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Oldest Languages - (Arabic, Hebrew, Sanksrit, Latin, Tamil, Hieroglyphs, Middle Chinese, Greek)
Wednesday, 13 June 2007 - 6:45 PM SL Time |  | |
ARABIC
The earliest Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, texts are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not in reality connected with Thamud. Later came the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered `Proto-Arabic`, but Pre-Classical Arabic.
By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet.
HEBREW
As a language, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. Hebrew (Israel) and Moabite (Jordan) are Southern Canaanite while Phoenician (Lebanon) are Northern Canaanite. Canaanite is closely related to Aramaic and to a lesser extent South-Central Arabic. Whereas other Canaanite languages and dialects have become extinct, Hebrew survived. Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in Israel from the 10th century BC until just before the Byzantine Period in the 3rd or 4th century AD. Afterward Hebrew continued as a literary language until the Modern Era when it was revived as a spoken language in the 19th century.
Hebrew is a Semitic language, and as such a member of the larger Afro-Asiatic phylum. Within Semitic, the Northwest Semitic languages formed around the 3rd millennium BC, grouped with the Arabic languages as Central Semitic. The Canaanite languages are a group within Northwest Semitic, emerging in the 2nd millennium BC in the Levant, gradually separating from Aramaic and Ugaritic.
SANSKRITt
The language name samsksrtam is derived from the past participle samskrtah `self-made, self-done` of the verb sam(s)kar- `to make self`, where sam- `with, together, self` and (s)kar- `do, make`. In modern usage, the verbal adjective saṃskṛta- has come to mean `cultured`. The language referred to as samskrtā vāk `the language of cultured` has by definition always been a `high` language, used for religious and learned discourse and contrasted with the languages spoken by the people. It is also called deva-bhāṣā meaning `language of the gods`. The oldest surviving Sanskrit grammar is Pānini`s Aṣṭādhyāyī (`Eight-Chapter Grammar`) dating to circa the 5th century BC. It is essentially a prescriptive grammar, i.e., an authority that defines (rather than describes) correct Sanskrit, although it contains descriptive parts, mostly to account for Vedic forms that had already passed out of use in Panini`s time.
Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-Aryan sub-family of the Indo-European family of languages. Together with the Iranian languages it belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch and as such is part of the Satem group of Indo-European languages, which also includes the Balto-Slavic branch.
LATIN
Latin is a member of the Italic languages, and the Latin alphabet is based on the Old Italic alphabet, which is in turn derived from the Greek alphabet. Latin was first brought to the Italian peninsula in the 9th or 8th century BC by migrants from the north, who settled in the Latium region, around the River Tiber, where the Roman civilization first developed. Latin was influenced by the Celtic dialects and the non-Indo-European Etruscan language of northern Italy.
Although surviving Roman literature consists almost entirely of Classical Latin, an artificial and highly stylized literary language whose Golden Age spanned from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD (encompassing the greatest Roman prose writers and poets like Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Livy, and Caesar, among others), the actual spoken language of the Western Roman Empire was Vulgar Latin, which significantly differed from Classical Latin in grammar, vocabulary, and (eventually) pronunciation.
Interestingly, while Latin long remained the legal and governmental language of the entire Roman Empire, Greek came to be the language most often used among the well-educated elite?as much of the literature and philosophy studied by upper-class Romans had been produced by Greek (usually Athenian) authors. In the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which became the Byzantine Empire after the final split of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires in 395, Greek eventually supplanted Latin as the legal and governmental language, in keeping with the fact that it had long been the spoken language of most Eastern citizens (of all classes).
TAMIL
Tamil has a literary tradition of more than two thousand years. The earliest epigraphic records found date to around 300 BCE and the Tolkappiyam, oldest known literary work in Tamil, has been dated variously between 300 BCE and 500 CE.[9][10] Tamil was declared a classical language of India by the Government of India in 2004 and was the first Indian language to have been accorded the status.[11][12]
Tamil is one of the ancient languages of the world with a history of over 3000 years and literary work dating to over 2000 years ago.[16][17][18] The origins of Tamil are not transparent, but it developed and flourished in India as an independent language with a rich literature. More than 55% of epigraphical inscriptions in India were found in Tamil language. Unlike in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh where early inscriptions were written in Sanskrit, the early inscriptions in Tamil nadu used Tamil exclusively. Tamil has the oldest extant literature amongst the Dravidian languages, but dating the language and the literature precisely is difficult. Literary works in India were preserved either in palm leaf manuscripts (implying repeated copying and recopying) or through oral transmission, making direct dating impossible. External chronological records and internal linguistic evidence, however, indicate that the oldest extant works were probably compiled sometime between the 2nd century BCE and the 10th century CE.
