Of course, there are many different language varieties and dialects in China today, so Chinese is a fairly broad term here – but many of today’s most used varieties (including Mandarin and Cantonese) fall within the Sino-Tibetan language family and are descended from the Old Chinese we’re referencing here! The first attested Old Chinese goes back to a set of inscriptions on oracle bones dated to roughly 1250 BCE. 3300 years old)Īnother competitor for both oldest written language and oldest spoken language still in use today, Chinese is definitely both useful and backed by a long, rich history. And today, contemporary Greek has approximately 13.5 million native speakers. Mycenaean Greek, the first attested (meaning, essentially, confirmed by linguists) iteration of Greek first appeared in 1450 BCE, 700 or so years before The Odyssey hit the scene. The works of Homer are believed to have been composed between the seventh and eighth centuries BC. While Modern Greek has evolved significantly from the Greek spoken in ancient times, the language of Greece today is a definitive descendant of the language of Homer and those who came before him… way before him. Moving forward just a hair in time, Greek is probably the oldest language still spoken as a primary, day-to-day language.
Regardless of whether or not anyone’s actually speaking Sanskrit at home, there are certainly people who speak and read it as a second language in India and beyond, with entire universities dedicated to the study of Sanskrit.Īnd, as well as its use in prayer and meditation, it’s also in use in modern literature and music, and in conversation through loan words that have made their way into other languages around the world. Researchers think some individuals list it as a sort of aspirational mother tongue. Interestingly, several thousand people report Sanskrit as their first language on India’s census each time it’s performed, though it’s believed no one speaks it as their first language today. However, Sanskrit words and phrases are also frequently used by bureaucratic institutions – from missile names to school mottos – in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and other parts of South and Southeast Asia. Like Coptic, Sanskrit is largely used in religious texts and ceremonies that persist today, with a place in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. With its oldest texts dating back to around 1500 BCE, Sanskrit is probably the second oldest language in the world still being used today. The language descended from Ancient Egyptian that survives today is called Coptic, and it’s primarily used as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the Coptic Catholic Church.īut hey, that’s pretty remarkable, especially after over 4500 years! 2. While the Egyptian language by and large hasn’t been spoken by regular people since the nineteenth century (which is, sadly, why you don’t see a lot of hieroglyph keyboards for sale, as cool as that would be), it is technically still in use today. The first known complete sentence in Ancient Egyptian was recorded in roughly 2690 BCE, making it over 4700 years old. So, it is perhaps no surprise that the oldest language on this list is also from and used in Africa – Egyptian. The first known language ever was a proto-language on the African continent, and the first known proto-writing system was created in Nigeria. The world’s 10 oldest languages in the world 1. It’s true that you could make an argument for the inclusion of many other old and wonderful languages, but these are the ones we were able to find the most convincing evidence for as being both ancient and in use in some form or another today.Īnd so, with that, we give you 10 of the oldest languages in the world that are still spoken today. Of course, there’s a lot we don’t know when you go back thousands of years.
And today, you can learn them and still find companions to make conversation with. They’ve changed and adapted over the centuries and millennia. These elegant and ancient languages have long histories. 2100 years old)īonus: Arabic: roughly 100 CE – Present (circa.
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