Introduction

Language and Literacy are important aspects of human civilization. Humans have been using various languages to communicate with each other for thousands of years, dating back to the Sumerian and Egyptian languages, which are at least five and a half thousand years old. But as humans evolved through time, most languages took birth, prospered, and died. But there are a few languages that continue to thrive even today for thousands of years. In this blog, we are going to discuss the seven oldest living languages, which not only are immortal but also have greatly influenced the culture of a greater area, even giving birth to many daughter languages and influencing many others. These languages have such a great impact that many loan words from these languages have become the foundational words for many languages, civilizations, and religions. So, languages like Sumerian and Egyptian are not discussed here as they are basically dead languages today. Languages like Hebrew, Tamil, Armenian, and Basque are also avoided, as, despite their old history, they don’t have a huge lasting impact outside the culture of the community where they are used. This blog describes only those languages that follow all three criteria-

1. They are very, very old. They at least have a basic foundation before the Common Era.
2. They are still living in some form, either as a popular language or purely as a liturgical and cultural language, or currently living with a different name and identity, although having the original structure.
3. They at least influenced a large area, civilization, culture, or many other languages.

So, yeah, let’s get started.

Chapter 1: Sanskrit

Sanskrit is an Indo-Aryan Language, which has its origin in the Indian Subcontinent, at least around 1500 BCE. The earliest known evidence of Sanskrit literature is found in the Rig Veda, which is the oldest known Indian and Hindu scripture. Sanskrit is said to have been born from the assimilation of the existing local indigenous languages with the languages from various migrations that happened in India over the centuries. It is considered to have a close relation with its western cousin, Persian, and both together form the soul of the Indo-Iranian language family. The language had a great impact on the entire region, as it formed the basis of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions, as well as many secular subjects like astronomy, mathematics, grammar, medicine, and philosophy. In fact, there is more non-religious Sanskrit literature than religious literature. The language is the direct ancestor of many popular Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, and Odia, and also loans a huge vocabulary to the Dravidian languages like Telugu and Kannada. The language also influenced many important languages of Southeast Asia, like Khmer in Cambodia, Thai in Thailand, and Javanese in Indonesia. Today, the language is mainly used as a liturgical and a classical language, although small communities across India continue to speak Classical Sanskrit as their primary language.

Chapter 2: Chinese

Chinese is the umbrella term for many languages in China, including Mandarin, Jin, Wu, Gan, Xiang, Min, Hakka, and Yue. The original Old Chinese dates back to the 13th century BCE, during the Shang Dynasty period. The Chinese language forms the foundation of traditions like Confucianism, Taoism, and many Mahayana Buddhism schools. The language also influenced the civilization’s governance, ethics, literature, and education systems. Besides China, the language also gave form to the modern Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese languages in many ways, including scripts as well as loan words. Classical Chinese was once basically the entire East Asia’s written lingua franca. The Chinese language evolved from Old Chinese to Classical Chinese to the various modern varieties we see today. Although the spoken language evolved over time, the written script remained remarkably stable. Today, a form of the language is spoken by billions of people across China, Taiwan, and the entire world.

Chapter 3: Greek

The Greek Language, along with Latin, forms the foundational language for most Western culture, dating back to Mycenaean Greece in the 15th century BCE. The language is the birthplace of Western philosophy, drama, and science. Greek (in the form of Koine Greek) is also the core language in the Eastern Orthodox Church and early Christianity. Greek also had a major lexical influence on Latin, and through it influenced the Western European cultures too. Today, Greek loan words form the core vocabulary for modern science, philosophy, and medicine. The Greek language has undergone a serious transformation over the past 3,000 years: from Ancient Greek to Koine Greek to Medieval Greek to Modern Greek. It is one of the few languages continuously spoken as the major primary language since before the Common Era.

Chapter 4: Persian

Persian is an Indo-Iranian language that has its origin in the Iranian Plateau around 3000 years ago. It was the official language of the Achaemenid and the Sassanian Empires. It also influenced Zoroastrianism (through its sister Avestan) as well as the later Shi’a Islamic culture. Persian, over the years, has become an important language for poetry, mysticism, court culture, and historiography. The language influenced many neighbouring languages like Urdu, Turkish, Pashto, and many Central Asian languages, thus extending beyond the Persosphere. It is also the literary and administrative lingua franca of many later empires, like the Safavid and the Mughal Empires. The New Persian language is not only spoken in modern Iran, but many of its regional variations, like Dari and Tajik, are also the official languages of Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Also, Urdu, the Persianized twin of Hindi, is the official language of Pakistan, and also one of the Scheduled languages of India, thus showing the influence of the Persian language.

Chapter 5: Aramaic

Aramaic is a Semitic language that originated around 3,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and the Levant. The language was the administrative language of the Achaemenid Empire, which soon influenced the Jewish cultures living within the Empire. Thus, during the era of Second Temple Judaism, it replaced Hebrew as the primary spoken language, thus forming an important section of the Jewish history book. Even parts of the Talmud are written in Babylonian Aramaic. Besides Judaism, Aramaic also influenced Christianity, as parts of the Bible are also written in this language. Aramaic is also one of the liturgical languages of the Oriental Christianity. As the region of the Levant lies at the intersection of both the East and the West, it influenced other important languages, including Persian, Greek, and Arabic. Today, the language predominantly survives as a liturgical language, although small pockets within the historic Fertile Crescent region, particularly in Iraq, Iran, Türkiye, and Syria, still speak some form of Neo-Aramaic dialects.

Chapter 6: Latin

Latin is the ultimate classical language of the Western world. It began around 800 BCE, in Italy, within the Roman culture. The language gained its true form centuries later, after the expansion of the Roman Republic and, later, the Roman Empire. It became the language of Roman law, administration, and Western education for centuries. When Christianity came to the Roman Empire, it became the language of the Catholic Church. The language during the medieval and modern times became the dominant source of scientific, legal, and academic vocabulary worldwide. Latin, although physically absent as a purely spoken language outside the liturgical and academic world, exists within the soul of Western Culture through its descendant Romance languages like French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. So, although it is a dead language, its soul still lives on through numerous languages.

Chapter 7: Arabic

Arabic is a Semitic language from the Arabian Peninsula. Although the earliest evidence of this language is found from around 400 BCE, it was finally standardized to its modern form around the 6th to 7th century CE. Arabic is the sacred language of Islam, thus heavily influencing other languages and cultures with significant Islamic influences like Persian, Urdu, Turkish, Swahili, Malay, and Spanish. The language also completely replaced many languages, such as Egyptian, and many Barbaric languages of Northern Africa. It is perhaps the only language whose standardized form (Classical Arabic) is preserved over a millennium, although local dialects continue to evolve even today. The Arabic language is also a major contributor to science, philosophy, mathematics, and law during the Islamic Golden Age. Today, the language is spoken as a primary language all over the Arab world, i.e., from North Africa to the Arabian Peninsula to the Levant, with nearly half a million speakers.

Conclusion

These seven languages took seven different trajectories, but influenced the world in more ways than we can think. These languages contribute to our regular vocabulary, which we use regularly without consciously knowing their roots. These languages are much more than classical languages, as they contribute to more than their regional literature and culture. They provide the fundamental platform over which the global civilization is evolving today.

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