It is believed the first spoken word was “Aa,” which meant hey. “Aa” is thought to have first been spoken by an australopithecine in Ethiopia over a million years ago.
Scientists at the University of Reading have discovered that 'I', 'we', 'who' and the numbers '1', '2' and '3' are amongst the oldest words, not only in English, but across all Indo-European languages.
According to a 2009 study by researchers at Reading University, the oldest words in the English language include “I“, “we“, “who“, “two” and “three“, all of which date back tens of thousands of years.
According to the ta-ta theory, humans made the earliest words by tongue movements that mimicked manual gestures, rendering them audible.
And the first people who were exactly like us were in Africa, probably about 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. They would have been the ones who first came up with words for things and then they would have passed those on to their children, and that would have kept going to you and me.
Mother, bark and spit are just three of 23 words that researchers believe date back 15,000 years, making them the oldest known words.
Kushim is the earliest known recorded name of a person in writing. The name "Kushim" is found on several Uruk period (c. 3400–3000 BCE) clay tablets used to record transactions of barley.
About The First Word
Acclaimed science writer Christine Kenneally explains how a relatively small group of scientists that include Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker assembled the astounding narrative of how the fundamental process of evolution produced a linguistic ape-in other words, us.
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).
The general consensus is that Sumerian was the first written language, developed in southern Mesopotamia around 3400 or 3500 BCE. At first, the Sumerians would make small tokens out of clay representing goods they were trading. Later, they began to write these symbols on clay tablets.
Having emerged from the dialects and vocabulary of Germanic peoples—Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—who settled in Britain in the 5th century CE, English today is a constantly changing language that has been influenced by a plethora of different cultures and languages, such as Latin, French, Dutch, and Afrikaans.
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is a string of Latin terms that together describe an inflammatory lung disease caused by long-term inhalation of silica dust. While the word is made up, the disease is real, and it's known under the names pneumoconiosis, silicosis, or black lung in the UK.
Major dictionaries
The longest word in any of the major English language dictionaries is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters), a word that refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles, specifically from a volcano; medically, it is the same as silicosis.
“To call a spade a spade” dating to 423 BC, appearing in The Clouds. The original phrasing was “To call a fig, a fig, a trough, a trough” which was meant in a very saucy context. “Hair of the dog” also comes from Aristophanes, popularized by John Heywood in his Proverbs c.
Zyzzyva has achieved notoriety for being the last word in several English-language dictionaries. Casey is commonly credited with naming the genus, although the etymology of the word is unclear. One theory is that the word was inspired by Zyzza, a former genus of leafhoppers.
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.
The earliest form of English is called Old English or Anglo-Saxon ( c. 550–1066).
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.
Sumerian can be considered the first language in the world, according to Mondly. The oldest proof of written Sumerian was found on the Kish tablet in today's Iraq, dating back to approximately 3500 BC.
"In the beginning of" (bereshith in Biblical Hebrew) is the opening-phrase or incipit used in the Bible in Genesis 1:1.
Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do
This first saying of Jesus on the cross is traditionally called "The Word of Forgiveness". It is theologically interpreted as Jesus' prayer for forgiveness for the Roman soldiers who were crucifying him and all others who were involved in his crucifixion.
The name Earth derives from the eighth century Anglo-Saxon word erda, which means ground or soil, and ultimately descends from Proto-Indo European *erþō. From this it has cognates throughout the Germanic languages, including with Jörð, the name of the giantess of Norse myth.
Oldest Female Name in History
Per Oldest.org, Neithhotep is the earliest named woman in history. A queen consort of Pharoah Narmer in Ancient Egypt, Neithhotep had her name recorded between circa 3150 and 3125 BCE. Looking for more ancient names for girls.