This is a list of languages by first written accounts which consists of the approximate dates for the first written accounts

Writing

Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.Writing most likely...

that are known for various languages.

Because of the way languages change gradually, it is usually impossible to pinpoint when a given language began to be spoken. In many cases, some form of the language had already been spoken (and even written) considerably earlier than the dates of the earliest extant samples provided here.

There are also various claims regarding still-undeciphered scripts without wide acceptance, which, if substantiated, would push backward the first attestation of certain languages.

A written record may encode a stage of a language corresponding to an earlier time — either as a result of oral tradition

Oral tradition

Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...

, or because the earliest source is a copy of an older manuscript that was lost. Oral tradition of epic poetry

Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

 may typically bridge a few centuries, and in rare cases, over a millennium. An extreme case is the Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit is an old Indo-Aryan language. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to Avestan, the oldest preserved Iranian language...

 of the Rigveda

Rigveda

The Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns...

: the earliest parts of this text are dated to ca. 1500 BC, while the oldest known manuscript dates to the 11th century AD, corresponding to a gap of approximately 2,500 years.

For languages that have developed out of a known predecessor, dates provided here are subject to conventional terminology. For example, Old French

Old French

Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...

 developed gradually out of Vulgar Latin

Vulgar Latin

Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...

, and the Oaths of Strasbourg

Oaths of Strasbourg

The Oaths of Strasbourg were several historical documents which included mutual pledges of allegiance between Louis the German , ruler of East Francia, and his brother Charles the Bald , ruler of West Francia...

 (842) listed are the earliest text that is classified as "Old French". Similarly, Danish

Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

 and Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

 separated from common Old East Norse in the 12th century, while Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

 separated from Old West Norse  around 1300.

Before 1000 BC

A very limited number of languages are attested from before the Bronze Age collapse

Bronze Age collapse

The Bronze Age collapse is a transition in southwestern Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age that some historians believe was violent, sudden and culturally disruptive...

 and the rise of alphabetic writing: The Sumerian

Sumerian language

Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...

, Hurrian

Hurrian language

Hurrian is a conventional name for the language of the Hurrians , a people who entered northern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC and had mostly vanished by 1000 BC. Hurrian was the language of the Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia, and was likely spoken at least initially in Hurrian settlements in...

, Hattic

Hattic language

Hattic was a language spoken by the Hattians in Asia Minor between the 3rd and the 2nd millennia BC. Scholars call this language 'Hattic' to distinguish it from the Hittite language--the Indo-European language of the Hittite Empire....

 and Elamite language

Elamite language

Elamite is an extinct language spoken by the ancient Elamites. Elamite was the primary language in present day Iran from 2800–550 BCE. The last written records in Elamite appear about the time of the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great....

 isolates, Afro-Asiatic  in the form of the Egyptian and a number of ancient Semitic languages

Semitic languages

The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...

, Indo-European

Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

 (Anatolian languages

Anatolian languages

The Anatolian languages comprise a group of extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language.-Origins:...

, Mycenaean Greek and traces of Indo-Aryan

Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni

Some theonyms, proper names and other terminology of the Mitanni exhibit an Indo-Aryan superstrate, suggesting that an Indo-Aryan elite imposed itself over the Hurrian population in the course of the Indo-Aryan expansion....

), and Sino-Tibetan (Old Chinese

Old Chinese

The earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at a site near modern Anyang identified as Yin, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1200 BC....

). There are a number of undeciphered

Undeciphered writing systems

Many undeciphered writing systems date from several thousand years BC, though some more modern examples do exist.The term "writing systems" is used here loosely to refer to groups of glyphs which appear to have representational symbolic meaning, but which may include "systems" that are largely...

 Bronze Age records, like the Linear A

Linear A

Linear A is one of two scripts used in ancient Crete before Mycenaean Greek Linear B; Cretan hieroglyphs is the second script. In Minoan times, before the Mycenaean Greek dominion, Linear A was the official script for the palaces and religious activities, and hieroglyphs were mainly used on seals....

 (encoding a possible "Minoan language", Proto-Elamite

Proto-Elamite

The Proto-Elamite period is the time of ca. 3200 BC to 2700 BC when Susa, the later capital of the Elamites, began to receive influence from the cultures of the Iranian plateau. In archaeological terms this corresponds to the late Banesh period...

 and a "Harappan language

Harappan language

The Harappan language is the unknown language or languages of the Bronze Age Harappan civilization ....

" (Indus script

Indus script

The term Indus script refers to short strings of symbols associated with the Indus Valley Civilization, in use during the Early Harappan and Mature Harappan period, between the 35th and 20th centuries BC. In spite of many attempts at decipherments and claims, it is as yet undeciphered...

).

Date	Language	Attestation	Notes
c. 2900 BC	Sumerian Sumerian language Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...	Jemdet Nasr period Jemdet Nasr period The Jemdet Nasr period is an archaeological culture in southern Mesopotamia that is generally dated to 3100–2900 BCE. It is named after the type-site Jemdet Nasr, where the assemblage typical for this period was first recognized. Its geographical distribution is limited to south–central Iraq...	see Sumerian cuneiform Cuneiform Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot*Cuneiform Records, a music record label... ; "proto-literate" period from about 3500 BC (see Kish tablet Kish tablet The Kish tablet is a limestone tablet found at Tell al-Uhaymir, Babil Governorate, Iraq - the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Kish. It is dated to ca. 3500 BC... )
c. 2700 BC	Egyptian Egyptian language Egyptian is the oldest known indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BC, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century AD in the...	tomb of Seth-Peribsen Seth-Peribsen Peribsen is the serekh name of an early Egyptian king who ruled during the 2nd dynasty. Unlike many other pharaohs of this dynasty, Peribsen is well-attested in the archaeological records...  (2nd Dynasty Second dynasty of Egypt The second dynasty of ancient Egypt is often combined with Dynasty I under the group title Early Dynastic Period. It dates approximately from 2890 to 2686 BC. The capital at that time was Thinis.-Rulers:... , Umm el-Qa'ab Umm el-Qa'ab Umm el-Qa`āb is the necropolis of the Early Dynastic kings at Abydos, in Egypt. Its modern name means Mother of Pots, as the whole area is littered with the broken pot shards of offerings made in earlier times...	see Egyptian hieroglyphs Egyptian hieroglyphs Egyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood... ; "proto-hieroglyphic" inscriptions from about 3300 BC (Naqada III Naqada III Naqada III is the last phase of the Naqada culture of ancient Egyptian prehistory, dating approximately from 3200 to 3000 BC. It is the period during which the process of state formation, which had begun to take place in Naqada II, became highly visible, with named kings heading powerful... ; see Abydos, Egypt Abydos, Egypt Abydos is one of the most ancient cities of Upper Egypt, and also of the eight Upper Nome, of which it was the capital city. It is located about 11 kilometres west of the Nile at latitude 26° 10' N, near the modern Egyptian towns of el-'Araba el Madfuna and al-Balyana... , Narmer Palette Narmer Palette The Narmer Palette, also known as the Great ierakonpolis Palette or the Palette of Narmer, is a significant Egyptian archeological find, dating from about the 31st century BC, containing some of the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions ever found. It is thought by some to depict the unification of... )
c. 2400 BC	|Akkadian Akkadian language Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...		Some proper names attested in Sumerian Sumerian language Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...  texts at Tell Harmal Shaduppum Shaduppum , is an ancientSumerian city which now lies within the borders of present-day Baghdad.- History :...   from about 2800 BC. fragments of the Legend of Etana at Tell Harmal Shaduppum Shaduppum , is an ancientSumerian city which now lies within the borders of present-day Baghdad.- History :...  c. 2600 BC.
c. 2400 BC	Eblaite Eblaite language Eblaite is an extinct Semitic language, which was spoken in the 3rd millennium BC in the ancient city of Ebla, at Tell Mardikh , between Aleppo and Hama, in western modern Syria....
c. 2250 BC	Elamite Elamite language Elamite is an extinct language spoken by the ancient Elamites. Elamite was the primary language in present day Iran from 2800–550 BCE. The last written records in Elamite appear about the time of the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great....	Awan dynasty Awan dynasty The Awan Dynasty was the first dynasty of Elam of which anything is known today, appearing at the dawn of historical record. The Elamites were likely major rivals of neighboring Sumer from remotest antiquity; they were said to have been defeated by Enmebaragesi of Kish The Awan Dynasty was the...  peace treaty with Naram-Sin
c. 2000 BC	Hurrian Hurrian language Hurrian is a conventional name for the language of the Hurrians , a people who entered northern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC and had mostly vanished by 1000 BC. Hurrian was the language of the Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia, and was likely spoken at least initially in Hurrian settlements in...		fragmentary, known only from a few gloss Gloss A gloss is a brief notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the reader's language if that is different.... es in Hittite texts Hittite texts The corpus of texts written in the Hittite language is indexed by the Catalogue des Textes Hittites...
c. 1800 BC	Luwian Luwian language Luwian is an extinct language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. Luwian is closely related to Hittite, and was among the languages spoken during the second and first millennia BC by population groups in central and western Anatolia and northern Syria...		Luwian hieroglyphs
18th century BC	|Minoan Eteocretan language The Minoan language was spoken in ancient Crete before it was replaced with the language of the mainland; the relationship between Minoan and Greek is unknown. While attempts have been made to connect it to other languages, Minoan must be considered unclassified until a linguistic affiliation can...	Linear A Linear A Linear A is one of two scripts used in ancient Crete before Mycenaean Greek Linear B; Cretan hieroglyphs is the second script. In Minoan times, before the Mycenaean Greek dominion, Linear A was the official script for the palaces and religious activities, and hieroglyphs were mainly used on seals....  inscriptions	c. 1625 BC: Minoan archival documents written in Cretan hieroglyphs Cretan hieroglyphs Cretan hieroglyphs are hieroglyphs found on artifacts of Bronze Age Minoan Crete . Symbol inventories have been compiled by Evans , Meijer , Olivier/Godart...
c. 1650 BC	Hittite Hittite language Hittite is the extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who created an empire centred on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia...	Various cuneiform texts and Palace Chronicles written during the reign of Hattusili I Hattusili I Hattusili I was a king of the Hittite Old Kingdom. He reigned ca. 1586–1556 BC .He used the title of Labarna at the beginning of his reign... , from the archives at Hattusas	see Hittite cuneiform Hittite cuneiform Hittite cuneiform is the implementation of cuneiform script used in writing the Hittite language. The surviving corpus of Hittite texts is preserved in cuneiform on clay tablets dates to the 2nd millennium BC .... , Hittite texts Hittite texts The corpus of texts written in the Hittite language is indexed by the Catalogue des Textes Hittites...
c. 1500 BC	Canaanite Canaanite languages The Canaanite languages are a subfamily of the Semitic languages, which were spoken by the ancient peoples of the Canaan region, including Canaanites, Israelites and Phoenicians...	Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Proto-Sinaitic is a Middle Bronze Age script attested in a very small collection of inscriptions at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula. Due to the extreme scarcity of Proto-Sinaitic signs, very little is known with certainty about the nature of the script...
c. 1425 - 1375 BC	Greek	Linear B Linear B Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...  tablet archive from Bronze Age Knossos Knossos Knossos , also known as Labyrinth, or Knossos Palace, is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and probably the ceremonial and political centre of the Minoan civilization and culture. The palace appears as a maze of workrooms, living spaces, and store rooms close to a central square...
c. 1400 BC	Hattic Hattic language Hattic was a language spoken by the Hattians in Asia Minor between the 3rd and the 2nd millennia BC. Scholars call this language 'Hattic' to distinguish it from the Hittite language--the Indo-European language of the Hittite Empire....		known only from Hittite texts Hittite texts The corpus of texts written in the Hittite language is indexed by the Catalogue des Textes Hittites...
c. 1300 BC	Ugaritic Ugaritic language The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Ugaritic, Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew:-Grammar:Ugaritic is an inflected language, and as a Semitic language its grammatical features are highly similar to those found in Classical Arabic and Akkadian...		see Ugaritic alphabet Ugaritic alphabet The Ugaritic script is a cuneiform abjad used from around 1400 BCE for Ugaritic, an extinct Northwest Semitic language, and discovered in Ugarit , Syria, in 1928. It has 30 letters...
c. 1200 BC	Old Chinese Old Chinese The earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at a site near modern Anyang identified as Yin, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1200 BC....	Oracle bone script Oracle bone script Oracle bone script refers to incised ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in Bronze Age China...  and bronze inscriptions

