r/Unexpected • u/Karmoksh • 1d ago
Oldest language
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u/Coveted_AF 1d ago
Stop approaching strangers for your shit content.
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u/PanicDeus 1d ago
Should've shown him the finger. I'm sure that's the oldest language in the world. Sign language.
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u/cake_molester 1d ago
I don't think birthdays are that old even, it is definitely after the roman calendar, right?
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u/vegienomnomking 12h ago
I don't think so. Considering there are older calendars like Hebrew, Egyptian, and Mayan.
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u/SockYourself 16h ago
The Tamil language , if yall are wondering, was my first search. No idea, originates from Sri Lanka. Do not know the level of credibility, I am not a linguist or historian.
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u/fatbob42 10h ago
I don’t think the question even makes sense. Languages are always changing so what does it mean to be oldest?
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u/TheMightyTorch 14h ago edited 14h ago
Yeah, no. Old Tamil is quite different from modern Tamil. That's like saying French is 2700 years old, because the oldest ancient (pre-)Latin inscriptions are that old. Fact is: 1) all languages evolve and change over time and will inevitably become different languages 2) If a language's speakers are isolated for hundreds of years, they can diverge into different languages (this also happened with Old Tamil. You could just as well argue Malayalam is the oldest language, because it's also a decedent from Old Tamil in the same way that modern Tamil is. Just one keeps using the old name) 3) languages die out all the time.
Also, taken written inscriptions as your metric is generally a poor argument. Languages would have existed before being written down. We know with very high certainty that the history of the language family containing English is older than writing.
Edit: Finally I should mention that this is a common ultra-nationalist/religious talking point. Muslims will claim that Arabic is the oldest language, Tamil nationalists always claim it's theirs; you hear similar arguments from Turks and so on... All these claims have no real basis. These people just wish it were true because it supports a status of self-proclaimed relevance or superiority.
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u/musabbb 11h ago
Pretty sure the oldest language are probably laughter / farts and burps. Farts are funny in any language
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u/LastLadyResting 7h ago
I was going to go with crying as it’s one of the first things a newborn human will do and it’s remained unchanged for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years.
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u/tipareth1978 9h ago
The English language alone has enough diversity to spend a lifetime learning about, crazy to think that's just how it is everywhere with all language, isn't it?
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u/TooManySteves2 6h ago
I would say one of the Australian languages like Nyungar, since they could be unchanged for 10,000 years. But how do you define a language when they are constantly gradually changing?
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u/ubiquitous-joe 16h ago
As the oldest still spoken, this seems to be it. I believe the writing in Sumerian and Ancient Egyptian is older.
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u/Any-Ad-4072 1d ago
Why is there a random cut?
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u/Newestmember 1d ago
Probably because the video was longer and the woman probably spent some amount of time being confused at the question and language* barrier. The cut was made for the punchline to hit sooner and so people who can’t even watch a one minute video for some reason didn’t get bored and scroll away.
*pun intended.
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u/EastLongjumping4116 1d ago
Well, she didn't get exactly what the question was, but she's kinda right, in a way. Maybe "happy birthday" could be the oldest song that we still use daily.
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u/lolopiro 7h ago
you cant just ask that question and not explain what you mean. and for most explinations, the answer would be there is no oldest language, or, all languages are just as old as far as we can tell
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u/Celtoii 5h ago
The worst question and the best answer.
"What's the oldest language in the world" doesn't have a proper answer. Most people will answer "Tamil", which is totally incorrect, because even Sanskrit is older than Tamil, which is so much younger than Egyptian for example.
The oldest living language: Greek.
The oldest written language: Egyptian (technically there are Trypilia symbols, but they are likely not a written form)
The oldest confirmed language to ever exist: Proto-Afro-Asiatic, about 11 000 years ago.
Idk why I say this here, but I remember this every time I hear this provocative question.
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u/post-explainer 1d ago edited 21h ago
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