Mount Elbrus, Europe’s highest mountain in the Caucasus region between Europe and Asia. A region known for its linguistic diversity / Wikipedia
10 Oldest Languages in Use Today
It is almost impossible to judge how old one language is from another. The evolution of language is virtually similar to biological evolution; like evolution, changes to a language happen minutely over the course of generations. However there is no clearly discernible difference between one language and the next language, from which it derived. Despite this, each of the ten languages listed are considerably ancient yet still spoken today. Each of these languages has an intriguing history that differentiates it from the multitude of others.
Hebrew is an interesting case on this list: it fell out of common usage circa 400 CE. Yet it remain preserved as a liturgical language for Jews around the world. The rise of Zionism in the 19th and 20th centuries revived the language; it became the official language of Israel. Hebrew speakers can fully understand the Old Testament.
Spoken by c.78 million people, Tamil is officially recognized as a language of India, Sri Lanka and Singapore.This classical language has survived the ages. Dating back to the third century BCE, it has been in continuous use ever since.LithuanianLithuanian, like most European languages, is Indo-European in origin. This group divided up c.3500 BCE. The most fascinating feature of Lithuanian is that it retained the sounds and grammar of its Proto-Indo-European ancestor, unlike that of its cousins.
Mainly spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, Farsi is actually Persian — a direct descendant of Old Persian. Modern Persian appeared circa 800 CE. Farsi speakers could quite easily read ancient texts in Persian with relative ease — more fluently than English speakers can read Shakespeare!
Icelandic is an Indo-European language from the North Germanic branch. This ancient language of the Norse peoples has developed quite conservatively over the centuries. Amazingly, Icelanders can read their ancient sagas as though they were written yesterday.
This Slavic language belongs to the same family as Russian, Polish, Czech and Croatian. The Slavic language family is relatively young as far as languages are concerned and only split from Proto-Slavic pre-ninth century CE.
The Basque language is a linguistic mystery. It is spoken in regions that stretch across both France and Spain. It’s also unrelated to the Romance language family. The only explanation to explain it thus far, is that it existed long before the Romans arrived with the Latin they spoken that subsequently developed into French and Spanish.
Finnish is a member of the Finno-Ugric family which includes Estonian, Hungarian and several languages in minority groups across Siberia. Finnish was only written down in the 16th century, but its history is long. Interestingly, Finnish has many loanwords still in usage from Old Germanic and Gothic (those two languages do not exist today.)
Originating from the Caucasus region, the frontier between Europe and Asia, Georgian is spoken in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. It’s part of the Kartvelian language family. This family of languages is unlike any other in the world; its alphabet is thought to be adapted from Aramaic.
A minority of people in Ireland speak Irish (Gaeilge) today, but its history is long and artistic. A member of the Celtic branch of Indo-European languages, it existed long before the Germanic influences of Norse, Anglo-Saxon and Frisian landed on the British Isles. Scottish Gaelic and Manx are derived from Irish Gaelic through migration. It has the oldest vernacular of any language in Western Europe. The ancient Irish chose to write their manuscripts in Gaelic rather than the common Latin, at that time. Source: The Culture Trip The STAR Team
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