Top 5 Oldest Surviving Languages

[@mrkisukes]

Fun thing about Madarin. The chinese word for it is 普通話, literally “common speak”. So yeah, you know the cliche of a lot of fantasy story having a “common tongue”, yeah, it’s real for the Chinese.

[@Bepples]

Same with the Greek term Koine (Κοινή) meaning common, also describing the standardised ancient Greek during the Hellenistic and early medieval periods.

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

Duch/deutsch also means people or speech of the common people. The problem with labeling your language "common tongue" in a fantasy work is that it implies there is no history and this term appeared very recently, as if thats what it was called long ago phonetics and semantics will have changed.

[@zimriel]

@@Bepples Yeah, D&D got its idea for a "common tongue" from Koine. D&D came to assume a common pagan culture which, for mediaeval society, wasn't pagan. A common tongue for nonChristians had to be remembered from the Hellenistic era. So: "Common".

[@sabkobds]

Slavic comes from word "word". It somehow means "understandable". Interesting Slavic term for German person is "Nemec/Nijemac/Nemac..." which means "mute one", which was probably word for all "not understandable" people (aliens/foreigners), but being largest neighboring group to them, it probably stacked.

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

@@sabkobds But it has morphed so much most think slav comes from slava meaning glory.

[@owenofhb8319]

What about Basque? Isn't it a Pre-Indo-European language?

[@kaby3190]

I don't claim to know much about Basque, but his criteria says that he uses the earliest attested written record, and from what I could find on Wikipedia, the earliest Basque written record is the Hand of Irulegi, which dates to around 80-72 BC, which is newer than all the items on the list I believe.

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

Its Pre PIE as in its not derived from PIE, but basque is actually much much younger.

[@galinor7]

​@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 yes. Claims about Basques antiquity are perhaps shrouded in myth and evidence for pre Indo-European are maybe not that evidence based.

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

@lu0z987 I am not basque thus their language doesnt mean much to me.

[@funky7692]

​@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 L take

[@אניאוהבדיונונים]

As a Hebrew speaker, it’s actually kind of easy to understand the ancient texts, it’s kind of like an English speaker reading Shakespeare

[@giladbenbunan]

נכון, מות העברית המדוברת היה בערך בתקופת המשנה ולכן אפשר לקרוא משנה בקלות בעברית

[@kalebmaxwell5725]

So would you say the grammar is more, or less complex than modern Hebrew?

[@andrelee7081]

I'm sorry, but as a native English speaker, Shakespeare is not easy to understand

[@adamodeo9320]

I find Shakespeare far more difficult for an English speaker than the bible for a Hebrew speaker

[@BHHB336]

@@kalebmaxwell5725 the grammar is more complicated, so a Hebrew speaker wouldn’t really get why to use a certain form of word/different vocabulary instead of another, but it’s still understandable using context for forms/words that aren’t used today

[@manetho5134]

as an Egyptian muslim, I wish we get taught Coptic in our schools along with Hieroglyphs, it would be really cool to be able to read the texts of our ancient ancestors

[@scottdoesntmatter4409]

As a Muslim, you should be aware that Islam has done all it can ever since its founder to wipe out every other culture and religion it could.

[@florianbirnbaum6584]

The surprising thing is that you forgot your own language. Now you could look at China with disdain.

[@manetho5134]

@@florianbirnbaum6584 Languages die all over the world, French people don't speak Gallic Celtic anymore, what's your point?

[@florianbirnbaum6584]

@@manetho5134 But French is not Gallic. Coptic was the evolved language of the Pharaohs. You basically forgot your own culture. The same culture you try to sell to the world for money. If it wasn't so important, there was no need to reclaim Rosetta Stone, for instance. But I don't really care, worse for you.

[@manetho5134]

@@florianbirnbaum6584 yes French is not Gallic, they forgot their Gallic language and now speak Latin based French, cultures and identities change and evolve all over the world, especially when religion and language change, no peaple have the same culture unchanged for 5000 years, Egyptian religion died in the 4th and 5th centuries with the rapid spread of Christianity, and the Egyptian language died in the Islamic period wirh the spead of Arabic

[@jbueno4304]

Just a minor correction in 1:30, Ferdinand was the king of Aragon and Isabella the queen of Castile. Great video!

[@SWLinPHX]

And they are responsible for sponsoring Columbus's voyage to America. Also their daughter Catherine was the first wife of the notorious King Henry VIII of England, who herself was the mother of Mary I of England ("Bloody Mary").

[@debodatta7398]

This is an incredibly shitty video badly researched there's no way he could say Sanskrit went extinct and then claim Hindi is still part of the tradition of Sanskrit from thousands of years ago (even though earliest form of Sanskrit we have is from 1 century bce, it is only proposed Sanskrit that is older because it is known that Sanskrit started out in a different area and travelled down to India so we use the history of the other peoples like the Persians, Armenians and other India-aryan groups to date it... on top of that with a flimsily claim like that excluding Arabic from here is just nonsense as well as any other language since the continuum is the same...

[@BloodRider1914]

Tamil is very long lasting and has changed relatively little in the last 2000 years. I'm surprised it didn't get more mention separate from the other Indian languages.

[@varoonnone7159]

You indulge in wishful thinking. Linguistic history doesn't really support the propaganda of tamil supremacists

[@bj.bruner]

No one conquers the Tamil kings

[@kremepye3613]

@@bj.bruner except the sri lankan government

[@MottiShneor]

But is is really separate from the other Indian languages? is it not descended from Sanskrit? and if it is - is it NOT in the hierarchy the video shows? I'm curious... I spent 8 months in India, traveling around, from Rajasthan down to Kanya-Kumari and zig-zagging all around -- I remember many people complaining about how "un-intelligible" Tamil was... Sometimes with nasty jokes. Now I wonder... is it really different?

[@MadhanBhavani]

@@MottiShneor Tamil is a dravidian language and hence descended from proto-dravidian, it is not descended from sanskrit

[@Copyright_Infringement]

In all seriousness, the question of which language is the "oldest" is misleading. Languages naturally evolve over time, split into dialects, then those dialects become languages, etc. English is just as old as Sardinian, Greek, Bengali, and any other Indo-European language, since all of them are effectively dialects of dialects of dialects of a single historical language (Proto-Indo-European). Which language families are oldest is also hotly debated and thus can't be said with certainty

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

All languages arent the same in oldness tho. Modern english is about 500 years old, while icelandic is much older being quite preserved old west norse.

[@Saladid]

Yes, the question should be: which language has been preserved for the longest period of time

[@mastersafari5349]

Of course you can tell that any language has it's ancestors going back to the dawn of times. Honestly, this should be called "a list of dialects that had the longest recorded history". Though some languages still could be defined as "more ancient". For example: English didn't even split off of proto-Germanic language and proto-Germanic language itself didn't even diverge from Indo-European meanwhile ancient Egyptian speakers were already carving their hyroglyphs on the walls of their temples.

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

@@mastersafari5349 Dialect is an even more nieshe term than language.

