What is the most ancient language in the world?

Answer 1

It all depends on what you mean by "most ancient language" (see SUMMARY at end!)

1) Do you mean one that is still an everyday, spoken 'living language?

Note that LIVING languages, such as those we use for day-to-day communication, are ALWAYS changing, but generally do so gradually, so that they maintain a connection with the past. Thus, for instance, we speak of "English" of the 8th century A.D. and of today, recognizing their organic connection. Yet in what sense are they "the same language"?

Looking at it this way, the question is almost impossible to answer, because we might take ANY language back generation by generation through the millennia.

And beware of being fooled by what we CALL the language! The fact that we still use the name "Tamil" for a language, does not mean the CURRENT version is any closer to what was used 2500 years ago than French and Italian are to Latin (for, in fact, these "Romance" languages are basically LIVING Latin, changed through the centuries).


2) Perhaps you are interested in the oldest language spoken in ANY form.. that is, language which is still used today in something close to ancient forms, but not necessarily in daily speech. As noted above, this really does not happen with daily living languages. But some are preserved (or revived) for SPECIAL use. Best example of this is liturgical and scholarly languages. By this measure, we would have to go with "Classical Sanskrit" of the first millennium B.C., which is still used for liturgical purposes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit

(Note that this is part of why a form of Latin --besides its 'daughter languages' -- persisted... for use in the church [liturgical] and as a common language among scholars of different nations.)


3) Now if you want to know about the most ancient WRITTEN language, that is, the language for which we have found the most ancient decipherable evidence, most would answer the Sumerian language of lower Mesopotamia, for which we have writings from perhaps 3400 or 3500 B.C. This culture is credited with first inventing a system of writing (at least the oldest one to survive).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer#Language_and_writing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script

But ancient Egyptian writings have also been recovered from the 4th millennium B.C., and some have argued that certain ones might predate the Sumerian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_language
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2002/04/16/MN229801.DTL

It's also probably in this category that we ought to consider ancient inscriptions with Chinese characters, though that's not quite the same as the "Chinese language"
http://www.chineseandchina.net/history-chinese-characters
http://www.chinapage.com/archeology/2000year.html

4) Finally, if you want the most ancient WRITTEN language that is spoken today in some form or another -- a combination of the categories above, with all the caveats-- you might choose something like Hebrew, since we have written forms of it from the 9th to 10th century BC, and a modern version of it has in the past century become an everyday spoken language. (In fact, given the unusual history of Modern Hebrew, this language may be much closer than many others to what is preserved of the ancient forms.)


SUMMARY -- for the oldest language that is. ..
1) "living" = impossible to answer (but see #4)
2) liturgical =Sanskrit
3) written forms found =Sumerian (Egyptian close behind) or some form of Chinese?
4) written in some form, with a modern-day version = Hebrew?

Answer 2

Sign Language

Answer 3

Sanskrit is the most ancient language in the world.

Answer 4

Ancient Languages...are Latin,ancient Greek and an Egyptian language(type B i think) Sry i couldn't help u more...

Answer 5

Actually the oldest and most universal language is math- thats right Math- Numbers, addition, subtraction ..... It is the only universal language.

Answer 6

Sumerian I believe Chinese is the longest surviving language

Answer 7

Sanskrit predates the standard hieroglyphs. It came from the area around Ur.

Answer 8

abarnacsqufa the language of the java cave men

Answer 9

body language

Answer 10

I believe it's Sanskrit... but don't quote me.