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What’s the world’s oldest language?

scientificamerican.com

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Re: What’s the world’s oldest language?

#41

Post by DonaldFisk »

This question keeps cropping up, and whenever it does, people claim it was their language. The question needs to be precisely framed.

Oldest spoken language in the world? All equally old.

Oldest still spoken language in a particular area? It's easier to answer this for islands or archipelagos, e.g. Great Britain: Welsh. New Zealand: Maori. Japan: Ainu (but maybe not for much longer).

Oldest written language? Sumerian (extinct) or Egyptian (not extinct, despite what the article states).

Oldest written language still in use? Coptic, a direct descendant of Egyptian used as a liturgical language in the Coptic Church, but not spoken as a vernacular for centuries.

Oldest written language still spoken? Hebrew (originally Canaanite), in continuous use but not as a vernacular for about 2000 years.

Oldest written language continuously spoken: Greek, but it wasn't continuously written. (There was a gap between Linear B and alphabetic script.)

Oldest continuously spoken and written language: Chinese.

Re: What’s the world’s oldest language?

#42

Post by becquerel »

NoraCodes wrote: post #40
LordGronk wrote: post #8

Historians and linguists generally agree that Sumerian, Akkadian and Egyptian are the oldest languages with a clear written record. All three are extinct Umm, what? Coptic is a (barely) living Egyptian. It is close enough for us to have deciphered hieroglyphs, hieratic, and demotic, at the old, middle, and late stages. Yes the Greek on the Rosetta stone helped but Coptic sealed the deal, particularly with translitera…

> I expect better from a publication as “woke” as Scientific American. This strikes me as a prime example of "woke" having lost all meaning. What would it mean here? Having an orientation towards truth? Giving a shit about minorities?

Saying racism is without scientific merit, that trans people shouldn't kill themselves, and/or not being overtly fascist.

Re: What’s the world’s oldest language?

#43

Post by LordGronk »

retrac wrote: post #29
LordGronk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it has a steady liturgical use and children are raised to understand it in church, along with small spoken revival groups here in the states so, while not exactly living, I would say it’s in a far better state in its community than Latin post vatican 2. But note, I never said it was alive. Just that it’s not as dead as, say, Sumerian (in fact it’s about as alive amongst the coptic community I know as Sumerian was at…

That is why I compared it to Latin. It sees steady liturgical use, and in some pockets, children are still raised to understand it in Church, along with spoken revival groups. That is to say, Latin is dead.

I would say Coptic and Latin are not exactly a 1 to 1 comparison, primarily because today coptic is attached to a specific ethnic identity and the attempts at community revival that come with that. Of course one might argue that there are Latin revival groups too but equating organised families and expat communities that function like the Copts (or similar groups like the Mandaeans) with, say, internet organised neo-pagans that have little continuity or an organisation like the Catholic Church that solely uses Latin for official documents and discourages its use is, at best, a comparison that lacks any sort of diachronic subtlety.

Re: What’s the world’s oldest language?

#44

Post by ZeroGravitas »

linguistics__ wrote: post #16
bradley13 wrote: post #7

There are so many fascinating things about languages. Here are a couple: - Toss people together who don't really have a common language, and they quickly evolve a pidgin, which is a very simplified kind of language that lets them communicate. Over a couple of generations, the pidgin evolves into a full language. This has happened repeatedly over history, often through things like conquering or enslaving other groups…

Just as a little correction: Dutch is not an "evolved German dialect". German and Dutch are both West Germanic languages, but so is Scots, Frisian and English. So it would be like saying that German is an evolved English dialect then (though to be fair, Dutch and German are grouped closer to each-other in that family tree usually and have provided a lot of substrate for each-other due to close contact). Swiss German…

I saw a a neat video recently that mapped the spread of language through Germany as a gradient, with each successive wave being understood by their neighbours but people at opposite ends of the spectrum having difficulty. Then national boundaries cut right through that.

https://youtu.be/ilWSllUAM7U?si=t7IFX2QxdIq_jL5d

Re: What’s the world’s oldest language?