[@Copyright_Infringement]

​@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 Languages are never "preserved". While Icelandic may not have changed as much grammatically, it has completely transformed phonologically. This is a recurring phenomenon in language, where languages differ not in how much they change, but instead in _what_ they change. I should also point out that since both are in the same family, we know that English is _exactly_ as old as Icelandic.

[@AthanasiosJapan]

I am a native Greek speaker, who have studied Latin for 2 years, Sanskrit for 1 year and Hebrew for half a year. Though I don't speak Chinese, I have studied Kanbun Kundoku, which is the traditional Japanese method of reading Chinese texts. I am really happy that I studied those ancient languages!

[@Thomas-lg6jx]

Brother mother horse ect...similar in latin sanskrit gallic

[@MegaMaxiepad]

I know a Sanskrit word: Jangala, which means exactly what it sounds like.

[@varoonnone7159]

I watch the jangala standing on my veranda in my pajamas doing yoga, a cup of chai in one hand and scratching my chakras with the other

[@edwinholcombe2741]

Why are you happy about that?

[@varoonnone7159]

@@edwinholcombe2741 Haven't you ever experienced the simple joy of knowing things? Especially a language that opens up a whole new world and culture to you?

[@Зеленыйслоник-е8ъ]

You should have called the vid „the oldest suviving WRITTEN languages“.

[@faithlesshound5621]

Sanskrit seems to get special treatment here. The text says that the starting date is the earliest WRITING. For Sanskrit that would actually be Asoka's Prakrit inscriptions c 250 BC, not the Vedic hymns which had been ORALLY preserved from c 1500 BC. Asoka's inscriptions were also in Greek and Aramaic.

[@Зеленыйслоник-е8ъ]

@@faithlesshound5621 I am not an expert here. Prakrit is some kind of (written or spoken) vernacular Sanskrit or something of its own?

[@faithlesshound5621]

@@Зеленыйслоник-е8ъ The Prakrits were the common speech AND written language of the time, when the use of Sanskrit was already limited to priests and scholars. I doubt that ordinary people spoke a debased form of the priests' tongue. It's more likely that ordinary language grew and developed on its own, while the priests made it complicated and lagged behind changes in the vernacular. Priests use "big daddy" energy, so they try to speak like their grandfathers did. Modern North Indian languages came out of the Prakrits in the same way that the Romance languages developed from Vulgar Latin, modified by whatever language was already spoken there. They did not come directly from the language of Cicero and Vergil, except when scholars shovelled words and constructions from them into their vernacular works during the Renaissance of classical learning. It may be like what people use on the streets today differs from what you might hear a judge, priest or lecturer say, or see in a lawyer's letter. Many people don't use gerunds or the subjunctive in ordinary English speech, but they survive in written language and can be misunderstood.

[@mahatmaniggandhi2898]

​@@Зеленыйслоник-е8ъ they are descended from sanskrit, they were the natural evolution of vedic sanskrit (at least some dialects) that were natively spoken by the people of the time, and they are the ancestors of modern indo-aryan languages

[@debodatta7398]

This is an incredibly shitty video badly researched there's no way he could say Sanskrit went extinct and then claim Hindi is still part of the tradition of Sanskrit from thousands of years ago (even though earliest form of Sanskrit we have is from 1 century bce, it is only proposed Sanskrit that is older because it is known that Sanskrit started out in a different area and travelled down to India so we use the history of the other peoples like the Persians, Armenians and other India-aryan groups to date it... on top of that with a flimsily claim like that excluding Arabic from here is just nonsense as well as any other language since the continuum is the same...

[@billsnyder6391]

This is fascinating. My father's ancestors came from a mountainous region in Central Germany in 1816. They spoke Niederhessische. They settled in Pennsylvania and could NOT understand to the dialect of the local Pennsylvania Dutch, who spoke either Rheinland/Pflalz or Schwietzer-Duutsch. A few years ago I was able to connect with a distant cousin who grew up in that village. He is fluent in that dialect, Standard German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and he can speak American English with only barest hint that he was not born listening to Walter Cronkite. I have studied standard German, and the documents he sent me in the Niederhessische dialect are gibberish to me. On another issue, I do some acting and am now learning a role in a Shakespeare play, AS YOU LIKE IT. I've been in productions of MIDSUMMERS NIGHT'S DREAM, and HAMLET. The job of an actor in a Shakespeare play is to convey the meanind, despite differences after all these years. In addition to that, I am learning Welsh. Today in church, to celebrate the Feast of the Pentecost, we read the Gospel in about 7 different languages (I say "about" because our Argentinian parishioner and our Mexican parishioner viscerally HATE each other's dialect). I compared the current BEIBL CYMRAEAG with the 1588 Welsh Bible and, again, it is gibberish to me.

[@Lagolop]

Yiddish is also a Germanic language based Medieval High German. Close to Swiss German, Austrian and Bavarian. Of course the Ashkenazi culture began int he Rhineland and I know that the Amish and Yiddish speakers can understand each other quite a bit.

[@avior2951]

@@Lagolop Yiddish is very easily intelligible to german speakers. Though, it's closer to silesian than to the ones you listed iirc. "Austrian" also isn't a language/dialect, they speak bavarian except for a small area in the extreme west. Swiss german is merely the name of the german standard used in switzerland, the group is called alemannic.

[@saucysos]

Hebrew is particularly interesting because you have a higher rate of literacy than actual speakers due to Hebrew Schools and other institutions in the Jewish diaspora. For example, my Jewish friends and I can read Hebrew and derive sounds from the letters, but we don’t understand any more than two-dozen words.

[@JB-wc9hn]

Same, I can speak and understand a little things conversationally here and there but definitely can read and write without much issue.

[@lambert801]

It's the same here in Iran with Arabic. All Muslims here can read the Quran (in Arabic) and produce the sounds, but they don't understand anything they read. And the way we read it is so Persian that I don't think an Arab would understand a word of it 😅

[@saucysos]

@@lambert801 yeah, when my peers and I were learning Hebrew we learned it with such an American accent, not even an Ashkenazi one like our ancestors. I would get made fun of by an Israeli if I tried to read text to them 😂

[@varoonnone7159]

The revival of Hebrew as lingua franca for all jewish communities who made it to Israel was a brilliant decision. A pity India didn't do it for sanskrit

[@saucysos]

@@varoonnone7159 I personally think it was a smarter decision for India to make English a popular bridge language, but Sanskrit would’ve definitely been a good choice. While it is a shame the cultural heritage of Sanskrit is gone, I feel like India’s large English-speaking population is very beneficial for it in regards to business and commerce. Overall, I think we just need to promote bilingualism and language education along with revivals to keep cultural heritage alive, but as many of my peers in school can attest to, a lot of (especially English-speaking) teenagers don’t see the value in learning a new language.

[@florianschweizer4601]

Mayan is a strong contender as recent evidence suggests it may have had its writing system as early as 250 BC (EDIT: I previously & erroneously translated a find in a ‘2500-year-old temple’ to 2500 BC..)