First millennium BC

With the appearance of alphabetic writing in the Early Iron Age, the number of attested languages increases. With the emergence of the Brahmic family of scripts

Brahmic family of scripts

The Brahmic or Indic scripts are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia , Southeast Asia, and parts of Central and East Asia, and are descended from the Brāhmī script of the ancient Indian subcontinent...

, languages of India

Languages of India

The languages of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-European languages—Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian languages...

 are attested from after about 300 BC.

• Phoenician - about 1000 BC
• Aramaic
  Aramaic language
  Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...
  
   - c. 950 BC
  10th century BC
  The 10th century BC started the first day of 1000 BC and ended the last day of 901 BC.- Overview :This period followed the Bronze Age collapse in the Near East, and the century saw the Early Iron Age take hold there. The Greek Dark Ages which had come about in 1200 BC continued. The Neo-Assyrian...
  
  
• Hebrew
  Hebrew language
  Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
  
   - c. 950 BC
  10th century BC
  The 10th century BC started the first day of 1000 BC and ended the last day of 901 BC.- Overview :This period followed the Bronze Age collapse in the Near East, and the century saw the Early Iron Age take hold there. The Greek Dark Ages which had come about in 1200 BC continued. The Neo-Assyrian...
  
  : Gezer calendar
  Gezer calendar
  The Gezer calendar is a tablet of soft limestone inscription, dating to the 10th century BCE. Scholars are divided as to whether the script and language are Phoenician or paleo-Hebrew, which were linguistically very similar in this period....
  
  
• Phrygian
  Phrygian language
  The Phrygian language was the Indo-European language of the Phrygians, spoken in Asia Minor during Classical Antiquity .Phrygian is considered to have been closely related to Greek....
  
   - c. 800 BC
• Moabite
  Moabite language
  The Moabite language is an extinct Canaanite language, spoken in Moab in the early first millennium BC. Most of our knowledge about Moabite comes from the Mesha Stele, as well as the El-Kerak Stela. The main features distinguishing Moabite from fellow Canaanite languages such as Hebrew are: a...
  
   - c. 800 BC
• Ammonite
  Ammonite language
  The Ammonite language is the extinct Canaanite language of the Ammonite people mentioned in the Bible, who used to live in modern-day Jordan, and after whom its capital Amman is named. Only fragments of their language survive - chiefly the 9th century BC , the 7th-6th century BC Tell Siran bronze...
  
   - c. 800 BC
• Old North Arabian - c. 800 BC
• Old South Arabian
  Old South Arabian
  Old South Arabian is the term used to describe four extinct, closely related languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. There were a number of other Sayhadic languages , of which very little evidence survived, however...
  
   - c. 800 BC
• Etruscan
  Etruscan language
  The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna...
  
    - c. 700 BC
• Umbrian
  Umbrian language
  Umbrian is an extinct Italic language formerly spoken by the Umbri in the ancient Italian region of Umbria. Within the Italic languages it is closely related to the Oscan group and is therefore associated with it in the group of Osco-Umbrian languages...
  
   - c. 600 BC
• North Picene
  North Picene language
  The North Picene language is a hypothetical construct based on four inscriptions of the Italian Iron Age from the Pesaro region of northeast Italy. The total number of words is about 60...
  
   - c. 600 BC
• Lepontic
  Lepontic language
  Lepontic is an extinct Alpine language that was spoken in parts of Rhaetia and Cisalpine Gaul between 550 and 100 BC. It was a Celtic language, although its exact classification within Celtic has been the object of debate...
  
   - c. 600 BC
• Tartessian
  Tartessian language
  The Tartessian language is the extinct Paleohispanic language of inscriptions in the Southwestern script found in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula: mainly in the south of Portugal , but also in Spain . There are 95 of these inscriptions with the longest having 82 readable signs...
  
   - c. 600 BC
• Lydian
  Lydian language
  Lydian was an Indo-European language spoken in the region of Lydia in western Anatolia . It belongs to the Anatolian group of the Indo-European language family....
  
   - c. 600 BC
• Carian
  Carian language
  The Carian language is an extinct language of the Luwian subgroup of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. The Carian language was spoken in Caria, a region of western Anatolia between the ancient regions of Lycia and Lydia, by the Carians, a name possibly first mentioned in...
  
   - c. 600 BC
• Eteocypriot
  Eteocypriot
  Eteocypriot was a pre-Indo-European language spoken in Iron Age Cyprus. The name means "true" or "original Cyprian" parallel to Eteocretan, both of which names are used by modern scholarship to mean the pre-Greek languages of those places. Eteocypriot was written in the Cypriot syllabary, a...
  
