Which language has the longest background in history?

Anti-konti   Tue Jun 01, 2010 8:57 pm GMT
With evidences
Leasnam   Tue Jun 01, 2010 8:59 pm GMT
It would be Sumerian (Jemdet Nasr), I believe at around 3200 BC.
Anti-konti   Tue Jun 01, 2010 9:08 pm GMT
I mean any language still spoken.
Franco   Tue Jun 01, 2010 9:11 pm GMT
Latin. It is still a spoken language, in fact it is the official language of Vatican City.
anonymouss   Tue Jun 01, 2010 9:12 pm GMT
what about Chinese?
yannik   Tue Jun 01, 2010 9:43 pm GMT
or Greek , Hebrew and Sanskrit (up to now for sacred Scriptures )
Leasnam   Tue Jun 01, 2010 9:45 pm GMT
Greek is older than either Latin or Chinese.

Chinese is older than Latin though, and more widely spoken.
anti-leasnam   Tue Jun 01, 2010 9:52 pm GMT
Quote from wikies:
Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning the Archaic (c. 9th–6th centuries BC), Classical (c. 5th–4th centuries BC), and Hellenistic (c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD) periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world.

Old Chinese, sometimes known as "Archaic Chinese", was the language common during the early and middle Zhou Dynasty (1122 BCE–256 BCE), texts of which include inscriptions on bronze artifacts, the poetry of the Shījīng, the history of the Shūjīng, and portions of the Yìjīng (I Ching).
Matematik   Tue Jun 01, 2010 10:08 pm GMT
Chinese only as a written language. The Chinese spoken languages are as deviated from each other as English, Italian and German.
Leasnam   Tue Jun 01, 2010 10:44 pm GMT
<<anti-leasnam >>

Don't blame me, blame Wikipedia.
You asked for "evidences". I was only trying to make you happy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_first_written_accounts
anti-anti-konti   Tue Jun 01, 2010 11:01 pm GMT
Since Arabic and Hebrew is related to Akkadian (2800 BC) then both of them are the oldest ones.
Mexicano   Wed Jun 02, 2010 12:23 am GMT
But how early did Arabic and Hebrew emerge as they actually are today? You can say any language is the oldest if you use the reasoning you did, as all languages are ultimately related. I'm not sure at what point the various Semitic languages diverged (their homeland was postulated to be somewhere in the Middle East or northeast Africa). There probably was some form of early or proto Hebrew by around 2000 BC, but Abraham actually lived in Ur in Mesopotamia before moving to Israel.

Chinese and Sanskrit are also very old attested languages. Latin only came about in a recognizable form by the early Roman Republic, which is considerably after these other ones. As for Greek, it's not easy to tell, because some classify Mycenean, used from around 1500-1100 BC, as a type of Greek (the most ancient), which was before the Archaic Period of which Classical and later Koine and Modern Greek would evolve from.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&   Wed Jun 02, 2010 12:31 am GMT
Could Mayan languages are the oldest?
"The Mayan language family is one of the best documented and most studied in the Americas. Modern Mayan languages descend from Proto-Mayan, a language thought to have been spoken at least 5,000 years ago; it has been partially reconstructed using the comparative method."
rep   Wed Jun 02, 2010 1:01 pm GMT
Frisian is still alive.
http://www.boudicca.de/frisian1.htm
Alina   Wed Jun 02, 2010 2:00 pm GMT
Latin. It is still a spoken language, in fact it is the official language of Vatican City.

Actually they prefer speaking Italian than Latin nowadays....