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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?

#31

Post by ffhhttt »

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…

> Swiss German

If we go a few hundred years or so it would’ve been considered a language as much as any other German “dialect”. But somebody decided to pick another dialect to be the “standard German” language.

Same applies to France and Italy. Especially when some northern Italian “dialect” are actually more closely related to “French” and some southern “French” ones to Catalan.

Just like for instance Dutch interestingly enough is closer to Franconian than to Frisian.

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

#32

Post by avhception »

zarzavat wrote: post #23
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…

This is why “oldest language” is silly. Is Old English the same language as Modern English? They are definitely not mutually intelligible. If we can accept them as being the “same” language then why not English and Proto-Indo-European? It’s not like people woke up one day and started speaking a different language. It’s a continuous evolution. The oldest languages that are still intelligible such that you could go bac…

It's interesting to think that the amount of written and spoken words that will be preserved for future generations is higher than ever. Will the future need to understand all these internet texts, podcasts and videos contribute to the ossification of languages?

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

#33

Post by ffhhttt »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #27
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…

> Isolate people, and they quickly develop their own dialect. Are you sure of that? I think the absence of external communication would make a language more conservative.

Yeah, it’s generally the inverse from what they are saying. Isolated groups retain the old form of the language for much longer.

e.g. Romansh or even Basque.

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

#34

Post by LordGronk »

zarzavat wrote: post #23
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…

This is why “oldest language” is silly. Is Old English the same language as Modern English? They are definitely not mutually intelligible. If we can accept them as being the “same” language then why not English and Proto-Indo-European? It’s not like people woke up one day and started speaking a different language. It’s a continuous evolution. The oldest languages that are still intelligible such that you could go bac…

I think a better and more interesting question would, perhaps, be “What is the most conservative language as supported by written and spoken evidence (the variations of ancient greek dialects tracking with orthographic differences shows that it can be done). And Anglo-saxon is not the same as modern English to any degree. 1066 and the great vowel shift saw to that. A great book on the history, and conservative nature of Egyptian is “The Ancient Egyptian Language: An Historical Study” by James Allen. If you really want to get into the weeds “Ancient Egyptian Phonology” by the same author. The latter in particular points out the extreme similarities to more rural Coptic dialects and Egyptian as found in the Heqanakht papyri.

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

#35

Post by ffhhttt »

LordGronk wrote: post #10
zirgs wrote: post #5

What makes them think that there was just one proto-language not several ones that appeared independently from each other?

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.

I don’t think that we can conclusively say (or even close to that) that other Hominids were incapable of complex (to an extent) language.

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

#36

Post by flir »

blueyes wrote: post #9

Very disappointing article, and a reminder to me that, when the headline is a question, the article rarely contains the answer. It's as though the author went down a rabbit hole of her own curiosity for a couple hours, came up with next to nothing, but had to justify the time spent.

> It's as though the author went down a rabbit hole of her own curiosity for a couple hours, came up with next to nothing, but had to justify the time spent.

Authors have daily standups too?

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

#37

Post by ochrist »

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…

There are those who believe that English should be considered North Germanic (Scandinavian) rather than West Germanic: https://brill.com/view/journals/ldc/6/1/article-p1_1.xml?lan...

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

#38

Post by countWSS »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Sanskrit Sanskrit is the only one with significant use due ancient religious texts. Sumerian/Egyptian/Akkadian are basically academic reconstructions and modern languages deviate significantly from their ancestors(e.g. proto-Armenian vs modern Armenian).

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

#39

Post by ffhhttt »

causi wrote: post #3

But it’s impossible to prove the existence of a proto-human language—the hypothetical direct ancestor of every language in the world. Maybe not in the bulletproof sense, but it seems pretty obvious that since human beings raised without language cannot learn it as adults or even as teenagers, the facility for learning language at a particular age is an evolved trait. That and the fact there's strong evidence neandert…

I guess it depends on how we define a language. It’s not inconceivable that different languages might have developed from multiple different proto-languages.

Or that languages were lost and developed again from some semi-verbal communication systems independently.

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

#40

Post by NoraCodes »

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?

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