   - c. 600 BC
• Thracian
  Thracian language
  The Thracian language was the Indo-European language spoken in ancient times in Southeastern Europe by the Thracians, the northern neighbors of the Ancient Greeks. The Thracian language exhibits satemization: it either belonged to the Satem group of Indo-European languages or it was strongly...
  
    c. 6th c.BC
  6th century BC
  The 6th century BC started the first day of 600 BC and ended the last day of 501 BC.Pāṇini, in India, composed a grammar for Sanskrit, in this century or slightly later...
  
  
• Venetic
  Venetic language
  Venetic is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken in ancient times in the North East of Italy and part of modern Slovenia, between the Po River delta and the southern fringe of the Alps....
  
    c. 6th c.BC
  6th century BC
  The 6th century BC started the first day of 600 BC and ended the last day of 501 BC.Pāṇini, in India, composed a grammar for Sanskrit, in this century or slightly later...
  
  
• Old Persian - 525 BC: Behistun inscription
  Behistun Inscription
  The Behistun Inscription The Behistun Inscription The Behistun Inscription (also Bistun or Bisutun, Modern Persian: بیستون The Behistun Inscription (also Bistun or Bisutun, Modern Persian: بیستون...
  
  
• Tamil
  Tamil language
  Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
  
    - 5th century BC.
• Latin
  Latin
  Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
  
   - c. 500 BC: Duenos Inscription
  Duenos Inscription
  The Duenos Inscription is one of the earliest known Old Latin texts, dating from the 7th century BC. It is inscribed on the sides of a kernos, in this case a trio of small globular vases adjoined by three clay struts. It was found by Heinrich Dressel in 1880 on the Quirinal Hill in Rome. The kernos...
  
  
• South Picene
  South Picene language
  South Picene is an extinct Italic language, belonging to the Sabellic subfamily. It is currently considered by SIL International to belong to the Umbrian Group although in the long history of its attempted classification it has been placed at a higher level, parallel to Oscan and Umbrian within...
  
   - c. 500 BC
• Messapian
  Messapian language
  Messapian is an extinct Indo-European language of South-eastern Italy, once spoken in the region of Apulia. It was spoken by the three Iapygian tribes of the region: the Messapians, the Dauni and the Peucetii....
  
   - c. 500 BC
• Gaulish
  Gaulish language
  The Gaulish language is an extinct Celtic language that was spoken by the Gauls, a people who inhabited the region known as Gaul from the Iron Age through the Roman period...
  
   - c. 500 BC
• Mixe–Zoque - c. 500 BC: Isthmian script
  Isthmian script
  The Isthmian script is a very early Mesoamerican writing system in use in the area of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from perhaps 500 BCE to 500 CE, although there is disagreement on these dates...
  
   (disputed)
• Oscan
  Oscan language
  Oscan is a term used to describe both an extinct language of southern Italy and the language group to which it belonged.The Oscan language was spoken by a number of tribes, including the Samnites, the Aurunci, the Sidicini, and the Ausones. The latter three tribes were often grouped under the name...
  
   - c. 400 BC
• Iberian
  Iberian language
  The Iberian language was the language of a people identified by Greek and Roman sources who lived in the eastern and southeastern regions of the Iberian peninsula. The ancient Iberians can be identified as a rather nebulous local culture between the 7th and 1st century BC...
  
   - c. 400 BC
• Meroitic
  Meroitic language
  The Meroitic language was spoken in Meroë and the Sudan during the Meroitic period and went extinct about 400 CE. It was written in two forms of the Meroitic alphabet: Meroitic Cursive, which was written with a stylus and was used for general record-keeping; and Meroitic Hieroglyphic, which was...
  
   - c. 300 BC
• Faliscan
  Faliscan language
  The Faliscan language, the extinct language of the ancient Falisci, forms, together with Latin, the group of Latino-Faliscan languages. It seems probable that the dialect lasted on, though being gradually permeated with Latin, until at least 150 BC.-Corpus:...
  
   - c. 300 BC
• Volscian
  Volscian language
  Volscian was a Sabellic Italic language, which was spoken by the Volsci and closely related to Oscan and Umbrian.It is attested in an inscription found in Velitrae , dating probably from early in the 3rd century BC; it is cut upon a small bronze plate , which must have once been fixed to some...
  
   - c. 275 BC
  275 BC
  Year 275 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Dentatus and Caudinus...
  
  
• Middle Indo-Aryan (Prakrit
  Prakrit
  Prakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the literary and religious...
  
  ) in Brahmi Script
  Brāhmī script
  Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...
  
   - c. 260 BC: Edicts of Ashoka
  Edicts of Ashoka
  The Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of 33 inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, made by the Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty during his reign from 269 BCE to 231 BCE. These inscriptions are dispersed throughout the areas of modern-day Bangladesh, India,...
  
  
• Mayan languages
  Maya script
  The Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs or Maya hieroglyphs, is the writing system of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica, presently the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered...
  
   - 3rd century BC
• Galatian
  Galatian language
  Galatian is an extinct Celtic language once spoken in Galatia in Asia Minor from the 3rd century BC up to at least the 4th century AD, although ancient sources suggest it was still spoken in the 6th century....
  
   - c. 200 BC
• Pahlavi - ca. 130-170 BC
• Celtiberian
  Celtiberian language
  Celtiberian is an extinct Indo-European language of the Celtic branch spoken by the Celtiberians in an area of the Iberian Peninsula lyingbetween the headwaters of the Duero, Tajo, Júcar and Turia rivers and the Ebro river...
  
   - c. 100 BC
• Korean
  Korean language
  Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
  
   - adoption of Hanja
  Hanja
  Hanja is the Korean name for the Chinese characters hanzi. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation...
  
   c. 100 BC, evidence of proto-Idu
  Idu
  Idu is an archaic writing system that represents the Korean language using hanja. The term "idu" is used in two senses. It may refer to various systems of representing Korean phonology through Chinese characters called hanja, which were used from the early Three Kingdoms to Joseon periods...
  
   c. 500 AD

First millennium AD

From Late Antiquity

Late Antiquity

Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...

, we have for the first time languages with earliest records in manuscript

Manuscript

A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

 tradition (as opposed to epigraphy

Epigraphy

Epigraphy Epigraphy Epigraphy (from the , literally "on-writing", is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be...

). Thus, Old Armenian is first attested in the Armenian Bible translation

Armenian Bible translation

The Armenian Bible is due to Saint Mesrob's early 5th century translation. The first monument of Armenian literature is the version of the Holy Scriptures. Isaac, says Moses of Chorene, made a translation of the Bible from the Syriac text about 411...

.

• Bactrian
  Bactrian language
  The Bactrian language is an extinct Eastern Iranian language which was spoken in the Central Asian region of Bactria. Linguistically, it is classified as belonging to the middle period of the East Iranian branch...
  
   - - c. 150: Rabatak inscription
  Rabatak inscription
  The Rabatak inscription is an inscription written on a rock in the Bactrian language and the Greek script, which was found in 1993 at the site of Rabatak, near Surkh Kotal in Afghanistan...
  
  
• Common Germanic/Proto-Norse - c. 160: Vimose inscriptions
  Vimose inscriptions
  Finds from Vimose, Funen, Denmark, include some of the very oldest datable Elder Futhark runic inscriptions in late Proto-Germanic or early Proto-Norse from the 2nd to 3rd centuries AD....
  
   (c. 100 BC if the Negau helmet
  Negau helmet
  Negau helmet refers to one of 26 bronze helmets dating to ca. 450 till 350 BC, found in 1811 in a cache in Ženjak, near Negau, Duchy of Styria . The helmets are of typical Etruscan 'vetulonic' shape, sometimes described as of the Negau type. They were buried in ca...
  
   inscription is accepted as Germanic)
• Cham
  Cham language
  Cham is the language of the Cham people of Southeast Asia, and formerly the language of the kingdom of Champa in central Vietnam. A member of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family, it is spoken by 100,000 people in Vietnam and up to 220,000 people in Cambodia . There are also...
  
   - c. 200
• Gothic
  Gothic language
  Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
  
   - c. 300: Gothic runic inscriptions
  Gothic runic inscriptions
  Very few Elder Futhark inscriptions in the Gothic language have been found in the territory historically settled by the Goths...
  
  
• Ge'ez
  Ge'ez language
  Ge'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the northern region of Ethiopia and southern Eritrea in the Horn of Africa...
  
   - c. 300 (pre)-Ezana inscriptions
• Armenian
  Armenian language
  The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
  
   - 395 - 405 Saint Mesrob Mashtots.
• Primitive Irish - c. 300-400: Ogham
  Ogham
  Ogham is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the Old Irish language, and occasionally the Brythonic language. Ogham is sometimes called the "Celtic Tree Alphabet", based on a High Medieval Bríatharogam tradition ascribing names of trees to the individual letters.There are roughly...
  
   inscriptions
• Ekoi
  Ekoid languages
  The Ekoid languages are a dialect cluster, such as Ekajuk and Ejagham , spoken principally in southeastern Nigeria and in adjacent regions of Cameroon. They have long been associated with the Bantu languages, without their status being precisely defined...
  