[@PotatoSoundSystem]

I think Mayan is still spoken by indigenous Maya peoples in Mexico and Central America

[@joemiller947]

250 BC, not 2500 BC

[@florianschweizer4601]

@@joemiller947 you’re right I misread the Science article detailing the find in a ‘2500-year-old temple’ 🙈

[@vincent412l7]

My mother (in California) played mahjong with a group of elderly people from all over China. When together they speak English to understand each other. Although the spoken dialects differ the written language is mostly the same (until the communists changed the language. Movie theaters in China would show movies with subtitles so that everybody can understand.

[@NZobservatory]

An India-born friend told me that when he was a kid he could not understand the language spoken by newsreaders on TV stations in neighboring cities.

[@pangli2918]

In the early stages, Chinese characters did not have prescribed pronunciations, so regardless of which dialect you speak, you can understand the meaning and pronounce it using the dialect.

[@RocketJo86]

I had studied both Japanese and Mandarin (the latter for just a year, so I can't really say I speak much 😅). But the hanzi are so fascinating. In Japanese we didn't study Kanji until the third year, but due to the Mandarin classes I already knew quite some of them. I didn't know how to pronounce them correctly, but I can read them.

[@christophersmith108]

Absolutely fascinating! Thank you

[@philippedevienne9659]

Fun and instructive video. Just would like to mention Georgian that has been spoken continually for 40 centuries and is still spoken by 6 millions people today.

[@zimriel]

the same argument could be made for American Indian or Australian languages. Nobody 40 centuries ago was writing text in Kartuli. This one only got its script at the same time the Udi ("Caucasian-Albanians") were writing it. You know what language *is* recorded for 30 centuries? ProtoArmenian. It's probably descended from Phrygian, a relative of Greek. Phrygians were literate . . .

[@florianbirnbaum6584]

​@@zimriel Phrygian is an Anatolian language as hittite. Ugly of you disrespecting your Kartvelians neighbours. They were already living there when you left the Yamnaya swamp.

[@zimriel]

@@florianbirnbaum6584 reed moar

[@florianbirnbaum6584]

@@zimriel You should reAd something which is not ultranationalistic propaganda. What will be next? The story of Psametikos and the Phrygian word for "bread"? Come on! And Armenian has been linked before with Greek in the same branch of IE not with the Anatolian languages. You could write to the author of the "Etymological Dictionary of the Armenian Language" to share your opinions with him. He'll have a good laugh with your comment. Next time try saying that there's a letter written in Armenian by Noah in the top of the Ararat mountain.

[@jovan-noble-guy749]

​@@zimrielYour comment translated to "already tomorrow", is that you meant to say? What language is that? -Norwegian?

[@kaby3190]

Omg I finished watching this excellent video and was surprised when I saw the number of likes, views, and subscribers. I totally thought you were a big professional youtuber! The quality of your videos are at that level at least. Keep up the great work! Just subscribed :)

[@xp7575]

True, very true, I'm glad the algorithm is finally giving him some exposure, adding this reply to your comment to bump up his engagement #'s

[@alexfos4212]

Top 10 moments from this vid, in no particular order: 0:08 First appearance of the king 0:16 First implied smile (based on the happiness found in the eyes (glasses?)) 0:50 Julius Cesar getting stabbed 1:14, 8:50 Barb (it's the exact same joke so it only counts once) 4:43 Revival 7:06 The reason why this video will be banned in China 9:50 Stockholm Syndrome 11:44 Tunuk tun 13:39 2 Pakistans 14:10 Correct, she is immortal

[@LeMerqie]

oh, she's immortal>?

[@SsvbxxYT]

@@LeMerqie After hundreds of years of overseeing the British Empire, Queen Elizabeth II decided to be reborn in an alternate universe and save the UK from German invasion during World War II. Her son, Charles III, has now been tasked with keeping order in the UK. He's not doing a very good job at it.

[@StageRight123]

7:06 gave me a good laugh.

[@vassilisxerikos3908]

Unless mistaken, Vedic Sanskrit was written down much later than 1500BCE and by examining the language, linguistics can estimate it was formed at least around 1500, no? In terms of Greek, Mycenaean texts actually date from 1400BCE, they were written down in tablets then. The language in those tablets is estimated to similarity originate further back in time (circa 1700BCE which is the limit linguists estimate that proto-Greek split into dialects).

[@zimriel]

You're mistaken :) Vedic Sanskrit is noted in the Mitanni texts 1500 BCE

[@vassilisxerikos3908]

@@zimriel mittani texts aren’t Sanskrit. They aren’t even IE. Just indo-aryan names appearing within non IE texts akin to how a bunch of pre-Greek toponyms appear in Greek (like Parnitha or Corinth etc). That doesn’t mean pre-Greek languages are attested. Vedic Sanskrit was written down sometime in the 4th or 3rd century BCE.

[@TheodoreMasselos]

The Hathibada Ghosundi Inscriptions, sometimes referred simply as the Ghosundi Inscription or the Hathibada Inscription, are among the oldest known Sanskrit inscriptions in the Brahmi script, and dated to the 2nd-1st-century BCE. (Wikipedia)

[@HuckleberryHim]

Well it really depends at that point on what you're calling "the same language". Mycenaean Greek was very, very different even from Classical Greek. I would definitely not call the descendants of Sanskrit "the same language" as Sanskrit either though, in fact pretty far from it. They have a Sanskrit core, often quite modified, with plenty of loanwords, especially from Persian (kind of an English-as-Germanic situation). Actually, even the 1700 BCE oldest estimates for the composition of the oldest parts of the Rg Veda would have been some language close to Proto-Indo-Aryan, while Vedic and Classical Sanskrit are heavily "indicized". The Vedas as we know them today came about around 1000 BCE, and maybe even later to fully "modernize". The situation is probably similar with Greek, but I don't know as much about it. The point is though that neither is really just one mutually intelligible, or even very similar, language surviving over millennia

[@RogeriusRex]

Persian is also written with the Cyrillic alphabet in some parts of the plateau.

[@craig3567]

Yes, Tajikistan 🇹🇯

[@debodatta7398]

This is an incredibly shitty video badly researched there's no way he could say Sanskrit went extinct and then claim Hindi is still part of the tradition of Sanskrit from thousands of years ago (even though earliest form of Sanskrit we have is from 1 century bce, it is only proposed Sanskrit that is older because it is known that Sanskrit started out in a different area and travelled down to India so we use the history of the other peoples like the Persians, Armenians and other India-aryan groups to date it... on top of that with a flimsily claim like that excluding Arabic from here is just nonsense as well as any other language since the continuum is the same...

