Even if you’re not a linguist, you probably know that languages evolve over time. English comes from Old English, Chinese comes from Old Chinese, and French comes from — well, you get the picture.
But what is the oldest language in the world, and what languages did it evolve into? Follow our ancient language guide to learn all about the oldest languages in the world, how long ago they originated, and whether or not people still speak them today.
Table of Contents
What was the world’s first language?
According to linguistic archaeologists, the world’s oldest language is called Proto-Sapiens or Proto-Human language. However, like all protolanguages, this early language is only a concept of a language, and there is no written evidence for it.
Based on archaeological studies of human migration, many linguists believe that spoken language first emerged in early humans over 135,000 years ago in the Middle Paleolithic period on the African continent. Because that’s long before our earliest records of written language, we don’t have artifacts that describe how a Proto-Human language looked or sounded.
What languages evolved from Proto-Sapiens/Proto-Human?
Theoretically, every language humans speak evolved from a Proto-Human language. Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor language of English, Spanish, French, and Farsi, is a conceptual descendant of this early human language. So are Proto-Afroasiatic (ancestor language to Arabic and Hebrew), Proto-Niger-Congo (ancestor language to Swahili and Yoruba), and Proto-Sino-Tibetan (ancestor language to Mandarin and Tibetan). All the world’s languages are potentially connected!
The top 5 oldest languages in the world
Humans began keeping written records around 5,000 years ago, making it possible for archaeologists and linguists to track the evolution of the world’s oldest languages. Check out how the five oldest written languages in the world came about and changed over time, and how they appear in modern usage today.
1. Sumerian
Known as one of the oldest languages in the world, the Sumerian language dates back to 3100 B.C.E. It was likely spoken throughout the Sumer civilization in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and Kuwait) until around 2000 B.C.E. Although Sumerian was not spoken by a large population, its speakers created many written texts for business, academics, legal documents, and sacred literature.
Sumerian was a language isolate, meaning that it was not closely related to other languages, and it did not evolve into languages we use today. It was also an agglutinative language that used short syllables to change the meaning of a word. It was most likely the first language to use the cuneiform writing system, a series of pictographs cut into clay, stone, or wood.
As Sumerian is an extinct language with limited written artifacts, it has no full dictionary. However, linguist archaeologists have compiled academic Sumerian lexicons consisting of 1,000 signs that appear in written tablets.
A few examples of Sumerian words include:
| Sumerian Word | English Translation |
| á-sàñ | illness |
| kur | mountain |
| nè | strength |
| še | grain |
| še-ga | favorite |
2. Akkadian
The Akkadian language emerged in the written record around 3000 B.C.E., and was believed to have replaced Sumerian in Mesopotamia. A Semitic language in the Afro-Asiatic language family, Akkadian was named after the city of Akkad in Sumer and became a lingua franca (common language) in the Middle East, Egypt, and Northern Africa.
Although people don’t speak Akkadian today, significant dialects like Babylonian and Assyrian made a historical impact. Many ancient mathematical and astronomy documents were written in Babylonian, and Assyrian was closely related to Aramaic, a language still spoken today in the form of Neo-Aramaic.
Like Sumerian, Akkadian used cuneiform script in its documents and artifacts. Over 600 word and syllable signs appear in an Akkadian lexicon, including these Akkadian words:
| Akkadian Word | English Translation |
| adammum | garment |
| ajarum | flower |
| raggum | evil |
| rîșum | help |
| tîrtum | command |
3. Egyptian
The ancient Egyptian language was primarily spoken in the Nile Valley. It’s best known for its hieroglyphic writing system, which appeared in the written record around 3000 B.C.E. and documented historical events, religious rituals, interpersonal communication, and details from Egyptians’ everyday lives.
Ancient Egyptian was part of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It went through many evolutionary changes over the next five millennia, including adopting the demotic writing system (a cursive script read right to left) around 700 B.C.E. and the Greek alphabet in Coptic Egyptian. People in Egypt spoke Coptic Egyptian until the 17th century C.E., when it was replaced by Egyptian Arabic (a dialect of Arabic unrelated to ancient Egyptian).
The historically significant Rosetta Stone was written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, as well as demotic Egyptian and ancient Greek, allowing linguists to translate the hieroglyphs and create an Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary that includes words like:
| Egyptian Word | English Translation |
| āmes | first born |
| bakt | gift |
| iati | misfortune |
| paqit | shell |
| unnu | child |
4. Hittite
One of the earliest recorded languages of the Indo-European language family, the ancient Hittite language was spoken by the Hittite people of Anatolia (modern-day Türkiye). It has no known language descendants and is unrelated to modern Turkish or other languages of the Middle East. However, you may find traces of Hittite in modern Indo-European languages, including English. (The Hittite word for “water” is watar!)
