sanskrit is the oldest language we have any written records of. That makes it the oldest language we know about. There were undoubtedly many more ancient languages, but they left no written records, or if they did, they didn't survive, so no one knows about them. Thus Sanskrit is credited with being the oldest language that we know of.

Answer 5

African languages - one in particular which has "click" consonants. I think it's spoken somewhere near the Sahara but not 100% on that (I saw this on TV - was definitely desert). Can't remember the name of the language or who speaks it off the top of my head; as I understand it some people believe it goes back to the languages spoken before homo sapiens left Africa.

Answer 6

Sanskrit. It is the mother of the indo-europena language. This is biased of course, there were many languages that were not written down, and probably just as ancient.

Answer 7

Considering all, that we know, about civilisations, per say, one would HAVE to consider, that the most ancient of LANGUAGES, belonged to the most ancient of PEOPLES, so, - taking THAT into account, - the native language of the Australian aboriginal peoples, would appear to be the "FAVOURITE", in THIS "RACE"!

Answer 8

Minoan, Vestinian, Skalvian, Punic, Mycenaean Greek, Mayan, Egyptian, those are all historic languages of historic civilization, all are extinct. I attempt to no longer supply you a language that have not been given through different answerers. have relaxing! ;)

Answer 9

Still being spoken today? Basque certainly the oldest european language, goes back further than sanskrit. it has been surrounded by french and spansh for all these times, but remains essentially almost a prehistoric language.

Answer 10

San and Hadzabe are reckoned to be at least 50,000 years old.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17723882.500-a-click-away-from-the-earliest-language.html

Written language is easier to date

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/334517.stm

btw there are many Australian Aboriginal languages (and Aborigine doesn't refer only to the Australian Aborigines but to the original inhabitants of any land)

http://www.dnathan.com/VL/austLang.htm