Thousands of languages are spoken worldwide. So, when did people develop communication systems that were specific to a particular region? Scientists know about 7,100 languages currently spoken. Almost 40% of them have been affected, which means their user numbers are declining and endangered. Some languages are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people, and more than half of the world's population speaks at least 23 languages. These and unspoken words bind human ties for thousands of years. That means finding the world's oldest language is more than just a curiosity. To understand clay inscriptions or trace the evolution of living languages, for example, linguists must address questions that go beyond language. In the course of his research, some mysteries of past civilizations were revealed, which also sparked discussions about the integration of science and culture.
"Like modern languages, ancient languages are important to understanding the past." Words can be used to trace the history of migrations and connections of peoples. "In some cases, grammar is our most reliable source of information from the past," said Claire Bowern, a professor of linguistics at Yale University."Language that we can trace through time to give us pictures of the past."Words sounds, gestures and occurs in many forms, including writing, but not all forms allow for irrefutable evidence. Experts use different methods to determine the age of a language. Danny Hieber, a linguist who studies endangered languages, said tracking down the oldest languages is "an incredible task." Finding the meaning of a language with many languages as two different languages is one way to determine the history of a language, as people who speak that language cannot understand each other. "For example, how far back in history did you understand German?" He asked. At that time, it represented the beginnings of English and German as separate languages, separated by the Germanic languages. Or, if we consider that most languages can be based on a single universal human language, then all languages are the same. "You know that your parents speak the same language, and your parents speak the same language."
"You might think that all languages come from the same root," Heber explained. But proving the existence of the first human language, the direct ancestor of all the world's languages, is difficult. For this reason, some linguists believe that the name of the 'oldest language' should be called the language of full knowledge. Most of the early writings were written in cuneiform, which was written on clay tablets. Sumerian and Akkadian are two languages that are at least 4,600 years old. Archaeologists discovered Egyptian hieroglyphs from the same historical period in the tomb of Pharaoh Seth-Peribson. The inscription reads: “He united the two kingdoms with his son Peribson. The phrase "Two Kings" is considered the earliest known phrase. Historians and linguists generally consider Sumerian, Akkadian, and Egyptian to be the oldest written languages. All three of these languages are extinct, that is, no longer It is not in use and has no living descendants who can pass the language on to future generations.
There are many possibilities for the oldest languages still in use today. Heber said that among these languages, Hebrew and Arabic stand out because they have periods that linguists can follow. The first evidence for both languages dates back 3,000 years, but Heber says both belong to the Aphiloi family and date back to 3,000 BC. He says it happened between 18,000 and 8,000 years ago, or about 20,000 to 10,000 years ago. Despite their varying dates, linguists generally consider Afro-Asiatic languages to be the oldest language family. However, how Hebrew and Arabic differ from other Afro-Asian languages is debatable. Bowen added China to the list of potential options. Its age is disputed, but it is believed to have developed about 4,500 years ago from Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the ancestor of Burmese and Tibetan. Inscriptions on tortoise shells and animal bones from 3,300 years ago are the earliest evidence of Chinese characters.
However, modern Chinese characters were only introduced many years later. If we go back another millennium or two, what has been said so far becomes even more obscure. Deven Patel, a professor of South Asian studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said the oldest documents written in Sanskrit are ancient Hindu scriptures written between 1500 and 1200 B.C. It was discovered in the Vedas, a collection of ancient Indian scriptures. “I think Sanskrit is the oldest surviving culture,” Patel said. “It may not be a modern mainstream language, but it is still the language people use to create documents.”
The language is spoken by 85 million people in southern India and Sri Lanka. Tamil has been documented by scholars for at least 2000 years. Scholars disagree about the exact age of Tolkpiyam, the oldest work of Tamil literature, with estimates ranging from 7,000 to 2,800 years ago. “Scholars disagree about the history of ancient Tamil writing and whether the language used was Tamil. Classifying them as the same language is similar to modern Tamil," Father announced. "Tamil speakers are especially trying to highlight this language as an ancient language." The debate over the dating of Sanskrit and Tamil is the oldest language in the world. Pointing to larger decisions about language, Patel added, “We are looking at a new history of political and social studies to answer these questions.”
コメント