   - c. 400: Nsibidi
  Nsibidi
  Nsibidi is a system of symbols indigenous to what is now southeastern Nigeria that is apparently ideographic, though there have been suggestions that it includes logographic elements...
  
   pottery inscriptions in Calabar
  Calabar
  Calabar is a city in Cross River State, southeastern Nigeria. The original name for Calabar was Atakpa, from the Jukun language....
  
  
• Georgian
  Georgian language
  Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
  
   - c. 430: a Georgian church in Bethlehem
  Bethlehem
  Bethlehem is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank of the Jordan River, near Israel and approximately south of Jerusalem, with a population of about 30,000 people. It is the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate of the Palestinian National Authority and a hub of Palestinian culture and tourism...
  
  
• Kannada - c. 450: Halmidi inscription
  Halmidi inscription
  The Halmidi inscription is the oldest known Kannada language inscription in the Kannada script. Experts agree on the relative date , but differ on absolute date. Estimates vary by about 50 years either side of about 500 AD . The inscription was discovered in 1936 by Dr. M. H...
  
  
• West Germanic - 6th century:
  • Old Low Franconian - c. 510: Salic law
    Salic law
    Salic law was a body of traditional law codified for governing the Salian Franks in the early Middle Ages during the reign of King Clovis I in the 6th century...
    
    
  • Old High German
    Old High German
    The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
    
     - c. 550: Pforzen buckle
    Pforzen buckle
    The Pforzen buckle is a silver belt buckle found in Pforzen, Ostallgäu in 1992. The Alemannic grave in which it was found dates to the end of the 6th century and was presumably that of a warrior, as it also contained a lance, spatha, seax and shield...
    
    
  • Old English - Undley bracteate
    Undley bracteate
    The Undley bracteate is a 5th century bracteate found in Undley Common, near Lakenheath, Suffolk. It bears the earliest known inscription that can be argued to be in Anglo-Frisian Futhorc ....
    
    ; c. 650: Franks Casket
    Franks Casket
    The Franks Casket is a small Anglo-Saxon whalebone chest from the seventh century, now in the British Museum. The casket is densely decorated with knife-cut narrative scenes in flat two-dimensional low-relief and with inscriptions mostly in Anglo-Saxon runes...
    
    ; West Heslerton brooch
• Arabic
  Arabic language
  Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
  
   - 512: pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions
• Old Irish - c. 600
• Cambodian
  Khmer language
  Khmer , or Cambodian, is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. It is the second most widely spoken Austroasiatic language , with speakers in the tens of millions. Khmer has been considerably influenced by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious...
  
   - c. 600
• Tibetan
  Tibetan language
  The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...
  
   - c. 600
• Udi
  Udi language
  The Udi language, spoken by the Udi people, is a member of the Lezgic branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family. It is believed an earlier form of it was the main language of Caucasian Albania, which stretched from south Dagestan to current day Azerbaijan.The language is spoken by about...
  
   - c. 600: Mount Sinai palimpsest M13
• Telugu
  Telugu language
  Telugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...
  
   - 620
• Old Malay
  Old Malay
  The Old Malay language, also called Classical Malay, is the ancestor of the modern Malay language, including Indonesian and Malaysian. It developed in the now Melayu Kingdom of Sumatra. It was heavily influenced by Sanskrit and Kawi , and was grammatically quite similar to modern Malay.-Old...
  
   - c. 683: Kedukan Bukit Inscription
  Kedukan Bukit Inscription
  The Kedukan Bukit Inscription was discovered by the Dutchman M. Batenburg on 29 November 1920 at Kedukan Bukit, South Sumatra, on the banks of the River Tatang, a tributary of the River Musi. It is the oldest surviving specimen of the Malay language, in a form known as Old Malay. It is a small...
  
  
• Tocharian
  Tocharian languages
  Tocharian or Tokharian is an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family. The name is taken from the people known to the Greeks as the Tocharians . These are sometimes identified with the Yuezhi and the Kushans. The term Tokharistan usually refers to 1st millennium Bactria, which the...
  
   - c. 700
• Welsh
  Welsh language
  Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
  
   - c. 700: Tywyn
  Tywyn
  Tywyn is a town and seaside resort on the Cardigan Bay coast of southern Gwynedd , in north Wales. The name derives from the Welsh tywyn and the town is sometimes referred to as Tywyn Meirionnydd...
  
   inscriptions
• Japanese
  Japanese language
  is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
  
   - 711–2 Kojiki
  Kojiki
  is the oldest extant chronicle in Japan, dating from the early 8th century and composed by Ō no Yasumaro at the request of Empress Gemmei. The Kojiki is a collection of myths concerning the origin of the four home islands of Japan, and the Kami...
  
  
• Old Turkic - 732 Orkhon inscriptions
  Orkhon inscriptions
  "Orkhon inscription" may refer to:*two monuments in the Orkhon valley, see Khöshöö Tsaidam Monuments*inscriptions in the Old Turkic "Orkhon alphabet" in general, see Old Turkic epigraphy...
  
  
• Old Frisian
  Old Frisian
  Old Frisian is a West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries in the area between the Rhine and Weser on the European North Sea coast. The Frisian settlers on the coast of South Jutland also spoke Old Frisian but no medieval texts of this area are known...
  
   - c. 750
• Persian
  Persian language
  Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
  
   - ca. 750
• Angika-769:Dohakosh by Saraha
  Saraha
  Saraha , Sarahapa , or Sarahapāda , originally known as Rāhula or Rāhulbhadra, was the first sahajiya and one of the Mahasiddhas, and is considered to be one of the founders of Buddhist Vajrayana, and particularly of the Mahamudra tradition. His dohas are compiled in Dohakośa, the 'Treasury of...
  
   in Old Angika
• Old Hindi - 769: Dohakosh by Saraha
  Saraha
  Saraha , Sarahapa , or Sarahapāda , originally known as Rāhula or Rāhulbhadra, was the first sahajiya and one of the Mahasiddhas, and is considered to be one of the founders of Buddhist Vajrayana, and particularly of the Mahamudra tradition. His dohas are compiled in Dohakośa, the 'Treasury of...
  
  
• Malayalam
  Malayalam language
  Malayalam , is one of the four major Dravidian languages of southern India. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India with official language status in the state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry. It is spoken by 35.9 million people...
  
   - c. 800
• Mozarabic
  Mozarabic language
  Mozarabic was a continuum of closely related Romance dialects spoken in Muslim-dominated areas of the Iberian Peninsula during the early stages of the Romance languages' development in Iberia. Mozarabic descends from Late Latin and early Romance dialects spoken in the Iberian Peninsula from the 5th...
  
   - c. 800
• Old Norse
  Old Norse
  Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
  
   - c. 800 (runic)
• Javanese
  Javanese language
  Javanese language is the language of the Javanese people from the central and eastern parts of the island of Java, in Indonesia. In addition, there are also some pockets of Javanese speakers in the northern coast of western Java...
  
   - 804
• Old French
  Old French
  Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...
  
   - c. 842: Oaths of Strasbourg
  Oaths of Strasbourg
  The Oaths of Strasbourg were several historical documents which included mutual pledges of allegiance between Louis the German , ruler of East Francia, and his brother Charles the Bald , ruler of West Francia...
  
  
• Old Church Slavonic
  Old Church Slavonic
  Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...
  
   - c. 862
• Assamese language
  Assamese language
  Assamese is the easternmost Indo-Aryan language. It is used mainly in the state of Assam in North-East India. It is also the official language of Assam. It is also spoken in parts of Arunachal Pradesh and other northeast Indian states. Nagamese, an Assamese-based Creole language is widely used in...
  
   -c. 900 charyapada
  Charyapada
  The Charyapada is a collection of 8th-12th century Vajrayana Buddhist caryagiti, or mystical poems from the tantric tradition in eastern India. Being caryagiti , the Charyapada were intended to be sung. These songs of realization were spontaneously composed verses that expressed a practitioner's...
  
  
• Bengali Language
  Bengali language
  Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
  
   -c. 900 charyapada
  Charyapada
  The Charyapada is a collection of 8th-12th century Vajrayana Buddhist caryagiti, or mystical poems from the tantric tradition in eastern India. Being caryagiti , the Charyapada were intended to be sung. These songs of realization were spontaneously composed verses that expressed a practitioner's...
  