#45

Post by celeritascelery »

DonaldFisk wrote: post #41

This question keeps cropping up, and whenever it does, people claim it was their language. The question needs to be precisely framed. Oldest spoken language in the world? All equally old. Oldest still spoken language in a particular area? It's easier to answer this for islands or archipelagos, e.g. Great Britain: Welsh. New Zealand: Maori. Japan: Ainu (but maybe not for much longer). Oldest written language? Sumerian…

> Oldest spoken language in the world? All equally old.

That doesn’t seem possible. Surely some spoken languages are older then others.

Re: What’s the world’s oldest language?

#46

Post by [deleted] »

NoraCodes wrote: post #40
LordGronk wrote: post #8

Historians and linguists generally agree that Sumerian, Akkadian and Egyptian are the oldest languages with a clear written record. All three are extinct Umm, what? Coptic is a (barely) living Egyptian. It is close enough for us to have deciphered hieroglyphs, hieratic, and demotic, at the old, middle, and late stages. Yes the Greek on the Rosetta stone helped but Coptic sealed the deal, particularly with translitera…

> I expect better from a publication as “woke” as Scientific American. This strikes me as a prime example of "woke" having lost all meaning. What would it mean here? Having an orientation towards truth? Giving a shit about minorities?

[deleted]

Re: What’s the world’s oldest language?

#47

Post by DonaldFisk »

celeritascelery wrote: post #45
DonaldFisk wrote: post #41

This question keeps cropping up, and whenever it does, people claim it was their language. The question needs to be precisely framed. Oldest spoken language in the world? All equally old. Oldest still spoken language in a particular area? It's easier to answer this for islands or archipelagos, e.g. Great Britain: Welsh. New Zealand: Maori. Japan: Ainu (but maybe not for much longer). Oldest written language? Sumerian…

> Oldest spoken language in the world? All equally old. That doesn’t seem possible. Surely some spoken languages are older then others.

OK, excluding constructed languages such as Esperanto.

Re: What’s the world’s oldest language?

#48

Post by LordGronk »

ycombinete wrote: post #18
LordGronk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no evidence that Homo Sapiens, aside from some interbreeding with other hominids interacted with other hominids who were capable of complex language for that to be possible. And a multiple origin scenario for behaviourally modern humans flies in the face of modern science, archaeology, and palaeontology to such a degree that it would basically require magic.

That doesn’t seem to make sense. Surely interbreeding with other hominids requires interaction with other hominids?

History shows that many humans of the same species can “interact” without friendly communication, or, for that matter, preserving fully functional languages (Just look at the Minoans, Etruscans, Harappans, Rhetics, and the numerous other peoples who spoke something that we can’t read, or can understand but only with great effort)

Re: What’s the world’s oldest language?

#49

Post by BurningFrog »

bradley13 wrote: post #7

There are so many fascinating things about languages. Here are a couple: - Toss people together who don't really have a common language, and they quickly evolve a pidgin, which is a very simplified kind of language that lets them communicate. Over a couple of generations, the pidgin evolves into a full language. This has happened repeatedly over history, often through things like conquering or enslaving other groups…

> Over a couple of generations, the pidgin evolves into a full language

What I read is that children born into a pidgin speaking society will turn it into a full (creole) language, because that's how people work.

Re: What’s the world’s oldest language?

#50

Post by civilitty »

celeritascelery wrote: post #45
DonaldFisk wrote: post #41

This question keeps cropping up, and whenever it does, people claim it was their language. The question needs to be precisely framed. Oldest spoken language in the world? All equally old. Oldest still spoken language in a particular area? It's easier to answer this for islands or archipelagos, e.g. Great Britain: Welsh. New Zealand: Maori. Japan: Ainu (but maybe not for much longer). Oldest written language? Sumerian…

> Oldest spoken language in the world? All equally old. That doesn’t seem possible. Surely some spoken languages are older then others.

Without written language, no record can exist of the spoken language. Since spoken language significantly predates written language, we’ll never know when the former originated.

It’s just practical to say they’re all equally old to avoid any cultural egotism that inevitably creeps in.

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