Top 5 Oldest Surviving Languages 

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

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.

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

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

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.

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!

Absolutely fascinating! Thank you

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

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

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..)

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.

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 :)

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.

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

Love this!

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

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

Well done! 👍

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.

love ur vids

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

I really enjoy your vídeos

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

thanks for the post

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.

I love the music selections

Very good.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Well made video.

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?

ur so underrated

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

Thank you 🙏

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.

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 ❤

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.

Interesting video but perhaps you should have mentioned Basque which predates the introduction of Indo European languages into Europe.

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

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

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

LOL, trying to find old latviešu grammer in our folksongs I got thinking about song and wisdom and realized the word vēda meaning insight/wisdom is cognate of our word vieds meaning smart/wise. Is it a cogante of wisdom? Im less familiar with germanic phonology.

I'm sorry for needing out too much, but you've used Coptic for the background picture of Greek.

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.

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

Persian was actually used even before the Achaemenids.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Thank you for taking a shot at French!

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

Very very interesting......

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.

I’ll just add another comment about the Australian Aboriginal languages that have been in continuous use for tens of thousands of years. Makes those you feature here sound quite modern

How old is brythonic or gaelic languages?

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

If we are talking about the oldest language in the world, in terms of which language has been preserved the most, or rather, which written language has the longest living tradition, then essentially we are playing a game of debating which classical religious tradition (Christianity-Greek and Latin, Judaism- Hebrew, Islam- Arabic, Hinduism- Sanskrit, Buddhism- Pali etc., Taoism- Chinese) is the oldest. And the answer to that question is very difficult

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

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

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.

How does Basque fit in all of this. I have heard it is a very old language whose structure is completely different to other European languages.

Great video! I especially appreciate the Hebrew part.

7:41 what about Linear A?

What about Lithuanian?

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.

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

What about thamazight/berber

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

I wonder if any of the ancient languages spoken by the northern nomadic peoples before their ranges were absorbed by the soviet empire survive? Those peoples migrated northwards with the tundra as the ice age ended and their way of life continued unbroken up until about the 1920's. Lacking an ancient written tradition it might be hard to research, but potentially some very ancient origins indeed might survive until the present day.

Your Winnie the Pooh slipped in the Modern China portion is certainly a brave stroke of humor.

What about Maltese language cause this language is originated from various civilizations

I think it's a serious error that you left out the bantu languages in Africa.

I speak Samskrit! And there are a million of us although official stats don't count correctly. That number is is now growing as well

My guesses (for languages identical or mutually intelligible with the oldest known speech): Sanskrit Aramaic Coptic Lithuanian Hebrew

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

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.

I am finding my way to trace roots of words found in arabic back to aramaic & Proto-siniatic, does anybody have any links or pdfs on these forgotten gems. I need a words dictionary with their meaning & the source of those words. Could anyone just help?

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

YOU LEAVE! I like it here!!! And you don’t own the comments, bro!!!!! (Seriously though, that was pretty great. Interesting research topic. Imma smash the Like button and then Imma leave… BUT NOT BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME TO!!!!!),

1500bc...where did that date come from?

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

4.43 Ewnheans: nyns yw Ebrowek “an kynsa ha’n unnik yeth, heb kowsoryon genesik bos dasvywyes”. Ty re ankevis Kernewek. (Correction: Hebrew is not “the first and only language without native speakers to be revived”. You have forgotten Cornish.)😟

Notice how in the Latin maps, Ireland wasnt highlighted? Its because it was speaking its own language at the time. And modern Irish and Scottish Gaelic are much closer to Old Irish than the modern Romance languages are to Latin. Should have got a mention

Southern, Northwestern and Northeastern Caucasian langauges, Basque, Turkic Langauges (especially Chuvash) and Eastern and Western Armenian (especially Homshetsi) had just left the Chat.

But Sanskrit is in a continuum with Persian through the Caucasus through Slavic through all of Europe, so it that an even bigger continuum?

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