  
• Philippine languages
  Philippine languages
  The Philippine languages are a 1991 proposal by Robert Blust that all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi—except Sama–Bajaw and a few languages of Palawan—form a subfamily of Austronesian languages...
  
   (particularly Old Tagalog
  Tagalog language
  Tagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by a third of the population of the Philippines and as a second language by most of the rest. It is the first language of the Philippine region IV and of Metro Manila...
  
  )- c. 900 Laguna Copperplate Inscription
  Laguna Copperplate Inscription
  The Laguna Copperplate Inscription is the earliest known written document found in the Philippines. The plate was found in 1989 by a sand laborer working on Lumbang River near the outlet to Laguna de Bay, in Barangay Wawa, Lumban, in the Laguna province.The inscription on the plate was first...
  
  
• Old Occitan - ca. end 9th cent. or before 960 Tumida femina.
• Leonese
  Leonese language
  The Leonese language is the endonym term used to refer to all vernacular Romance dialects of the Astur-Leonese linguistic group in the Spanish provinces of León and Zamora; Astur-Leonese also includes the dialects...
  
   - c. 959-974: Nodicia de Kesos
  Nodicia de Kesos
  In the early twentieth century, Zacarías García Villada discovered the Nodicia de kesos on the backside of a tenth-century parchment recording a gift to the monastery of San Justo y Pastor, which was located in either Chozas de Abajo or Ardón del Esla in the Kingdom of León. It is a list of the...
  
  .
• Italian
  Italian language
  Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
  
   - c. 960-963:
• Khitan
  Khitan language
  The Khitan language is a now-extinct language once spoken by the Khitan people . Khitan is generally deemed to be genetically linked to the Mongolic languages. It was written using two mutually exclusive writing systems known as the Khitan large script and the Khitan small script...
  
   - 986: Memorial for Yelü Yanning
  Memorial for Yelü Yanning
  The Memorial for Yelü Yanning is the oldest known Khitan inscription of significant length and for now the oldest major written attestation of a Mongolic language. Dated 986, it is written in the Mongolic Khitan language using the Khitan large script. With 19 lines and 271 characters it was found...
  
  
• Hungarian
  Hungarian language
  Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
  
   - 997: Charter of the Nuns of Veszprémvölgy (Hungarian fragments). The first coherent text is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer
  Funeral Sermon and Prayer
  The Funeral Sermon and Prayer is the oldest known and surviving contiguous Hungarian text, written by one scribal hand in the Latin script and dating to 1192-1195...
  
  of 1192.

1000-1500 AD

• Slovene - 972-1093: (Freising manuscripts
  Freising manuscripts
  The Freising Manuscripts are the first Latin-script continuous text in a Slavic language and the oldest document in Slovene.The monuments consisting of three texts in the oldest Slovene dialect were discovered bound into a Latin codex...
  
  )
• Russian - c. 1000
• Balinese
  Balinese language
  Balinese or simply Bali is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by 3.3 million people on the Indonesian island of Bali, as well as northern Nusa Penida, western Lombok and eastern Java...
  
   - c.1000
• Ossetic
  Ossetic language
  Ossetian , also sometimes called Ossete, is an East Iranian language spoken in Ossetia, a region on the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains....
  
   - c. 1000
• Marathi
  Marathi language
  Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
  
   - c. 1000
• Newari - c 1000
• Basque
  Basque language
  Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
  
   (Iruña-Veleia
  Iruña-Veleia
  Veleia was a Roman town in Hispania, currently located in the Basque Country, Spain. The site is located in the municipality of Iruña de Oca, 10 kilometers west of Vitoria. The town was an important station on the Roman road ab Asturica Burdigalam that ran parallel to the coast of the Bay of Biscay...
  
  , allegedly c. 300, being a forgery), Aragonese
  Aragonese language
  Aragonese is a Romance language now spoken in a number of local varieties by between 10,000 and 30,000 people over the valleys of the Aragón River, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza in Aragon, Spain...
  
   and Spanish
  Spanish language
  Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
  
   - ca. 1000: Glosas Emilianenses
  Glosas Emilianenses
  The Glosas Emilianenses are glosses written in a Latin codex. These marginalia are important as early examples of writing in Basque and a form of Spanish...
  
  
• Catalan
  Catalan language
  Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
  
   - c. 1028: Jurament Feudal
• Middle High German
  Middle High German
  Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...
  
   - 1050 (by convention)
• Middle English
  Middle English
  Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
  
   - 1066 (by convention)
• Piedmontese - 1080
• Croatian
  Croatian language
  Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
  
   - c. 1100: Baška tablet
  Baška tablet
  Baška tablet is one of the first monuments containing an inscription in the Croatian language, dating from the year 1100.The tablet was discovered by scholars in 1851 in the paving of the Romanesque church of St. Lucy in Jurandvor, near Baška, on the island of Krk...
  
  
• Danish
  Danish language
  Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
  
   - c. 1100 (by convention)
• Swedish
  Swedish language
  Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
  
   - c. 1100 (by convention; the Rök Stone (c. 9th century) is often cited as the beginning of Swedish literature)
• Nepal Bhasa
  Nepal Bhasa
  Nepal Bhasa is one of the major languages of Nepal, and is also spoken in India, particularly in Sikkim where it is one of the 11 official languages. Nepal Bhasa is the mother tongue of about 3% of the people in Nepal . It is spoken mainly by the Newars, who chiefly inhabit the towns of the...
  
   - 1114: "The Palmleaf from Uku Bahal"
• Middle Dutch
  Middle Dutch
  Middle Dutch is a collective name for a number of closely related West Germanic dialects which were spoken and written between 1150 and 1500...
  
    - 1150 (by convention)
• Portuguese
  Portuguese language
  Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
  
   and/or Galician
  Galician language
  Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
  
   - 1189
• Serbian
  Serbian language
  Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
  
   - between 1186 and 1190: The Gospels of Miroslav
• Bosnian
  Bosnian language
  Bosnian is a South Slavic language, spoken by Bosniaks. As a standardized form of the Shtokavian dialect, it is one of the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina....
  
   - 1189: The Charter of Kulin
  Ban Kulin
  Ban Kulin was a notable Ban of Bosnia who ruled from 1180 to 1204 first as a vassal of the Byzantine Empire and then of the Kingdom of Hungary. He was brought to the power by Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus. He had a son, Stjepan Kulinić who succeeded him as Bosnian Ban...
  
  
• Czech
  Czech language
  Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
  
   - c. 1200-1230
• Mongolian
  Mongolian language
  The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
  
   - 1224-1225: Genghis stone
• Western Lombard
  Western Lombard
  Western Lombard is a Romance language spoken in Italy, in the Lombard provinces of Milan, Monza, Varese, Como, Lecco, Sondrio, a small part of Cremona , Lodi and Pavia, and the Piedmont provinces of Novara, Verbano-Cusio-Ossola and a small part of Vercelli , and Switzerland...
  
   - c. 1250: Sordello da Goito, "Sirventese lombardesco"
• Polish
  Polish language
  Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
  
   - c. 1270: Book of Henryków
  Book of Henryków
  The Book of Henryków is a Latin chronicle of the Cistercian abbey in Henryków in Lower Silesia. Originally created as a registry of belongings looted by the Mongol raids of 1241, with time it was extended to include the history of the monastery...
  
  
• Yiddish - 1272
• Thai
  Thai language
  Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...
  
   - c. 1292
• Old Norwegian
  Old Norwegian
  Old Norwegian refers to a group of Old Norse dialects spoken and written in Norway in the Middle Ages. They bridged the dialect continuum from Old East Norse to Old West Norse.-Old Norwegian vs Common Norse:...
  
   - c. 1300
• Batak
  Batak (Indonesia)
  Batak is a collective term used to identify a number of ethnic groups predominantly found in North Sumatra, Indonesia. The term is used to include the Toba, Karo, Pakpak, Simalungun, Angkola and Mandailing, each of which are distinct but related groups with distinct, albeit related, languages and...
  
   - c.1300
• Finnic
  Finnic languages
  The term Finnic languages often means the Baltic-Finnic languages, an undisputed branch of the Uralic languages. However, it is also commonly used to mean the Finno-Permic languages, a hypothetical intermediate branch that includes Baltic Finnic, or the more disputed Finno-Volgaic languages....
  
   - c. 1300 Birch bark letter no. 292
  Birch bark letter no. 292
  The Birch bark letter given the document number 292 is the oldest known document in any Finnic language. The document is dated to the beginning of the 13th century...
  
   (Finnish
  Finnish language
  Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
  
   proper: Abckiria
  Abckiria
  Abckiria , in English "The ABC book", is the first book that was published in the Finnish language. It was written by Mikael Agricola, a bishop and Lutheran Reformer, and was first published in 1543...
  
