Oldest language
Encyclopedia
"Oldest language" is a term used informally for various concepts:
- referring to the emergence of language itself in human evolutionHuman evolutionHuman evolution refers to the evolutionary history of the genus Homo, including the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species and as a unique category of hominids and mammals...
- origin of languageOrigin of languageThe origin of language is the emergence of language in the human species. This is a highly controversial topic. Empirical evidence is so limited that many regard it as unsuitable for serious scholars. In 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris went so far as to ban debates on the subject...
- proto-languageProto-languageA proto-language in the tree model of historical linguistics is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead.Often the proto-language is not known directly...
, a stage before the emergence of language proper - mythical origins of languageMythical origins of languageThere have been many accounts of the origin of language in the world's mythologies and other stories pertaining to the origin of language, the development of language and the reasons behind the diversity in languages today....
- origin of language
- referring to a Proto-World languageProto-World languageThe Proto-Human language is the hypothetical most recent common ancestor of all the world's languages.The concept of "Proto-Human" presupposes monogenesis of all recorded spoken human languages....
, the hypothetical, most recent common ancestor of all the world's languages - referring to the date of attestation in writing (epigraphyEpigraphyEpigraphy 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...
).- see list of languages by first written accounts. The earliest attested languages (from ca. 3000 BC) are the SumerianSumerian languageSumerian 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...
and the EgyptianEgyptian languageEgyptian 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...
languages.
- see list of languages by first written accounts. The earliest attested languages (from ca. 3000 BC) are the Sumerian
- referring to the conservative nature of a given language (low rate of language changeLanguage changeLanguage change is the phenomenon whereby phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of language vary over time. The effect on language over time is known as diachronic change. Two linguistic disciplines in particular concern themselves with studying language change:...
, viz. "old" in the sense of "has not changed much for a long time"), see- glottochronologyGlottochronologyGlottochronology is that part of lexicostatistics dealing with the chronological relationship between languages....
- historical linguisticsHistorical linguisticsHistorical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
- glottochronology