Which is the oldest ancient language still used ?

What is the oldest ancient language still in existance ?

But that link you provided gives no definitive answers, just a bunch of nationalist claims. Besides, all languages evolve over time, to the point where 1-2 thousand years later, a language is almost incomprehensible to a normal speaker.

Originally posted by Romanus Maximus I am not sure if Greek and Persian qualify as I am not sure how close the modern versions relate to the ancient versions ? This is a question that has always perplexed me. Can someone finally solve this and also state roughly how old each language is ?

The Persian has a continuity I think. Not sure. When It comes to Greek you have the classical attic greek as a basis and the next level is an evolution. However, you can coun't the non demotic dialects as surviving ancient languages. I'm preparing a list of those who survive or survived until the 20th century.

My first contribution was about the Spartan Language: http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=18631

It is not demotic and it does not derive from the Classical Greek. It is a Dorian idioma.

Well here is another one from Answers .I am not  sure if this answers your question .It may, however, add a dimention to the discussion . This also touches upon the point you made regarding evolution of a language over a long period.Please take a look.

 There's a bit of a problem with the question itself -- 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, even though, placed side by side, they are DIFFERENT languages, for their speakers would not be able to understand each other. So, are they "the same language" or not?!

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

Because of this, French, Spanish and Italian are all "Vulgar Latin", that is, they have as much to be being a continuation of the "living" language of Latin (naturally modified through the centuries) as MODERN Mandarin Chinese does to be a continuation of the Chinese language spoken two millenia or more ago. The fact that the NAME of these later versions of the language changed in one case but not in another does not change the organic connnetion, but is an historical accident.

There is one other way to approach this question -- by looking for a language which is still used today in essentially the SAME form as long ago. 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 languages. In this case, the oldest is probably "Classical Sanskrit" of the first millenium B.C., which is still used for liturgical purposes. But again, this would NOT really qualify as a "living language", since it is not used in daily life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sanskrit...

You have written about some of the oldest language for which we have written records . It is likely Mandarin, Sumerian or Egyptian may also come close to the ones you have mentioned.One cannot be sure.  Only continued archaeological work and investigation may help   finding some pointers. But it appears NONE of these ancient languages as also Mayan is spoken today.

Edited by sreenivasarao s - 13-Apr-2007 at 14:40

The question itself has very little meaning.  In order to prove the antiquity (even including its evolution) of a language, we would have to have written materials.  Just because we can chart the progress of a language for several millennia still does prove that it is the "oldest".  Non-literary languages may have an even older existence, but because of a lack of literary evidence, there is simply no way to prove that.  Some try to use genetic evidence to find the answer, but this itself does not prove anything since the language of a people can change due to either conquest or economic advantage or even through evolution.  The language of France more than two millennia ago was a dialect of Celtic but it is now a language derived mainly from Latin, hence the language of a non-literary people may have changed many times during the life of the group.  20,000 years is a long time even in linguistic terms.  Indo-European languages cannot be seen beyond 6500 years, although the earliest written evidence of it only dates from about 3600 years ago.

All four languages you mentioned are used today.But they differ from the Ancient ones,although i do not know to what degree.I suppose that Middle Eastern languages ,such as Hebrew, are quite Ancient,but on the other hand,we have ,in Hellas for example, the languages used by Myceneans and Minoans ,which were older than Attic Hellenic ,but they are greatly related to them.It's very complicated.

"What is the oldest ancient language still in existance?"


How about Sign Language or Body Language...

Euskera, or the Basque language is pre Indo European and may date as far back as 40,000 years.  Only 4 languages survived the IE incursion, Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian and Euskera.  The first three are related, however there is no connection to any other language on earth with Euskera.

Isn't magyar a later arrival into europe?

Mr.Lawrence Lo , a Software Engineer from CA in USA has developed a remarkably good website about ancient writing systems (scripts).One of the pages in the site maps the time -line of ancient scripts.Even though the Time- line is NOT about languages per se, it still is  very interesting . Visit the link :
http://www.ancientscripts.com/ws_timeline.html



Edited by sreenivasarao s - 18-Apr-2007 at 23:25