  , 1543)
• Old Prussian
  Old Prussian language
  Prussian is an extinct Baltic language, once spoken by the inhabitants of the original territory of Prussia in an area of what later became East Prussia and eastern parts of...
  
   - c. 1350
• Kashmiri
  Kashmiri language
  Kashmiri is a language from the Dardic sub-group and it is spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley, in Jammu and Kashmir. There are approximately 5,554,496 speakers in Jammu and Kashmir, according to the Census of 2001. Most of the 105,000 speakers or so in Pakistan are émigrés from the Kashmir...
  
   - c. 1350
• Oghuz Turkic (including Azeri
  Azerbaijani language
  Azerbaijani or Azeri or Torki is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
  
   and Ottoman Turkish
  Ottoman Turkish language
  The Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...
  
  ) - c. 1350 (Imadaddin Nasimi)
• Komi
  Komi language
  The Komi language is a Finno-Permic language spoken by the Komi peoples in the northeastern European part of Russia. Komi is one of the two members of the Permic subgroup of the Finno-Ugric branch...
  
   - 1372
• Korean
  Hangul
  Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
  
   - 1446 (Hunmin Jeongeum
  Hunmin Jeongeum
  Hunminjeongeum is a document describing an entirely new and native script for the Korean language. The script was initially named after the publication, but later came to be known as hangul...
  
  )
• Albanian
  Albanian language
  Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...
  
   - 1462 (Formula e Pagëzimit - Short baptismal formula in a letter of Archbishop Pal Engjëll
  Pal Engjëlli
  Pal Engjëlli was an Albanian Catholic clergyman, Archbishop of Durrës and Cardinal of Albania who in 1462 wrote the first known sentence retrieved so far in Albanian. Pal Engjëlli is reported to have been a friend, co-worker and close counselor of Skanderbeg. As his envoy, he frequently traveled...
  
  )
• Maltese
  Maltese language
  Maltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...
  
   - c. 1470: Cantilena
  Cantilena
  Il Cantilena is the oldest known literary text in the Maltese language. It dates from the 15th century but was not found until 1966 or 1968 by Prof. Godfrey Wettinger and Fr. M. Fsadni . The poem is attributed to Pietru Caxaro, and was recorded by Caxaro's nephew, Brandano, in his notarial...
  
  
• Early Modern English
  Early Modern English
  Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English...
  
   - 1470s (by convention)
• Tulu
  Tulu language
  The Tulu language |?]]]) is a Dravidian language spoken by 1.95 million native speakers mainly in the southwest part of Indian state Karnataka known as Tulu Nadu. In India, 1.72 million people speak it as their mother tongue , increased by 10 percent over the 1991 census...
  
   - c. 1500

After AD 1500

Date	Language	Attestation	Notes
1521	Romanian Romanian language Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...	Neacşu's Letter.	The Cyrillic orthographic manual of Constantin Kostentschi from 1420 documents earlier written usage. Four 16th century documents, namely Codicele Voronetean, Psaltirea Scheiana, Psaltirea Hurmuzachi and Psaltirea Voroneteana, are arguably copies of 15th century originals.
1530	Latvian Latvian language Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...
1535	Estonian Estonian language Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
1539	Classical Nahuatl Classical Nahuatl Classical Nahuatl is a term used to describe the variants of the Nahuatl language that were spoken in the Valley of Mexico — and central Mexico as a lingua franca — at the time of the 16th-century Spanish conquest of Mexico...	Breve y mas compendiosa doctrina cristiana en lengua mexicana y castellana	Possibly the first printed book in the New World New World The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle... . No copies are known to exist today.
1543	Modern Finnish Finnish language Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...	Abckiria Abckiria Abckiria , in English "The ABC book", is the first book that was published in the Finnish language. It was written by Mikael Agricola, a bishop and Lutheran Reformer, and was first published in 1543... by Mikael Agricola Mikael Agricola Mikael Agricola was a clergyman who became the de facto founder of written Finnish and a prominent proponent of the Protestant Reformation in Sweden . He is often called the "father of the Finnish written language". Agricola was consecrated as the bishop of Turku in 1554, without papal approval... .
1547	Lithuanian Lithuanian language Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...	Katekizmas by Martynas Mažvydas Martynas Mažvydas Martynas Mažvydas Martynas Mažvydas Martynas Mažvydas (1510 near Žemaičių Naumiestis (now in Šilutė district municipality) - May 21, 1563 in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) was the author and the editor of the first printed book in the Lithuanian language....	Katekizmas is the first printed book in Lithuanian. The earliest surviving text in Lithuanian is the hand-written Lord's Prayer and Hail Mary on a slip of paper dated between 1503 and 1525.
ca. 1550	New Dutch/Standard Dutch History of Dutch Dutch is a West Germanic language, that originated from the Old Frankish dialects.Among the words with which Dutch has enriched the English vocabulary are: brandy, cole slaw, cookie, cruiser, dock, easel, freight, landscape, spook, stoop, and yacht...	Statenbijbel	The Statenbijbel is commonly accepted to be the start of Standard Dutch, but various experiments were performed around 1550 in Flanders and Brabant. Although none proved to be lasting they did create a semi-standard and many formed the base for the Statenbijbel.
1554	Wastek Wastek language The Wastek or Huastec language is a Mayan language of Mexico, spoken by the Huastecs living in rural areas of San Luis Potosí and northern Veracruz. Though relatively isolated from them, it is related to the Mayan languages spoken further south and east in Mexico and Central America...	A grammar by Andrés de Olmos Andrés de Olmos Andrés de Olmos , Franciscan priest and extraordinary grammarian and ethno-historian of Mexico's Indians, was born in Oña, Burgos, Spain, and died in Tampico in New Spain... .
1593	Modern Tagalog Tagalog language Tagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by a third of the population of the Philippines and as a second language by most of the rest. It is the first language of the Philippine region IV and of Metro Manila...	Doctrina Cristiana (Christian Doctrine), a book explaining the basic beliefs of Roman Catholicism
1600	Buginese Buginese language Buginese is the language spoken by about four million people mainly in the southern part of Sulawesi, Indonesia.-History:The word Buginese derives from the word Bahasa Bugis in Malay. In Buginese, it is called while the Bugis people are called...
ca. 1650	Ubykh Ubykh language Ubykh or Ubyx is an extinct language of the Northwestern Caucasian group, spoken by the Ubykh people... Abkhaz Abkhaz language Abkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken mainly by the Abkhaz people. It is the official language of Abkhazia where around 100,000 people speak it. Furthermore, it is spoken by thousands of members of the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey, Georgia's autonomous republic of Adjara, Syria, Jordan... Adyghe Adyghe language Adyghe language , also known as West Circassian , is one of the two official languages of the Republic of Adygea in the Russian Federation, the other being Russian. It is spoken by various tribes of the Adyghe people: Abzekh, Adamey, Bzhedugh; Hatukuay, Kemirgoy, Makhosh; Natekuay, Shapsigh; Zhane,... Mingrelian	The Seyahatname Seyahatname Seyâhatnâme is a Persian term, also used in Ottoman Turkish, which means "book of travels", denoting a literary form and tradition whose examples can be found throughout centuries in the Middle Ages around the Islamic world, starting with the Arab travellers of the Umayyad period.An outstanding...  of Evliya Çelebi Evliya Çelebi Evliya Çelebi was an Ottoman traveler who journeyed through the territory of the Ottoman Empire and neighboring lands over a period of forty years.- Life :... .
1692	Sakha (Yakut) Sakha language Sakha, or Yakut, is a Turkic language with around 360,000 native speakers spoken in the Sakha Republic in the Russian Federation by the Sakha or Yakuts.Sakha is an agglutinative language, and it employs vowel harmony.-Classification:...
ca. 1695	Seri Seri language Seri is a language isolate spoken by the Seri people by between 716 and 900 people in two villages on the coast of Sonora, Mexico.-Classification:...	Grammar and vocabulary compiled by Adamo Gilg.	No longer known to exist.
1728	Swahili Swahili language Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...	Utendi wa Tambuka Utendi wa Tambuka Utend̠i wa Tambuka or Utenzi wa Tambuka , also known as Kyuo kya Hereḳali , is an epic poem in the Swahili language dated 1728...
1743	Chinese Pidgin English Chinese Pidgin English Chinese Pidgin English is a Pidgin language between English and Chinese. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, there was also Chinese Pidgin English spoken in Cantonese-speaking portions of China...
1760	Greenlandic language		Kalaallisut is written with the Latin alphabet (Hans Edege)
1770	Guugu Yimithirr Guugu Yimithirr language Guugu Yimithirr is an Australian Aboriginal language, the traditional language of the Guugu Yimithirr people of Far North Queensland. Most of the speakers today live at the community of Hopevale, about 46 km from Cooktown...	Words recorded by James Cook James Cook Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy... 's crew.
1806	Tswana Tswana language Tswana or Setswana is a language spoken in Southern Africa by about 4.5 million people. It is a Bantu language belonging to the Niger–Congo language family within the Sotho languages branch of Zone S , and is closely related to the Northern- and Southern Sotho languages, as well as the Kgalagadi...	Heinrich Lictenstein - Upon the Language of the Beetjuana	First complete Bible Bible The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...  translation in 1857 by Robert Moffat Robert Moffat Robert Moffat was a Scottish Congregationalist missionary to Africa, and father in law of David Livingstone....
1814	Māori language Maori language Māori or te reo Māori , commonly te reo , is the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand, the Māori. It has the status of an official language in New Zealand...		systematic orthography from 1820 (Hongi Hika Hongi Hika Hongi Hika was a New Zealand Māori rangatira and war leader of the Ngāpuhi iwi . Hongi Hika used European weapons to overrun much of northern New Zealand in the first of the Musket Wars... )
1819	Cherokee Cherokee language Cherokee is an Iroquoian language spoken by the Cherokee people which uses a unique syllabary writing system. It is the only Southern Iroquoian language that remains spoken. Cherokee is a polysynthetic language.-North American etymology:...
1823	Xhosa Xhosa language Xhosa is one of the official languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said...	John Bennie’s Xhosa Reading sheet printed at Twali	Complete Bible Bible The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...  translation 1859
1826	Aleut language Aleut language Aleut is a language of the Eskimo–Aleut language family. It is the heritage language of the Aleut people living in the Aleutian Islands, Pribilof Islands, and Commander Islands. As of 2007 there were about 150 speakers of Aleut .- Dialects :Aleut is alone with the Eskimo languages in the...		Aleut is written with the Cyrillic alphabet (loann Veniaminov)
ca. 1830	Vai Vai language The Vai language, alternately called Vy or Gallinas, is a Mande language, spoken by roughly 104,000 in Liberia and by smaller populations, some 15,500, in Sierra Leone. It is noteworthy for being one of the few sub-Saharan African languages to have a writing system that is not based on the Latin...
1832	Gamilaraay Gamilaraay language The Gamilaraay or Kamilaroi language is a Pama–Nyungan language of the Wiradhuric subgroup found mostly in South East Australia. It was the traditional language of the Kamilaroi people, but is now moribund—according to Ethnologue, there were only 3 speakers left in 1997...	Basic vocabulary collected by Thomas Mitchell.
1833	Sesotho	Reduced to writing by French missionaries Casalis and Arbousset	First grammar book 1841 and complete Bible Bible The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...  translation 1881
1837	Zulu Zulu language Zulu is the language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa as well as being understood by over 50% of the population...	First written publication Incwadi Yokuqala Yabafundayo	First grammar book 1859 and complete Bible Bible The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...  translation 1883
1844	Afrikaans Afrikaans Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...	Letters by Louis Henri Meurant (published in Eastern Cape newspaper - South Africa)	Followed by Muslim texts written in Afrikaans using Arabic alphabet Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...  in 1856. Spelling rules published in 1874. Complete Bible Bible The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...  published 1933.
1870	Inuktitut Syllabary Inuktitut syllabics Inuktitut syllabics is a writing system used by the Inuit in Nunavut and in Nunavik, Quebec...		Inuktitut is written with the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabary alphabet/The Netsilik adopted Qaniujaaqpait by the 1920s.(Edmund Peck Edmund Peck Edmund James Peck , known in as Inuktitut as Uqammaq , was an Anglican missionary in Canada... )
1872	Venda Venda language Venda, also known as or , is a Bantu language and an official language of South Africa. The majority of Venda speakers live in the northern part of South Africa's Limpopo Province, but about 10% of speakers live in Zimbabwe. The Venda language is related to Kalanga which is spoken in Botswana...	Reduced to writing by the Berlin Missionaries	First complete Bible Bible The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...  translation 1936
1885	Carrier language Carrier language The Carrier language is a Northern Athabaskan language. It is named after the Dakelh people, a First Nations people of the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada, for whom Carrier is the usual English name. People who are referred to as Carrier speak two related languages. One,...	Barkerville Jail Text, written in pencil on a board in the then recently created Carrier syllabics Carrier syllabics Carrier or Déné syllabics is a script created by Adrien-Gabriel Morice for the Carrier language. It was inspired by Cree syllabics and is one of the writing systems in the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics Unicode range.-History:...	Although the first known text by native speakers dates to 1885, the first record of the language is a list of words recorded in 1793 by Alexander MacKenzie.
ca. 1900	Papuan languages Papuan languages The Papuan languages are those languages of the western Pacific which are neither Austronesian nor Australian. The term does not presuppose a genetic relationship. The concept of Papuan peoples as distinct from Melanesians was first suggested and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1892.-The...
ca. 1900	Other Austronesian languages Austronesian languages The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the... .
1903	Lingala Lingala language Lingala, or Ngala, is a Bantu language spoken throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a large part of the Republic of the Congo , as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic. It has over 10 million speakers...
1968	Southern Ndebele Southern Ndebele language The Southern Ndebele language is an African language belonging to the Nguni group of Bantu languages, and spoken by the amaNdebele . There are two dialects of Southern Ndebele in South Africa:* the Northern Transvaal Ndebele or Nrebele...	Small booklet published with praises of their kings and a little history	Translation of the New Testament New Testament The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....  of the Bible Bible The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...  completed in 1986 - translation of Old Testament Old Testament The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...  ongoing
1984	Gooniyandi Gooniyandi language Gooniyandi is an Australian Aboriginal language now spoken by about 100 people, most of whom live in or near Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia. Gooniyandi is an endangered language as it is not being passed on to children, who instead grow up speaking Kriol....

