The communication in all the cultures has not always been through languages from the earliest times. Before any of the languages came into existence, the communication used to happen through gestures and sounds.
It was very late that languages emerged with the culture of spoken words and oral traditions. Linguistics, however, while calculating the age of a language, take into account the time when people started using it in the written form.
Also, it is said that the evolution of languages is like biological evolution. Many dialects are born from one parent language, and that parent language dies leaving behind the dialects to be circulated in the form of vulgar language and literature.
Due to all these reasons, one just can’t tell exactly how old a language is, or what its date of origin is. Linguists take into account the following languages when we talk about the oldest languages that are still in use.
1. Latin
(Courtesy: writeopinions.com)The language dates back to 75 BC, and it was preceded by the Old Latin. The Roman Empire made Latin its official language and later it became the origin point of the Romance Languages –Italian, French, Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese. It is the official language of the Vatican and Poland today.
2. Hebrew
(Courtesy: Wikipedia)This is better known as the language of Jews and dates back to 1000 BC. Israel’s official language, Hebrew has the status of sacred language as it was primarily used for religious texts. Jews all around the world still speak and write this language.
3. Persian
(Courtesy: Fluent in 3 months)It is spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. The modern Persian dates back to 800 CE, which was preceded by the Old Persian language, the official language of the Persian Empire. A great corpus of literature exists in this language which is widely read and translated.
4. Greek
(Courtesy: Schmidhauserus)Earlier, it was spoken in Greece and Asia Minor (now Turkey). Today, Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus. It was used as a written language for over 3000 years uninterruptedly, which is the longest time for any language to maintain its status.
All the western literature takes its inspiration from the Greek language and literature. The current population speaking the language today constitutes a vast number of 15 million.
5. Sanskrit
(Courtesy: India Today)This classical language is no more in common use now but is still a liturgical language. This is indubitably one of the oldest known languages of the world. It dates back to the 2nd millennium BC and the first written document in Sanskrit is Rigveda.