[@xp7575]

Idk if there are any other Vlogging Thru History fans on here but this is a great channel and I implore any of you who watch VTH to recommend he do a review of this video and this channel in general, it would be awesome to see this channel get the bump up in exposure that it deserves and VTH does great work highlighting small channels like this and getting more eyes on their work and more subs to their channel

[@debodatta7398]

This is an incredibly shitty video badly researched there's no way he could say Sanskrit went extinct and then claim Hindi is still part of the tradition of Sanskrit from thousands of years ago (even though earliest form of Sanskrit we have is from 1 century bce, it is only proposed Sanskrit that is older because it is known that Sanskrit started out in a different area and travelled down to India so we use the history of the other peoples like the Persians, Armenians and other India-aryan groups to date it... on top of that with a flimsily claim like that excluding Arabic from here is just nonsense as well as any other language since the continuum is the same...

[@EbpRoyan]

The beauty,pride and secret of Tamil is hidden in the spectacular Tamil script.

[@Topquark1]

There are an astounding number of connections showing how Tamil language was copied into English. உடன் Udan becomes S-udden கொல் Koll becomes Kill பன்சு Panju - Sponge தாக்கு Thaku - Attaku உழவர் Ulavar - Lavor- labour குளிர் Kulir - Cool பசை Pasai - Paste புட்டில Buttil-Bottle காசு Kaasu -Cash, Casino and all connected words. Kazaariyan ( means Kaasu + Ariyan காசை அரிந்தவன்) The people who understand money i.e The masters of money. துவட்டல் Thuvattal - Towel கட்டு மரம் Kattu Maram - Catamaran. வழி Vazhi- Way குருனை Karunai - Corn பல Pala - Poly பிரப்பு Pirappu-Birth உருண்டை Urundai Round. உருளை Urulai- World மாங்காய் Mangai- Mango கொய்யா Goyya- Gauva ஒன்று Ondru- One எட்டு Ettu - Eight வெற்றி Vettry- Victory வாகனம் Vaaganam- Wagon கயிறு Kayiru - Coir அவ்வை Avvai - Eve காலம் தெரி Kaalam Teri - Calander தரை Tharai - Terra, Terrain. அல் தரை Ul Tharai - Ultra ( Meaning out of this World/ Earth/ Land) மஹா திரை Maha thirai - மாத்திரை Mathirai - Meter குறிப்பு Kurippu - Script நாகம் Naakam Snake பொத்தான் Poththan-Button உருள் Urul - Roll உரய் Urai - Orate உரைகள் Uraigal - Oracle இன்ஜி Inji-Ginjer தொலை Tholai - Tele ( Tholai Pesi - Telephone, Tholai kaatchi , or Tholai Vizhiyam-Television) தேக்கு Thekku - Teak அரிசி Arisi - Rice பரிசு Parisu - Prize மூலக்கூறு Moolakkooru - Molecule மிக மகா மஹா Miga, Maga, Maha - Mega பிணி Pini - Pain அளவு Alavu - Level தரை உலா Tarai Ula - Travel சுற்றம் Suttram- Surround கைப்பற்று Kaipatru- Capture பிள Pila - Plough கட்டில் Kattil - Cot இல்லம் Illam-Villa கண்டு Kandu - Candy கன்சி Kanji - Conji பந்தல் Pandhal - Pandal கல் வெட்டு Kal Vettu - Culvert சுருட்டு Suruttu - Cheroot சிறுத்தை Siruthai - Cheetah களி Kali - Clay கரை Karai - Cry பெற்றோர் ஒப்புதல் Petror Oppudhal - Betrothal சரணடைய Saranadai - Surrender தாங்கி Thaangi - Tank பீப்பாய் (meaning a hollow barrel)Peepaai - Pipe பழைய Pzhaya - Paleo ( Greek) ex Paleontology, paleolithic புட்டு Puttu - Puddings எம்பிரான் Embiran - Emperor தெய்யல் Theyyal- Theyyalar tailor. தெச்சு Techchu - Stitch தச்சர்/தச்சன் Thachchar-Tecnician ( Margret Thachar is from a family of ancient roof making profession. Stitching leaves / branches for making roofs) ஒப்பாரி Oppari a kind of dance drama art - Opera. விழி Vizhi- Vision *Still there are hundreds of words gone to English from us. Mind-boggling connection 😯*

[@l0os176]

4:38 Would Cornish count as a revived language? I remember reading about the last native speaker dying, but there's a revival movement now. There aren't many people speaking it (only a few thousand I think) but at one point the number of native speakers was 0.

[@gamma_nerd]

According to my research, while knowledge and use of Cornish is revitalized, there are no native speakers and the revival is mostly in the form of a second language.

[@l0os176]

@@gamma_nerd Ah, thanks! Good stuff

[@lambert801]

Just because there are no surviving written records of Persian before 550 BC doesn't mean the language didn't exist before that. Same as with all the other languages on this list.

[@thomasrealdance]

Wasn't there a relation with Elamite, which *was* written around the same time as Sumerian ... and what about the inscriptions of Darius the Great? Don't tell me that was as recent as 5xx CE ...

[@lambert801]

@@thomasrealdance Elamite is a completely different language, much older than Persian. The inscription of Behistun (by Darius the Great) was made in about 520 BCE, not CE.

[@thomasrealdance]

Thank you, good to know!

[@omarjosehassaanfarinas5283]

Hello. What about Arabic? It is a bit more relevant than some of the languages on your list, I should think? What criteria was applied to exclude it but include Aramaic or Coptic Egyptian?

[@Lexivor]

This is the criterion that excludes Arabic :"1) The “start date” for a language is the earliest attested written record of that language." Arabic just isn't old enough.

[@Lexivor]

@@RobinoftheHod So you didn't understand my comment at all. Reread it slowly, several times, looking up any words you don't understand. Maybe that will help.

[@olivierdastein2604]

There's almost no trace of written Arabic before a pretty recent time (by comparison with the languages listed). You can follow the evolution of ancient Egyptian into Coptic for 5000 years thanks to all the writings Egyptians left, for instance, and Aramaic for 3 000 years, with very abundant examples because it was basically the "international language" of the antiquity in the middle east, so you find ancient writings in Aramaic everywhere there. Meanwhile, examples of written Arabic are not only much more recent but also extraordinarily rare before the Arab expansion. Arabic languages before Mohamed are very poorly known. Arabic only became relevant after the 7th century, so if you're talking "old", Coptic and Aramaic, despite not being relevant anymore *nowadays* certainly can be included.

[@eliasbc430]

@Notyourbis3000 years that’s nabateen my friend not arabic , indeed there’s inscriptions in Arabic dated back to the 3rd and 4th but not a thousand

[@debodatta7398]

This is an incredibly shitty video badly researched there's no way he could say Sanskrit went extinct and then claim Hindi is still part of the tradition of Sanskrit from thousands of years ago (even though earliest form of Sanskrit we have is from 1 century bce, it is only proposed Sanskrit that is older because it is known that Sanskrit started out in a different area and travelled down to India so we use the history of the other peoples like the Persians, Armenians and other India-aryan groups to date it... on top of that with a flimsily claim like that excluding Arabic from here is just nonsense as well as any other language since the continuum is the same...

[@fredericjanelle]

Ce vidéo est très intéressant. merci pour le bon travail.