By family

Attestation by major language family

Language family

A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...

:

• Afro-Asiatic: since about the 28th c. BC
  • 28th c. BC: Egyptian
    Egyptian language
    Egyptian is the oldest known indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BC, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century AD in the...
    
    
  • 24th c. BC: Semitic
    Semitic languages
    The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
    
     (Eblaite
    Eblaite language
    Eblaite is an extinct Semitic language, which was spoken in the 3rd millennium BC in the ancient city of Ebla, at Tell Mardikh , between Aleppo and Hama, in western modern Syria....
    
    , Akkadian
    Akkadian language
    Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
    
    )
    • 16th c. BC: West Semitic (Canaanite
      Canaanite languages
      The Canaanite languages are a subfamily of the Semitic languages, which were spoken by the ancient peoples of the Canaan region, including Canaanites, Israelites and Phoenicians...
      
      )
• Hurro-Urartian
  Hurro-Urartian languages
  The Hurro-Urartian languages are an extinct language family of the Ancient Near East, comprising only two known languages: Hurrian and Urartian, both of which were spoken in the Taurus mountains area.-Classification:...
  
  : ca. 20th c. BC
• Indo-European
  Indo-European languages
  The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
  
  : since about the 19th c. BC
  • 19th c. BC: Anatolian
    Anatolian languages
    The Anatolian languages comprise a group of extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language.-Origins:...
    
    
  • 15th-14th c. BC: Greek
    Greek language
    Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
    
    
  • 7th c. BC: Italic
    Italic languages
    The Italic subfamily is a member of the Indo-European language family. It includes the Romance languages derived from Latin , and a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, and Latin.In the past various definitions of "Italic" have prevailed...
    
    
  • 6th c. BC: Celtic
    Celtic languages
    The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...
    
    
  • 6th c. BC: Indo-Iranian
    Indo-Iranian
    Indo-Iranian can refer to:* Indo-Iranian languages* Prehistoric Indo-Iranians * Indo-European languages* Proto-Indo-Iranian religion* Proto-Indo-Iranian language...
    
    
  • 2nd c. AD: Germanic
    Germanic languages
    The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
    
    
  • 9th c. AD: Balto-Slavic
    Balto-Slavic languages
    The Balto-Slavic language group traditionally comprises Baltic and Slavic languages, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branch, which points to the period of common development...
    
    
• Sino-Tibetan: about 1200 BC
  • roughly 1200 BC: Old Chinese
    Old Chinese
    The earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at a site near modern Anyang identified as Yin, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1200 BC....
    
    
  • 9th c. AD: Tibeto-Burman (Tibetan
    Tibetan language
    The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...
    
    )
• Dravidian
  Dravidian languages
  The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
  
  : 3rd c. BC
• Austronesian
  Austronesian languages
  The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
  
  : 3rd c. AD
• Mayan
  Mayan languages
  The Mayan languages form a language family spoken in Mesoamerica and northern Central America. Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6 million indigenous Maya, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and Honduras...
  
