What is the oldest language still spoken?

1. Tamil (5000 years old) - Oldest Living Language of the World. Source Spoken by 78 million people and official language in Sri Lanka and Singapore, Tamil is the oldest language in the world. It is the only ancient language that has survived all the way to the modern world.

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Which is the 1 oldest language?

The Tamil language is recognized as the oldest language in the world and it is the oldest language of the Dravidian family. This language had a presence even around 5,000 years ago. According to a survey, 1863 newspapers are published in the Tamil language only every day.

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What is the 3rd oldest language still spoken?

3. Egyptian. While modern Egyptians speak Arabic, the current form of the ancient Egyptian language known as Coptic is still in use as a liturgical language within the Coptic Church.

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Is Chinese older than Tamil?

Though we can not ascertain the world's oldest language, other languages including Chinese and Egyptian are older than Tamil.

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Is Sanskrit older than Tamil?

However, it is generally acknowledged that Tamil has one of the oldest written traditions among living languages, while Sanskrit has been recognized as one of the oldest recorded languages in the world.

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Top 10 Oldest Living Languages In The World | Oldest Languages Still Spoken | Oldest Languages

16 related questions found

Did Sanskrit evolve from Tamil?

Answer and Explanation: Tamil is not derived from Sanskrit, although the two did influence each other throughout history. While Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, Tamil comes from the Dravidian language family. So, Tamil and Sanskrit are not directly related.

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Did Tamil borrow words from Sanskrit?

The Tamil language of Dravidian family has absorbed many loanwords from Indo-Aryan family, predominantly from Prakrit, Pali and Sanskrit, ever since the early 1st millennium CE, when the Sangam period Chola kingdoms became influenced by spread of Jainism, Buddhism and early Hinduism.

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Is Arabic or Tamil older?

Arabic, cc. 2800 years old. Persian (Farsi), cc. 2500 years old. Tamil, cc. 5000 years old.

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Is Tamil older than Greek?

Yes, there are records of Old Tamil that go back about 2,500 years. Going back to the Vedas, Sanskrit is older. Additionally, Latin and Greek are definitely older than Tamil. Many of the the daughter languages of Latin are spoken all over the world, especially French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

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How old is Tamil Hindu?

Hinduism in Tamil Nadu finds its earliest literary mention in the Sangam literature dated to the 5th century BCE.

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What language did Adam and Eve speak?

The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the midrashim) and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden.

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What language did Jesus speak?

Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.

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What is the hardest language to learn?

Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.

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What is the youngest language?

The world's youngest language, coming in at only 100 years old (officially), is the South African language of Afrikaans. Surprised? Afrikaans, the natively spoken language of 7 million South Africans, was born from the white Dutch, French, and German colonizers in South Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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What is the easiest language to learn?

We've used data from the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) to rank them from the easier to the somewhat more challenging.
  • Frisian. ...
  • Dutch. ...
  • Norwegian. ...
  • Spanish. ...
  • Portuguese. ...
  • Italian. ...
  • French. ...
  • Swedish.

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What is the newest language?

The world's youngest languages
  • Light Warlpiri. Spoken in Australia by 350 people, Light Warlpiri is one of the newest languages in the world. ...
  • Esperanto. Esperanto is spoken internationally by an estimated 30,000 to 180,000 users. ...
  • Lingala. Coming in as the most well-known language on the list is Lingala. ...
  • Gooniyandi.

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Which is the 5 oldest language in the world?

The world's 10 oldest languages in the world
  1. Egyptian – 2690 BC (circa. 4700 years old) ...
  2. Sanskrit – 1500 BC (circa. 3500 years old) ...
  3. Greek – 1450 BC (circa. 3500 years old) ...
  4. Chinese – 1250 BC (circa. 3300 years old) ...
  5. Aramaic – 1100 BC (circa. 3100 years old) ...
  6. Hebrew – 1000 BC (circa. 3000 years old)

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How old English is?

Old English – the earliest form of the English language – was spoken and written in Anglo-Saxon Britain from c. 450 CE until c. 1150 (thus it continued to be used for some decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066).

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How old is Tamil origin?

The earliest Tamil writing is attested in inscriptions and potsherds from the 5th century bce. Three periods have been distinguished through analyses of grammatical and lexical changes: Old Tamil (from about 450 bce to 700 ce), Middle Tamil (700–1600), and Modern Tamil (from 1600).

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What language is older than Tamil?

2. Sanskrit (5000 years old) - World's Oldest Language. Source Unlike Tamil, which is still a widely spoken language, Sanskrit is the oldest language in the world but fell out of common usage around 600 B.C. It is now a liturgical language - the holy languages found in the scriptures of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

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Why Tamil is the oldest?

Tamil. Tamil is the oldest language still in use today. By order of appearance, the Tamil language (part of the family of Dravidian languages) would be considered the world's oldest living language as it is over 5,000 years old, with its first grammar book having made its first appearance in 3,000 BC.

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What if Tamil is the oldest language in the world?

By order of appearance, Tamil would be considered the world's oldest language as it is over 5,000 years old, having made its first appearance in 3,000 BC.

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Is Tamil the root of all languages?

A lot of root words are found in many languages of the world in several forms and modifications retaining the semantic meaning of a particular word. In many of the world languages, words that have no connection with Tamil language are a rarity.

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Did the word cash come from Tamil?

Origin for the word cash derives from Tamil 'Kaasu', meaning loose change.

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Which language was influenced by Tamil?

A biography of the Tamil language reveals its influence on Sanskrit and Hebrew.

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