[@Alaedious]

Pourquoi 'ce' vidéo? C'est curieux. 'Vidéo' est un nom féminin.

[@fredericjanelle]

@@Alaedious Salut l'ami, bonne question. je suis allé voir sur internet et voici ce que j'ai trouvé : "Bien que le nom vidéo soit souvent employé au masculin au Canada, son genre est en fait féminin" . Donc, au Canada/Québec, nous avons tendance à dire : ce vidéo...

[@Alaedious]

Bien! Je me demandais si ce n'était pas pour cette raison aussi. 😊

[@a.v.j5664]

4:40 isn’t accurate since the uralic livonian language died in 2013, but has since gained a new native speaker who was born in 2020 but started speaking livonian in 2022-23

[@Ggdivhjkjl]

From whom did he learn? Manx and Cornish are also revived languages but no revived language has reached the success level of Hebrew, even if it was very imperfectly revived.

[@a.v.j5664]

@@Ggdivhjkjl *she learned it from her parents who had learned it before it went extinct as a second language

[@MichaelSidneyTimpson]

Mutual intelligibility between Chinese languages is a joke. It is like speaking Icelandic to English person and expecting them to understand. And that is the Modern languages, Min is WAAAAY different, along with many others. Yes, there is certainly intelligibility between written languages, but it is not 1:1, and that's not even addressing the vast difference between traditional and simplified characters.

[@tomasbyrom3954]

Apparently Hokkien and Mandarin have less than 40% mutual ineligibility. So it'd probably be easier for an English speaker to understand Icelandic than for a Mandarin speaker to understand Hokkien

[@infoworld7706]

it doesn't mean all of them, but majority of them

[@MichaelSidneyTimpson]

@@infoworld7706 not a majority, because it isn't based on a group as whole. Neigboring languages have more mutual intelligibility that more distant ones. There's also when and how they evolved in the process.

[@debodatta7398]

This is an incredibly shitty video badly researched there's no way he could say Sanskrit went extinct and then claim Hindi is still part of the tradition of Sanskrit from thousands of years ago (even though earliest form of Sanskrit we have is from 1 century bce, it is only proposed Sanskrit that is older because it is known that Sanskrit started out in a different area and travelled down to India so we use the history of the other peoples like the Persians, Armenians and other India-aryan groups to date it... on top of that with a flimsily claim like that excluding Arabic from here is just nonsense as well as any other language since the continuum is the same...

[@MiguelCorreiaDaCunha]

"Portuguese: it doesn't matter". Me, a brazillian: oh, no you didn't!

[@stegotyranno4206]

12:51 Classical and Prakrit division was more like educated lingua franca vs colloquial. Therr were still upper classes who spoke Prakrit, but Classical was more often used in formal documents and poetry.

[@king_halcyon]

Classical Sanskrit was more like literary-formal one as you said, and also influenced more Dravidian languages than Prakrits did.

[@debodatta7398]

This is an incredibly shitty video badly researched there's no way he could say Sanskrit went extinct and then claim Hindi is still part of the tradition of Sanskrit from thousands of years ago (even though earliest form of Sanskrit we have is from 1 century bce, it is only proposed Sanskrit that is older because it is known that Sanskrit started out in a different area and travelled down to India so we use the history of the other peoples like the Persians, Armenians and other India-aryan groups to date it... on top of that with a flimsily claim like that excluding Arabic from here is just nonsense as well as any other language since the continuum is the same...

[@davexenos9196]

I think you may have forgotten AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL languages. Believe it or not they didn`t go around grunting at each other, in fact they have been happily chatting away with each other for about 70,000 years.

[@chrisschneiders6734]

Asking the same question, wasn't a written language thou..

[@Lexivor]

All humans have ancestors that have been speaking with each other for 70,000 years. No specific language is even close to being that old.

[@ayeRiseAi]

In that case language of north sentinelese would be oldest as they are the only last uncontacted tribe on earth.

[@scriptranda2670]

Lol, Australian Aboriginals are indians. It's probably some form of sanskrit

[@Lexivor]

@@scriptranda2670 That's not even remotely true.

[@jdschneider5858]

Wow! That was fascinating!. You certainly packed a lot of information into a few minutes. It helps to speak fast and clearly 🙂 Bravissimo!!

[@perfesser944]

It was actually Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon (the "Catholic Kings").

[@ahmadzuribshaamerifke5671]

There are many words in Bahasa Melayu & Bahasa Indonesia, possibly in the other languages in Southeast Asia that are borrowed from Sanskrit. The best example would be the city and country of Singapore - from Singapura literally translated from Sanskrit as Lion City.

[@WhiteDevil_XO]

Tamil is the oldest living language in the world and the oldest literature is "tholkappiyam" which belongs to the 10,000BCE. The country name of Singapore originated from the Tamil Language, because the word Singa means Singam(Lion) and Pore --> Pur --> Puram... That's why Singapore --> Singapuram (Lion's City) and Under the chola dynasty the king Rajaraja Cholan and his descendents who ruled most of southeast Asia and expanded his territory and you know what In Singapore has declared tamil is one of the official language to the country... So It's just my thoughts and let us know what's your thinking?

[@Rhythm412]

@@WhiteDevil_XO no friend, many malay Indonesian words derive their origin from Sanskrit. for example, the words bahasa, suami, putra, vijiaya, suarga etc. Also javanese also has many sanskrit based words. there are also a few tamil words in Indonesia because of Cholas. Singapore name has a sanskrit. Please provide proof that Tamil is 10000 years old, for me it would be >3000 years old.

[@WhiteDevil_XO]

@@Rhythm412 hey my friend, Maybe you just try to Google "Tamil language age" and "Sanskrit language age"... It may helps you☺️

[@johnbannister9212]

How do you expect your audience to take this all in at your speed of delivery and understand let alone enjoy it? I gave up early.

[@toonedin]

I _'took it all in'_ at 2x video speed. That is the default speed at which I watch KZbin videos. That is my way of coping with information overload crossed with the fear of missing out. Oh and I watch on Vanced so no time wasted on ads, sponsors, intros, outros and all the other fluff other than the actual subject of the video. 😎

[@Dida16]

What impressed me the most is that almost every person who commented here is suggesting his native language as one of the oldest. Although we all know which are the oldest languages from historical events and mentions to discoveries and resources. Every single language is beautiful, has its history, and travels through time with its traditions ❤

[@Ggdivhjkjl]

Some sources say there are still a small number of native Coptic speakers. The Coptic pronunciation dispute is evidence of this for else the pronunciation reform, instituted by the Church hierarchy, would never has caused any controversy.

[@zimriel]

My understanding is that some Coptic Christians have intermittently been devout enough to attempt to raise their children in this language but that this doesn't tend to survive school. In large part because their parents themselves speak Arabic as their first language.