Epigraphic attestation of Tamil begins with rock inscriptions from the 2nd century BCE, written in Tamil-Brahmi, an adapted form of the Brahmi script.[24][25] The earliest extant literary text is the Tolkāppiyam, a work on poetics and grammar which describes the language of the classical period, dated variously between the 1st BCE and 10th CE[26]
Tamil scholars categorise Tamil literature and language into the following periods:[27]
1. Sangam (100 BCE to 300 CE)
2. Post-Sangam period (300 to 600 CE)
3. Bhakthi period (600 to 1200 CE)
4. Mediaeval Period (1200 to 1800 CE)
5. Modern (1800 to the present)
EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHSs
Hieroglyphs emerged from the preliterate artistic traditions of Egypt. For example, symbols on Gerzean pottery from circa 4000 BC resemble hieroglyphic writing.For many years the earliest known hieroglyphic inscription was the Narmer Palette, found during excavations at Hierakonpolis (modern Kawm al-Ahmar) in the 1890s, which has been dated to circa 3200 BC. However, in 1998 a German archaeological team under Günter Dreyer excavating at Abydos (modern Umm el-Qa`ab) uncovered tomb U-j of a Predynastic ruler, and recovered three hundred clay labels inscribed with proto-hieroglyphs, dating to the Naqada IIIA period of the 33rd century BC.[1][2] The first full sentence written in hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal impression found in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qa`ab, which dates from the Second Dynasty. In the era of the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom, about 800 hieroglyphs existed. By the Greco-Roman period, they numbered more than 5,000.
Hieroglyphs consist of three kinds of glyphs: phonetic glyphs, including single-consonant characters that functioned like an alphabet; logographs, representing morphemes; and determinatives, which narrowed down the meaning of a logographic or phonetic words.
As writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic (priestly) and demotic (popular) scripts. These variants were also more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed along side the other forms, especially in monumental and other formal writing. The Rosetta Stone contains parallel texts in hieroglyphic and demotic writing.
Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule (intermittent in the 6th and 5th centuries BC), and after Alexander`s conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Macedonian and Roman periods.
By the 4th century, few Egyptians were capable of reading hieroglyphs, and the myth of allegorical hieroglyphs was ascendant. Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased after the closing of all non-Christian temples in AD 391 by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I; the last known inscription is from a temple far to the south not long after 391.
MIDDLE CHINESE
Middle Chinese (Traditional Chinese: 中古漢語; Pinyin: zhōnggǔ Hànyǔ), or Ancient Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties (6th century - 10th century). The term `Middle Chinese`, in contrast to Old Chinese and Modern Chinese, is usually used in the context of historical Chinese phonology, which seeks to reconstruct the pronunciation of Chinese used during these times.
Middle Chinese c... |
Source(s)
various |
pharoah
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13 Jun 2007 11:47:00 GMT Report for Abuse
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Cont...
Middle Chinese can be divided into an early period, generally called Early Middle Chinese, and a later period, Late Middle Chinese. The transition point between Early and Later Middle Chinese is thought to be during the Mid-Tang Dynasty and is indicated by the phonological developments.
GREEK
Greek has been spoken in the Balkan Peninsula since the 2nd millennium BC. The earliest evidence of this is found in the Linear B tablets in the 'Room of the Chariot Tablets', a LMII-context (c. 1500 BC) region of Knossos, in Crete, making Greek one of the very few living languages (together with the Chinese and West Semitic languages) directly descended from a language recorded in the Bronze Age. The later Greek alphabet is unrelated to Linear B, and is derived from the Phoenician alphabet (abjad); with minor modifications, it is still used today.
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MarkLevinson
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13 Jun 2007 12:58:11 GMT Report for Abuse
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Interesting!!
I think I've put a thread on this subject too!
What do you think of Polynesians and languages they'vr used?? |
pharoah
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13 Jun 2007 13:20:34 GMT Report for Abuse
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ML
i'm busy at the moment. i'll look into that in the evening! cant open up all these windows infront of the boss. |
MarkLevinson
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13 Jun 2007 14:29:02 GMT Report for Abuse
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i'm busy at the moment....
Mee too.....catch you later!! |
pharoah
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13 Jun 2007 17:24:46 GMT Report for Abuse
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ML
seems the oldest language is Hebrew or Greek. Arabic is a bit older.
polynesian languages are not as old as the above languages, but they have split from one another and there are different types of polynesian languages, each spoken by a small population. |
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