Also known as Hattic or Hattian, written records of Hittite usage emerged around 2000 B.C.E., and most artifacts reference the Hittite language or the Hittite people who spoke it. However, there are some records of cuneiform script written in Hittite, primarily religious texts and legal documents.
Language projects, including the Hittite Dictionary of the University of Chicago, keep records of the Hittite language to preserve its place in history. Some examples of Hittite words include:
| Hittite Word | English Translation |
| lazziya | to be good |
| laššumi | seed–producing plant |
| mienu | gentle |
| nanankušši | gloomy |
| nuntarriya | to be quick |
5. Ancient Greek
Of all the oldest languages in the world, you’re probably most familiar with ancient Greek. Spoken during the second millennium B.C.E. in the Aegean Islands and the Anatolian coast, ancient Greek made its way to cities around the Mediterranean Sea and throughout southern Italy. It was replaced in these regions by Latin in the 6th and 7th centuries B.C.E., but was still widely spoken throughout Greece.
Ancient Greek is one of the most well-documented Indo-European languages, thanks to its prominence as a scholastic language in academic documents. It went through several language periods before evolving into modern Greek, a language that is distinctly different from its ancient ancestor.
Many Indo-European languages, including Latin, French, and English, use words from the ancient Greek dictionary. You may have seen these ancient Greek words in English:
| Ancient Greek Word | English Translation |
| agape | pure love |
| chaos | disorder |
| cosmos | the universe |
| gnosis | knowledge |
| phobia | a fear |
The 10 oldest languages still spoken today
Many of the world’s oldest languages, including Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hittite, aren’t in common usage today. But lots of people around the world still speak languages that came from long ago, and some ancient languages are among the most spoken languages in the world!
Though they may have evolved from their earliest versions, these 10 languages are still spoken in the 21st century:
- Sanskrit* (1500 B.C.E.): 14,000 speakers
- Chinese (1500 B.C.E.): 1.3 billion speakers
- Greek (1450 B.C.E.): 10 million speakers
- Aramaic (1100 B.C.E.): 500,000 speakers
- Hebrew (900 B.C.E.): 6 million speakers
- Farsi (550 B.C.E.): 70 million speakers
- Arabic (500 B.C.E.): 400 million speakers
- Tamil (500 B.C.E.): 91 million speakers
- Armenian (500 B.C.E.): 9 million
- Korean (57 B.C.E.): 75 million speakers
*Data from britannica.com, worlddata.com, and ethnologue.com.
FAQ about the world’s oldest languages
Still have some questions about the oldest language in the world? Discover more interesting facts about how human communication began.
Is Latin one of the world’s oldest languages?
As English speakers, we may be most familiar with Latin as the oldest language we know. After all, it’s the ancestor tongue to Romance languages like Spanish, French, and Italian. And since Latin is a dead language, it’s easy to put it in the same category as other ancient languages.
However, the Latin language is relatively young compared to languages like Sumerian and Akkadian. Its earliest records appear around 700 B.C.E., which is around the same time as Hebrew or Farsi. While these languages have been around for nearly 3,000 years, making them very old, they’re not as old as Sumerian and Akkadian, which date back over 5,000 years.
What country has the oldest language?
Depending on how you view languages, you could argue that either Iraq or Greece has the oldest language. As the modern-day site of ancient Mesopotamia, Iraq was home to some of the world’s oldest languages, including Sumerian and Akkadian.
But those languages are not spoken in 21st-century Iraq, so others may argue that Greece is home to the oldest language that’s still spoken (or at least, the modern version of it). It simply depends on how you look at it.
What is the oldest writing system?
Scholars believe that the oldest writing system is the cuneiform writing system used in ancient Mesopotamia. Writers used reeds and sticks to create wedge-shaped characters that symbolized different syllables and words. Its prominence in artifacts throughout civilizations suggests that it was a very influential writing system as well, allowing people to keep written records of their societies for the first time in human history.
Do people still learn ancient languages?
The oldest languages in the world may be a part of history, but they don’t need to stay there. Linguists and linguistic archaeologists are always learning more about these ancient languages, and with every new artifact comes a new link between our present-day communication patterns and our ancestral languages.
But linguistic archaeologists don’t get to have all the fun! If you’re interested in learning the modern-day versions of Farsi, Chinese, or another old language, discover how Rosetta Stone works and start your language learning journey today.
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