[@debodatta7398]

This is an incredibly shitty video badly researched there's no way he could say Sanskrit went extinct and then claim Hindi is still part of the tradition of Sanskrit from thousands of years ago (even though earliest form of Sanskrit we have is from 1 century bce, it is only proposed Sanskrit that is older because it is known that Sanskrit started out in a different area and travelled down to India so we use the history of the other peoples like the Persians, Armenians and other India-aryan groups to date it... on top of that with a flimsily claim like that excluding Arabic from here is just nonsense as well as any other language since the continuum is the same...

[@sansway]

Earliest attestation belongs to Tamil is from 450BCE wherever for Sanskrit it is 1st century BCE....theres no evidence of sanskrit before that...how u tell that sanskrit is older thaan Tamil...And your Video topic is Oldest surviving language..u know what is mean for that..still now Tamil is spoken by more than 120M peoples around the world..Official languages of India, Srilanka, Singapore... recognised language of Malaysia, Mauritius, South Africa...and till not get the mention in this video is ridiculous

[@Śiśna3633]

Thumbs down. This guy is claiming the dead languages as living languages. False and purpose made propaganda.

[@kiruthikashashna9093]

Tamil 👍🏻.. 💐

[@Am-ih5nf]

Actually Sanskrit didnt exist until 1000 CE. Hindu nationalists try to claim otherwise.

[@raphgalban2007]

@@Am-ih5nfOldest written evidence does not mean the language was totally nonexistent before then

[@kumar3321]

Why this video doesn’t mention Tamil which is almost contemporary to Sanskriti and has been a widely spoken as well as written language since millennia. Although Sanskrit too is still read and written it has been reduced to be merely a classical language only and ceased to be the language of masses. Hence, Tamil qualifies to be oldest surviving language of the humanity. The KZbinr of this must take note of this fact and may do necessary corrections.

[@Birch37]

Some Australian Aboriginal languages have been around since 2000+ BCE? Some maybe still spoken today....

[@aftp4i94]

A decent number are still spoken today. The problem is they never developed a written form of their languages so pinning down a start date is near impossible. I guess that an Aboriginal language is probably the oldest still spoken language.

[@olivierdastein2604]

@@aftp4i94 How could it be "oldest"? All languages necessarily go back in time to the origin of mankind, and probably before, changing and evolving as time passes. It's only arbitrarily that we divide the evolution of a given language by giving it a different name. The oldest known form of the language spoken in France is called Latin, its most recent form is called French, and a date has been arbitrarily chosen when this language isn't called anymore medieval Latin and is called instead Old French. And of course linguists have partially reconstructed the remote ancestor of Latin (and most other languages of Europe, Iran, India, etc...), proto-indo European. We can't go further, but proto indo-European was necessarily itself the result of the evolution of some earlier language, which itself..etc....And it's necessarily the same for Aboriginal languages. There's no "start date" for any language, except one arbitrarily defined like in the example of Latin and French, or the oldest known use of it (in written form), such as the earliest Egyptian or Chinese writings.

[@butterw55]

Very nice. I especially liked the pinball "free game" sound effect whenever there's a "Golden Age".

[@reymohammed7040]

Somehow, you missed the Kartvelian languages, whose most ancient member, Svan, may have been spoken by Medea.

[@debodatta7398]

This is an incredibly shitty video badly researched there's no way he could say Sanskrit went extinct and then claim Hindi is still part of the tradition of Sanskrit from thousands of years ago (even though earliest form of Sanskrit we have is from 1 century bce, it is only proposed Sanskrit that is older because it is known that Sanskrit started out in a different area and travelled down to India so we use the history of the other peoples like the Persians, Armenians and other India-aryan groups to date it... on top of that with a flimsily claim like that excluding Arabic from here is just nonsense as well as any other language since the continuum is the same...

[@whoops0]

What do you mean by Indic languages? There are 3 language families in India. Sanskirt Language Family(Indo-European languages), Tamil language family(Dravidian languages) and tibetian language family.

[@elainethomson7146]

Where does the Basque language fit into your scheme?

[@olivierdastein2604]

It doesn't, given that he obviously-only covers languages whose early form is known, hence have been written. Nobody knows what the ancestor of Basque might have been like 2000 or 5000 years ago.

[@elainethomson7146]

Thanks, I have often wondered which is why I asked. I believe that it's one of the oldest-spoken languages, if not the oldest.

[@tadcotadco6344]

Where is the Armenian?

[@NovelsLover-zz]

Country or language

[@olexanderdanko7001]

What about Lithuanian?

[@olivierdastein2604]

There's no trace of what the ancestor of Lithuanian was like several thousands years ago, contrarily to the languages he mentioned in the video.

[@geraroda2868]

@@olivierdastein2604 Not true. There is the trace. Read the Bible (about Adam and Eve).

[@alex-iz5jv]

love ur vids

[@schs1977]

It would be interesting for hear about the different languages of Native Americans (US), such as Cherokee, Navajo, Choctow, Ojibew, Iroquoin, Shoshoni, the languages of First Nations in Canada such as Siouan, Dene, Blackfoot, Inuit,Tsimshian and of Greenland's native people.

[@nsawatchlistbait289]

I love the music selections

[@YuvalYosseph]

I wish my mom and grandma wouldve taught me Ladino, kinda sad to see that beautiful language fade away to time

[@nelsonperez8855]

Yuva Yosseph: You can learned spanish language! It's very similar to the Ladino language, and then after that you can learned Ladino language! Easy right.

[@talmoskowitz5221]

I attended a Seder with traditional Ladino melodies. Astoundingly beautiful. Try to find a Ladino Passover or a recording.

[@dragskcinnay3184]

4:43 no, that happened to other lesser known languages, such as Cornish...

[@compatriot852]

No Lithuanian? It's one of the oldest Indo European languages still retaining a lot of aspects lost in other languages all be it the written language is much more recent

[@joemiller947]

The oldest Lithuanian text is from the 16th century, not particularly old. Of course lithuanian is likely older than the 16th century, but we don't know how old. Proto-Balto-Slavic only split into the Slavic and Baltic branches around 2400 years ago at most, when many of the Greek epics had already been written for hundreds of years.

[@Msmworldofelements]

What makes Persian language so great is that us persian speakers still can kinda understand the old Persian despite being almost 2000 years apart

[@PanglossDr]

This was completely wrong. Most of what you talked about were families of languages. For this to be sensible you should look at how far back speakers of modern languages would be able to understand their ancestors.

[@pcongre]

04:40 "first and only language...revived" Wait, what about Italian/literary Tuscan? : )

[@gwdesfa]

8:10 The dialect of Athens (Attic dialect) is...ionian

[@TheImperatorKnight]

Nice video! Really enjoyed it and the one on the day Latin died.

[@LAM_AUT_ECU]

You forgot Basque, pre Indo-European, no-one really knows how old it is but ancient Basque could well be over 7000 years old. Other isolates communities such as the natives of North Sentinel Islands probably have even older languagaes. Probably some language isolates in Australia are older as well.

[@olivierdastein2604]

How could they be "older" than other languages? Every language necessarily had an ancestor 2000 years ago, which had an ancestor 5000 years ago, which had an ancestor 20 000 years ago, and so on... All languages are equally old. But an early form of the languages he lists is known because they were written, while nobody knows what the ancestors of Basque, North Sentinelese or Australian aboriginal languages were like.