  : 3rd c. AD
• South Caucasian
  South Caucasian languages
  The Kartvelian languages are spoken primarily in Georgia, with a large group of ethnic Georgian speakers in Russia, the United States, the European Union, and northeastern parts of Turkey. There are approximately 5.2 million speakers of this language family worldwide.It is not known to be related...
  
  : 5th c. (Georgian
  Georgian language
  Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
  
  )
• Northeast Caucasian
  Northeast Caucasian languages
  The Northeast Caucasian languages constitute a language family spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, northern Azerbaijan, and in northeastern Georgia, as well as in diaspora populations in Russia, Turkey, and the Middle East...
  
  : 7th c. (Udi
  Udi language
  The Udi language, spoken by the Udi people, is a member of the Lezgic branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family. It is believed an earlier form of it was the main language of Caucasian Albania, which stretched from south Dagestan to current day Azerbaijan.The language is spoken by about...
  
  )
• Austro-Asiatic: 7th c. (Khmer
  Khmer language
  Khmer , or Cambodian, is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. It is the second most widely spoken Austroasiatic language , with speakers in the tens of millions. Khmer has been considerably influenced by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious...
  
  )
• Altaic
  Altaic languages
  Altaic is a proposed language family that includes the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Japonic language families and the Korean language isolate. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe...
  
  : 8th c.
  • 8th c.: Turkic
    Turkic languages
    The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
    
     (Old Turkic)
  • 8th c.: Japonic
  • 13th c.: Mongolic
    Mongolic languages
    The Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in East-Central Asia, mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas plus in Kalmykia. The best-known member of this language family, Mongolian, is the primary language of most of the residents of Mongolia and the Mongolian residents of Inner...
    
    
• Nilo-Saharan: 9th c. (Old Nubian
  Old Nubian language
  Old Nubian is an ancient variety of Nubian, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century . It is ancestral to modern-day Nobiin and related to other Nubian languages such as Dongolawi. It was used throughout the medieval Christian kingdom of Makuria and its satellite Nobadia...
  
  )
• Basque
  Basque language
  Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
  
  : 10th c.
• Uralic
  Uralic languages
  The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...
  
  : 11th century
  • 11th c. Ugric (Hungarian
    Hungarian language
    Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
    
    )
  • 14th c. Finnic
    Finnic languages
    The term Finnic languages often means the Baltic-Finnic languages, an undisputed branch of the Uralic languages. However, it is also commonly used to mean the Finno-Permic languages, a hypothetical intermediate branch that includes Baltic Finnic, or the more disputed Finno-Volgaic languages....
    
    
• Tai–Kadai: 13th c.
• Uto-Aztecan
  Uto-Aztecan languages
  Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family consisting of over 30 languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found from the Great Basin of the Western United States , through western, central and southern Mexico Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family...
  
  : 16th c.
• Quechuan: 16th c.
• Niger–Congo (Bantu
  Bantu languages
  The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...
  
  ): 18th c.
• Indigenous Australian languages: 18th c.
• Iroquoian
  Iroquoian languages
  The Iroquoian languages are a First Nation and Native American language family.-Family division:*Ruttenber, Edward Manning. 1992 [1872]. History of the Indian tribes of Hudson's River. Hope Farm Press....
  
  : 19th c.
• Papuan languages
  Papuan languages
  The Papuan languages are those languages of the western Pacific which are neither Austronesian nor Australian. The term does not presuppose a genetic relationship. The concept of Papuan peoples as distinct from Melanesians was first suggested and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1892.-The...
  
  : 20th c.

Constructed languages

Date	Language	Attestation	Notes
1879	Volapük Volapük Volapük is a constructed language, created in 1879–1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany. Schleyer felt that God had told him in a dream to create an international language. Volapük conventions took place in 1884 , 1887 and 1889 . The first two conventions used...		created by Johann Martin Schleyer Johann Martin Schleyer Martin Schleyer was a German Catholic priest who invented the constructed language Volapük. His official name was "Martin Schleyer"; he added the name "Johann" unofficially....
1887	Esperanto Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...	Unua Libro Unua Libro The Unua Libro was the first publication to describe the international language Esperanto . It was first published in Russian on July 26, 1887 in Warsaw, by Dr. L.L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto. Over the next few years editions were published in Russian, Hebrew, Polish, French, German,...	created by L. L. Zamenhof L. L. Zamenhof Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof December 15, 1859 – April 14, 1917) was the inventor of Esperanto, the most successful constructed language designed for international communication.-Cultural background:...
1907	Ido Ido Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages...		based on Esperanto
1917	Quenya Quenya Quenya is a fictional language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, and used in his Secondary world, often called Middle-earth.Quenya is one of the many Elvish languages spoken by the immortal Elves, called Quendi in Quenya. The tongue actually called Quenya was in origin the speech of two clans of Elves...		created by J. R. R. Tolkien J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
1928	Novial Novial Novial [nov- + IAL, International Auxiliary Language] is a constructed international auxiliary language intended to facilitate international communication and friendship, without displacing anyone's native language...		created by Otto Jespersen Otto Jespersen Jens Otto Harry Jespersen or Otto Jespersen was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language.He was born in Randers in northern Jutland and attended Copenhagen University, earning degrees in English, French, and Latin...
1935	Sona Sona language Sona is a worldlang created by Kenneth Searight and described in a book he published in 1935. The word Sona in the language itself means "auxiliary neutral thing", but the name was also chosen to echo "sonority" or "sound"....	Sona, an auxiliary neutral language	created by Kenneth Searight Kenneth Searight Kenneth Searight was the creator of the international auxiliary language Sona. His book Sona; an auxiliary neutral language outlines the language's grammar and vocabulary. Encounters with Searight also influenced English author E.M...
1943	Interglossa	Later became Glosa Glosa Glosa is an international auxiliary language based on a previous draft auxiliary called Interglossa. As an isolating language, there are no inflections, so that words always remain in their dictionary form, no matter what function they have in the sentence...	created by Lancelot Hogben Lancelot Hogben Lancelot Thomas Hogben FRS was a versatile British experimental zoologist and medical statistician. He is best known for developing Xenopus laevis as a model organism for biological research in his early career, attacking the eugenics movement in the middle of his career, and popularising books on...
1951	Interlingua Interlingua Interlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...	Interlingua-English Dictionary Interlingua-English Dictionary The Interlingua–English Dictionary , developed by the International Auxiliary Language Association under the direction of Alexander Gode and published by Storm Publishers in 1951, is the first Interlingua dictionary. The IED includes about 27,000 words drawn from about 10,000 roots. It also...	created by the International Auxiliary Language Association International Auxiliary Language Association The International Auxiliary Language Association was founded in 1924 to "promote widespread study, discussion and publicity of all questions involved in the establishment of an auxiliary language, together with research and experiment that may hasten such establishment in an intelligent manner and...
1955	Loglan Loglan Loglan is a constructed language originally designed for linguistic research, particularly for investigating the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis. The language was developed beginning in 1955 by Dr James Cooke Brown with the goal of making a language so different from natural languages that people learning...		created by James Cooke Brown James Cooke Brown Dr. James Cooke Brown was a sociologist and science fiction author. He is notable for creating the artificial language Loglan and for designing the Parker Brothers board game Careers....
1985	Klingon Klingon language The Klingon language is the constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe....		created by Marc Okrand Marc Okrand Marc Okrand is an American linguist and is most notable as the creator of the Klingon language, which he speaks.-Biography:Okrand worked with Native American languages. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1972...
1987	Lojban Lojban See also discussed by Arthur Protin, Bob LeChevalier, Carl Burke, Doug Landauer, Guy Steele, Jack Waugh, Jeff Prothero, Jim Carter, and Robert Chassell, as well as , the concepts which "average English speakers won't recognize" because most of them "have no exact English counterpart".Like most...		based on Loglan Loglan Loglan is a constructed language originally designed for linguistic research, particularly for investigating the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis. The language was developed beginning in 1955 by Dr James Cooke Brown with the goal of making a language so different from natural languages that people learning... , created by the Logical Language Group

See also

• History of writing
  History of writing
  The history of writing records the development of expressing language by letters or other marks. In the history of how systems of representation of language through graphic means have evolved in different human civilizations, more complete writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of...
  
  
• List of writing systems
• Undeciphered writing systems
  Undeciphered writing systems
  Many undeciphered writing systems date from several thousand years BC, though some more modern examples do exist.The term "writing systems" is used here loosely to refer to groups of glyphs which appear to have representational symbolic meaning, but which may include "systems" that are largely...