What is the oldest language in the world?
The oldest written languages are Sumerian and Egyptian, both recorded about 5,000 years ago. Among languages still spoken today, Tamil, Chinese, Greek and Hebrew have some of the longest written histories.
Writing began around 3200 BC in Mesopotamia, where the Sumerians developed cuneiform, and in Egypt, where hieroglyphs appeared at about the same time. Sumerian eventually died out as a spoken language, though it was used in writing for centuries. Egyptian evolved into Coptic, which is still used in church services.
Some living languages have written records going back thousands of years. Chinese inscriptions on oracle bones date to about 1250 BC. Greek has written records from about 1450 BC. Tamil, spoken in southern India and Sri Lanka, has literature more than 2,000 years old. Hebrew was revived as an everyday spoken language in the 1800s and 1900s.
Spoken language is older
People spoke long before writing existed, possibly for tens of thousands of years or more, but spoken languages leave no direct traces. Linguists can reconstruct some ancient languages, like Proto-Indo-European, by comparing their descendants.
Did You Know?
Basque, spoken in Spain and France, is a language isolate with no known relatives and may descend from languages spoken in Europe before Indo-European languages arrived.