[@dogvom]

1:30 It was *_Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile,_* not Ferdinand of Castile and Isabella of Aragon.

[@SchmulKrieger]

In the Middle Ages, Northern Italy spoke German dialects. Some villages and region bordering Switzerland or Austria still do.

[@amon7039]

But molecular anthropologists indicate that the residents in Northern Italy today are mainly the descendants of Roman Italians by blood. If the Lombard migrations did not bring about large-scale population replacement, then the use of Germanic languages was probably confined only to the nobility and few Lombard settlement villages.

[@dcs4219]

thanks for the post

[@takiyahchappelle3840]

ur so underrated

[@sashaconrad3939]

I love languages and think this video is so interesting!

[@tango_cathal2029]

genuinely thought you were a big channel, and i loved the video, but hebrew isnt the only language that was ever revived with no native speakers. there's even languages that died completely, with no fluent or native speakers, that have been revived today, cornish, manx and livonian!

[@gamma_nerd]

thanks for the compliments and for the insight! Hebrew is definitely the most successful language revival but it definitely isn't the only one like I said in this vid. stay tuned for more videos!

[@MottiShneor]

@@gamma_nerd What, Klingon?

[@gamma_nerd]

@@MottiShneor Other language revival movements are more recent and less successful than Hebrew, but they're out there!

[@MottiShneor]

@@gamma_nerdNever said otherwise! I visited Ireland in round 2000, and had lots of talks about their desperate attempt to revive their old Celtic variant, and their failure to "bring it back to the street" They did quite a LOT to bring it back. I just wanted to put a little more "meat" into your information - how it came to be - and what was done, and by who - to explain this quite rare phenomena. There in Ireland, I went to the north-west islands where they have signs (can't spell but they sound like "Gael Tacht" - Gaelic speaking areas) just to listen to some old guys speaking the old language. And I'm not a linguist, it isn't even my hobby... yet I really wanted to hear "real Irish" speak. English was imposed on them, and although they did VERY WELL with English - It would be nice to have "real Irish" still exist and flourish. I'm so happy to have my English mediocre in comparison to my native Hebrew...

[@MottiShneor]

@@gamma_nerd 🤣Ah... you were referring to this little joke of mine... Oh, come on. There's plenty of stuff to make videos about. Not only on revival of languages, but I think - on dying languages (like the Yidish and Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic dialects) it is VERY interesting. See my notes about Ireland - It really deserves a good video - and also maybe an answer to "why it doesn't succeed" and how to make it succeed.

[@hglundahl]

1:20 The language of the élite did not stop being spoken as a first language. It was never all that separate from Vulgar Latin, it was about as different as "are not / is not" English from "ain't" English. There was never a time when in the Western Roman Empire the élite were totally not native speakers of Latin (except England and Wales).

[@albertlee4630]

Written Sanskrit was derived from Aramaic which ultimately originated from Egyptian Hieroglyphs. It's younger than Greek which lies in the same branch of the alphabetic family tree as Aramaic. The Chinese Oracle Bone script is older than the Greek alphabet although it was a contemporary of the Greek Linear B script, which is no longer in use. Both Greek and Chinese are definitely older than Sanskrit based on your "oldest written language" criterion, so it baffles me why you call Sanskrit the oldest.

[@olivierdastein2604]

Calling a language "oldest" makes little sense to begin with, and the choices made for this video seem pretty arbitrary to me.

[@pauls3204]

What about Brythonic languages of Wales Scotland Isle of Man Ireland Cornwall ? All still spoken all older than the Roman Empire all older than Latin.

[@cindyhuang7021]

this vid is actully underated and this is actully the real china that the amarican mainstream media actully dont show you

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

Church latin might not what a written form as they write in classical latin, but make no mistake classical latin was forgotten with the monks speaking church latin.

[@diaamuharam6602]

We still in Egypt used many coptic words in our Egyptian dialect till nowadays

[@dekenlst]

I thought the Copts were still speaking Coptic. How come they don't?

[@diaamuharam6602]

@@dekenlst After being occupied by different nations from Macedonians to Romans to Arabs to Ottmans, native Egyptians started to adopt the language of the ruling elite

[@free2trudge]

You forgot Euskara. It has adopted a phonetic alphabet for written form, but it’s still spoken and is older than Latin. Maybe much much older.

[@steenandersen1163]

What about African click-languages ? I thought they where the oldest existing languages.

[@olivierdastein2604]

There's no "oldest language." All languages are equally old, think about it. It's not like people weren't speaking until someone came up with the idea of using your mouth to make sounds and communicate, and it happened at different moments in different places. Humans have been using language since the dawn of times, and languages evolved and changed over time. Any language you can think of is the result of the evolution of a former language, derived itself from another older language derived from an even older language, etc....And that's true for every language on the planet, be it click languages, English, Cherokee, etc... But early forms of some languages are known while they aren't for others. We know what the ancestor of Coptic language 5 000 years ago was like because Egyptians wrote it on their monuments. But we have no idea about what the ancestor of click languages was like even only 1000 years ago because it wasn't written hence has left no trace.

[@CarlosdeArteaga]

I'm curious to know what Gamma Nerd knows about the Basque language. Linguists believe that it predates the arrival of Indo-European languages. Does that make it older than the top five listed in the video? Just sayin.

[@romeyjondorf]

I can read Hebrew and I am learning the language on Duolingo, as I am Jewish :) Great video!

[@gamma_nerd]

עם ישראל חי

[@aymanardo1322]

Free palestine 🇵🇸

[@gamma_nerd]

@@aymanardo1322 You can be a proud Jew and pro-Israel while also supporting your Palestinian brothers and sisters

[@varoonnone7159]

Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are Hindu Buddhist lands under Islamic colonisation. Free those lands !

[@varoonnone7159]

I'm a Hindu Atheist. A proud zionist who couldn't care less about Palestinians Our lives don't have any value in their eyes. They will never be our brothers and sisters

[@robin82pb94]

You forgot the Basque, in Europe. The problem is written / oral langage ?

[@olivierdastein2604]

Why specifically Basque? It's not different from any other random language.Obviously, in this video, he only mentions languages with a known early form 2000, 3000, 5000 years ago. Nobody knows what Basque was like during the antiquity. And the fact that its remote ancestor was presumably spoken in Europe before the ancestors of Indo-European languages were doesn't make it older than them.

[@VbombzDaBomberman]

Do you mean oldest written languages? Languages with attested (non-theoretical) ancestors?

[@gamma_nerd]

My criteria for the list are in the description!

[@geoffreyharris5931]

Very good.

[@delta606]

Just a correction "Κοινή - Common (Greek)" isn't read as "Koine", the οι sound together make the "ee" sound, so it would be read as "Keenee"

[@marienkijne]

Would it in Koine Greek tho

[@wodzisaww.5500]

@@marienkijne Iotacism was complete during the Koine era. It would be read as either /kyné/ or /kyní/ during the Imperial period. /koinέ/ is an outdated pronunciation for the time period.

