What Is First?

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Although, Arabic does not have a millennia long history, it is one of the most spoken languages in the world. About 310 million people worldwide speak Arabic as a native language and an additional 270 million people fluently speak Arabic as a second language. The first written records of Chinese language come from the Shang Dynasty and this

Learn about the origins and history of some of the oldest languages in the world, such as Tamil, Sanskrit, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, and more. Find out how these languages have evolved, survived, and influenced other languages over time.

Linguists estimate that human speech sounds first developed tens of thousands of years ago. MIT linguistics professor Shigeru Miyagawa proposes that verbal language may have been used in social situations around 100,000 years ago, while linguist George Poulos, author of On the Origins of Human Speech and Language, suggests human speech developed around 70,000 years ago. But these early

image credit By BabelStone, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Archaic Chinese or Old Chinese is the earliest written form of the Chinese language and can be traced back to an oracle bone pictured above dating back to about 1250 BCE. The language was used in ancient China during the Shang dynasty c.1600 BCE - c.1046 BCE, the Zhou dynasty c.1046 BCE - 256 BCE, and the Warring States

Survival of the fittest 10 oldest languages in the world 1. Chinese 6,000 years old The Chinese language is the oldest written language in the world, having been sighted on animal bones, known as oracle bones, that date back to the Shang dynasty.This means it was some 3,600 years ago when the written language was first used.

Some languages are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people, while more than half of the world's population uses one of just 23 tongues. These languages and dead ones that are no longer spoken weave

The Chinese language is the most spoken language in the world today, with approximately 16 percent of the world's population speaking at least one form of the language. Chinese dates back to over 3,000 years ago, making it one of the oldest languages in the world although the oldest form of Chinese is no longer used.

With languages forming, changing, disappearing and being discovered, it's hard to keep track of which came first. So, what is the oldest language in the world? As it turns out, that's a

Learn about the history and usage of 10 ancient languages that are still spoken today, from Egyptian to Arabic. Find out which language is the oldest and how to learn it with Busuu.

The world's first language is challenging to pinpoint because spoken languages existed long before written records. Some of the earliest known written languages include Sumerian, Egyptian, and Akkadian, with written records dating back to around 2600 BC or earlier. However, these written records only capture a fraction of language history, as