OLDEST LANGUAGES IN THE WORLD

5 Oldest Languages In The World (Photos)

News Hub Creator

Mar 19, 2022 5:12 PM

1. Tamil

Tamil is a Classical Dravidian language widely spoken by the Tamil people of Southern part of Asia.

It is an official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the sovereign nations of Sri Lanka and Singapore, and the Union Territory of Puducherry. The Tamil language is recognized as the oldest language in the world and it is the oldest language of the Dravidian family. This language evolved around five thousand years ago.

2. Korean

Korean is a Koreanic language largely spoken by about eighty million people, especially people from the Republic of Korea. It is the official and national language of both North Korea and South Korea, with different standardized official forms used in each country. The language is also a recognised minority language in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of Jilin Province, China.

Korean is one of the world's oldest living languages, and its origins are as obscure as the origin of the Korean people. Nineteenth Century Western scholars proposed a number of theories that linked the Korean language with Ural-Altaic, Japanese, Chinese, Tibetan, Dravidian Ainu, Indo-European and other languages.

3. Italian

Italian is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire.

Italian is credited as the most direct descendant of Latin, being the closest to it among the national languages and the least divergent from it together with Sardinian when regional and minority languages are also taken into account. Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, and Vatican City. One of the oldest languages in the world, Italian originated around 75 BCE and its origin can be detected in Roman languages.

4. Aramaic

Aramaic is a Semitic language that evolved among the Arameans in the ancient region of Syria. Over 3,000 years, Aramaic served as a language of public life and administration of ancient kingdoms and empires and also as a language of divine worship and religious study. Several dialects are still spoken today.

Regarded as one of the oldest language in the world, it is believed that this language was spoken by Armenians in ancient Syria in 1100 BC. This means that this language is in existence since the fourth illennium. It is the general consensus of religious scholars and historians that Jesus and his disciples primarily spoke Aramaic language. Today, there are around eighty million to ten million speakers of this language.

5. Chinese

Chinese is a group of languages spoken by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people of the world's population speak a variety of Chinese as their first language.

One of the oldest languages in the world, the first written records of the Chinese language appeared over three thousand years ago during the Shang dynasty. As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible.

From Opera News