[@zimriel]

@@wodzisaww.5500 Unsure about this. Rome was already transcribing Greek when the East was Hellenistic and the Latins agreed to write "oi" as "oe" and not [long] "i".

[@delta606]

@@marienkijne it is probable that it would yes. Although there has been some speculation that these double vowel sounds could have been pronounced separately, they are dismissed as non factual. On the other hand, we have plenty of evidence that they were pronounced as they are today, both by historical sources (and the Roman lectors), grammatic sources and the sheer fact that the sound probably stayed as it was compared to others in the Greek language.

[@joemiller947]

It's pronounced that way in Modern Greek yes, but not in Koine itself, which is why everyone outside of Greece says it the original way.

[@alekob.3791]

7:41 what about Linear A?

[@petefluffy7420]

Nothing from Australia? I thought surely there would be, with a culture stretching back for over 60 000 years, I thought there would be at least one.

[@petefluffy7420]

An update - toe quotes from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pama%E2%80%93Nyungan_languages. "The Pama-Nyungan languages are the most widespread family of Australian Aboriginal languages" and "Pama-Nyungan languages evolved around 5,000 years ago through the use of Proto-Pama-Nyungan, the ancestor of Pama-Nyungan languages? If th3e age of 5 000 tears is correct it is bar the oldest, making the others merely middle aged. not old

[@dijeffglota7668]

I really enjoy your vídeos

[@englishwithmory]

Persian was actually used even before the Achaemenids.

[@madjames1134]

Old Persian, unintelligible with Modern Persian.

[@dorianphilotheates3769]

Well done! 👍

[@marcarphd]

Well made video.

[@herwigmenzel5179]

North Sentinel Island is populated by people who have had no contact with the outside world for approximately 60 000 years and would have spoken aa language lasting that long , Because languages are living things changing over time this language would also have changed , slowly but staying basically the same language , now approximately 60,000 years old

[@zimriel]

Show me a book the Sentinelese wrote 50000 years ago or even 4 years ago, and we can talk

[@midtskogen]

This video was about the longest written tradition. As far as I know, the Sentinelese have none. The 60,000 year isolation claim is dubious anyway, but their language might belong to a family that has been pretty isolated for 60,000 years.

[@jeffcauhape6880]

How about Basque? It is thought to be pre-Indo-european and still spoken today. That ought to be old enough to count! :D

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

I disagree completely. I define something being the same language if native speakers of the language can understand each other. Thus latin and italian are different languages. So all languages end up being less than 1000 years old. Turn back the clock for an englishman in Hempshire and 500 years back he will no longer understand (unless hes studdied other germanic languages and especially older english). Turn back the clock for an icelander in Reikjevik for 1100 years and he will be able to understand, they have a very conservative language, this is far from the norm (the iland was settled 1100 years ago). I actually have no idea how far back the clock could you turn for me a latvietis here Madonā, partly because Im very masterful in my language and have much education including in the field of baltic filology and I cant objectively adjust for that do to my pride, but mainly because the oldest atested form of my language proper is less than 200 years old and we have dont exactly know when my language really came to be as all texts from centuries ago are german-latvian its more of a pigin language the german lords knew not the language our ancestors spoke. Looking at the fosilized grammer of folksongs I understand everything but thats the whole point when a folksons element becomes uninteligable the singers change it for something more modern so even the oldest folkson is always inteligable but we cant date them... Weird when ethnogenisis is much easyer to answer than linguistics, my people came to be after the black death in 1350 when so many people dying broke down tribal loyalties and the survivors merged to the nation that exists to this day.

[@lambert801]

Some languages have changed very little in the past 1000 years, such as Persian, my own mother tongue. I could read and completely understand poems from 800-900 years ago as a 11-year-old, with my limited vocabulary and knowledge of grammar even then.

[@GamersOdyssey]

@@lambert801 Same with Greek, we can very easily understand Koine Greek, it just sounds like "old/formal" Greek.

[@kristianrodd5809]

There are many surviving languages far older than these, however they can’t be ‘attested’ because they didn’t have written forms. For example, surviving Australian Aboriginal languages are orders of magnitude older than the ones mentioned in this video. Philologists have many methods aside from written records to assess the historical development trends of languages.

[@VeraBousiou]

Ancient Greek can be understood by modern Greek speakers with some effort, the continuity is rather astonishing. Now, if your talking pace was a bit slower, your intonation was better and you didn't chew the endings of the words your video would have been so much better. When we're talking about language we must also take care of our style of speech so to get our messages better across. A friendly suggestion.

[@gamma_nerd]

Thanks for your kind and constructive words! My enunciation could definitely be better.

[@SWLinPHX]

You can slow the pace/tempo of the video down without distorting the pitch using KZbin playback controls.

[@patriciaaturner289]

What about Basque? We don’t know how old it is.

[@anjadyrting3206]

Love this!

[@achyuthavm]

While the Vedas were composed around 1500 BCE, the language of Sanskrit itself would have been around for at least a little bit before right?

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

Great, YT has again deleted my longest and most thoughtful comment.

[@olivierdastein2604]

Do you have any idea of why?

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

@@olivierdastein2604 Yt is becomming more draconian by the month.

[@YogendranBaptist]

You are totally wrong, Tamil is the oldest language not Sanskrit. Still Tamil is spoken in India, Srilanka, Mauritius island, Singapore, Malaysia and South Africa

[@nehemiahmarcus308]

I had Latin and Greek in college. I took them for my language requirement because I thought it might be easier than a modern language.

[@varoonnone7159]

Easier? Here in France, choosing latin and greek in secondary school is a way for the upper bourgeoisie to distinguish itself from the african/maghrebi popular classes

[@Onnarashi]

But...Greek IS a modern language?

[@varoonnone7159]

@@Onnarashi Ancient Greek ! Taught as part as classics

[@MottiShneor]

And? were they?

[@eleniasimop]

...and you found out it wasn't!

[@melissaberman8244]

Thank you 🙏

[@pcongre]

3:09 I thought David's united kingdom (probably) wasn't historical? According to religionforbreakfast, at least ^^

[@king_halcyon]

David was. United kingdom I don’t know and scholars also.

[@king_halcyon]

*not modern UK!

[@gamma_nerd]

I tried to strike a balance between the secular and religious view for people watching. But it is true that the Israelites eventually went from a tribal confederation to a united nation, whether that union was political or just cultural. King David and King Solomon likely existed though!

[@Ggdivhjkjl]

Surprised you didn't mention Tsakonian during the Greek section.

[@BloodRider1914]

He did it as a quick side bar

[@andrefmartin]

I think it is worth do honorable mention the Germanic language from where English language can be related. as well the Slavic branch of the family, spoken since the barbarian times.

[@CakeLoverCreeper]

Why was Aramaic not mentioned, there are still some people speaking it

[@qalidurut7249]

If sanskirt is on this list Nubian and Coptic also should've been considered