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Ask-A-Linguist FAQ
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Oldest Language
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Questions:
What's the "oldest language"?
How old is language?
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Answer provided by
Elizabeth Pyatt,
Pennsylvania State University
What's the "oldest language"?
In my opinion, we don't know the answer to this question, although
some people will give one anyway. Here are some criteria people use,
and reasons why linguists don't think they really work.
Oldest Written Form
Some people base their answer on which language got written down first.
If you're counting absolute oldest, probably Sumerian or Egyptian wins
because they developed a writing system first (both start appearing in
about 3200 BC). If you're counting surviving languages, Chinese is
often cited (first written in 1500 BC), but Greek is a possible tie because
it was written in Linear B beginning ca. 1500 BC.*
*Data from "Ancient Scripts of the World"
(http://www.ancientscripts.com)
But all of this is irrelevant, because writing is not equal to speaking.
In 3200 BC, there were many, many languages spoken besides Sumerian and
Egyptian, but they weren't fortunate enough to have a writing system.
These languages are just as old. To take one interesting case, the
Albanian language (spoken north of Greece) was not written down until
about the 15th century AD, yet Ptolemy mentions the people in the
first century BC.* The linguistic and archaeological evidence
suggests that Albanians were a distinct people for even longer than
that. So Albanian has probably existed for several millennia, but has
only been written down for 500 years. With a twist of fate, Albanian
might be considered very "old" and Greek pretty "new".
*See An Introduction to the Indo-European Languages by Philip Baldi.
Longest in the Region
Another criteria people use is how long a language has been spoken in a
particular region. For instance, Basque is considered very old because
the evidence is that there have been Basque speakers in Spain and France
since at least the 2nd century BC and probably longer than that. Similary,
Welsh is considered the "oldest language in Britain" because its
speakers were there first.
But population movements cannot determine a language's age.
English speakers have moved all over the world, but even if
English only arrived on a continent in the 19th century, it does not
negate the fact that some form of English was spoken in the 6th
century AD in England. Even Welsh has moved a bit, establishing foot
holds in Patagonia (Argentina) and Canada - however, this language
still originated in Britain.
Age of Sister Languages
Many linguists do date languages to when they split from their parent
tongue. For instance, French and Spanish are both descended from
Latin, so their age is determined by when they evolved into separate
languages (between 400-700 AD). Some languages like Greek and Basque
are considered older because they never "split" into daughter
languages (although both have dialects), and so maintain their status
as a "language." In that criteria, there may be a language with the
world record of being spoken the longest without having spawned
daughter languages - but no one could tell you which one it is.
Even with this criteria, the situation is still murky. It's true that
there was a spoken form of Greek in 1500 BC during the Bronze Age,
but if a Bronze Age Greek was transported to Modern Athens, he or she
would probably not be able to understand Modern Greek. Even speakers
of Classical Greek (500 BC) are lost in Athens unless they have also
learned Modern Greek. Speakers of Modern English have trouble with
Shakespeare from just 500 years ago.
Languages are continuously evolving over time, and probably most languages,
even conservative ones, require special training in order for modern
speakers to fully understand older texts. In the final analysis, most
modern languages are equally young.
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How old is language?
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Although this question is still being debated, most linguists assume
that the full language capacity had evolved by 100,000 BC. This is
when modern humans (homo sapiens sapiens) evolved in Africa with a
modern skull shape (indicating modern brain function) and a modern
vocal tract which would allow these people to articulate all the
sounds found in modern languages. Some anthropologists speculate that
language or parts of the language ability may have developed earlier,
but there is no firm consensus yet.
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