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Amazing, apart from obvious benefits of being Wikipedia article it's necessary to note that it was written in one of the oldest regional Indian language - Telug

Amazing, apart from obvious benefits of being Wikipedia article it's necessary to note that it was written in one of the oldest regional Indian language - Telugu; so it will serve as good medium for language preservation as well.

Frondo 9y ago
Just FYI, Telugu is spoken by like 70 million people. It's nice that there are 365 more articles written in it, but there is also a wide variety of media being churned out in Telugu every day, like Tollywood cinema.
thaumasiotes 9y ago
What would make one regional language older than another one?
- _jgdh 9y ago
  I think there are a couple of ways to prove this. Archeological records of say, inscriptions in one language would help. If an inscription is older than any inscription in another language, it's possibly older. Another way would be linguistic analysis that demonstrates that one language is derived from another. For example, in India many languages are influenced by Sanskrit so Sanskrit is probably older than all of them, with a few exceptions like Tamil, which show much less influence. In India this is a pretty contentious issue. People like to claim that they're a part of a much older tradition and that makes their culture better. This is related to the claim by people who speak more widely spoken languages that these languages should replace the older, less popular languages - for example "why can't you Tamil speakers learn to speak Hindi?"
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    Two regional Indian languages spoken today are, by necessity, equally old. It's not so common for new languages to form. > in India many languages are influenced by Sanskrit so Sanskrit is probably older than all of them Sanskrit is older than modern languages in the sense that it is from a premodern period. That doesn't apply to living languages. We can say that Latin is an older form of Portuguese; it is nonsensical to say that Portuguese is older than Spanish. They're both Latin. Spanish has a noticeable amount of influence from Arabic, since Arabic speakers conquered the south of Spain and ruled there for a while. I don't see how this is evidence that Arabic is an older language than Spanish is, though.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - _jgdh 9y ago
      No, I don't think so. If people have been speaking Language A for 2 millennia, it's 2 millennia old. If they've been speaking Language B for 15 centuries, it's 15 centuries old. Just because A and B are both spoken today doesn't make them equally old. That's as absurd as saying you and I are both alive today so we must be the same age. It's interesting that you mention Spain. Are you familiar with the Basque language? It has almost no influence from the Romance languages spoken in all areas surrounding Basque country like French and Spanish. It's the last descendant of the pre-Indo-European languages spoken in Western Europe. Would you claim that Basque and Spanish are equally old? Influence doesn't imply that the influenced language is younger. A language being entirely derived from another, like Hindi from Sanskrit and the Romance languages from Latin, does imply that they're younger than Sanskrit and Latin.
      - Grustaf 9y ago
        >Would you claim that Basque and Spanish are equally old? If by Spanish you mean the modern history of the language, since its branching off from the other Romance languages, then you could say it's younger, but this is just an accident of naming, caused by the extrinsic fact that there are other surviving dialects of Latin with their own nation states. If Latin had only survived in the form of Spanish, we would probably either call it Latin, or see Latin as Old Spanish. Either way we wouldn't see it as less old than Basque. And from a linguistic point of view, unless you think Basque and IE languages derive from separate innovations of language (sort of like wings have evolved separately in birds and bats - analogy rather than homology), the language that is today called Spanish is of course just as old as the language called Basque.
      - thaumasiotes 9y ago
        > Would you claim that Basque and Spanish are equally old? Think. How could it possibly be otherwise? > If people have been speaking Language A for 2 millennia, it's 2 millennia old. If they've been speaking Language B for 15 centuries, it's 15 centuries old. Just because A and B are both spoken today doesn't make them equally old. But you just made that up. As has already been pointed out, all modern languages have been spoken for exactly the same period of time, with a few rare exceptions. The fact that two languages are both spoken today is sufficient to conclude that they are equally old, unless you happen to know exactly when one of them originated.
  - hrasyid 9y ago
    > If an inscription is older than any inscription in another language, it's possibly older No, it just means that the first language has an older written tradition. I really doubt that "the oldest" language" has any meaning at all, given that most (all?) living natural languages gradually evolved from an ancestor language. Like the other poster said, it's nonsensical to say whether Spanish and Portuguese is older because they both just evolved from being a variation of Latin. Or like, all current variant of English evolved from the English spoken in England some hundred years ago (which is different from British English today). What does it mean to say whether British, American or Australian English is older?
    - thaumasiotes 9y ago
      > I really doubt that "the oldest" language has any meaning at all, given that most (all?) living natural languages gradually evolved from an ancestor language. There are some newer languages, which evolved quite suddenly rather than gradually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Creole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Creole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah_language There is no reason to believe that any regional language of India could have arisen in this way, though.
- wsxcde 9y ago
  In India, it ends up being the availability of records that are (a) decipherable and (b) recognizably in that language. Among the so-called Indian "regional" langauges, the oldest Tamil records date back to about 2300 BC, while the oldest available records of Kannada/Telugu are a few hundreds of years younger. It's quite likely these languages existed long before these written records, but records are what decide the oldness olympics.
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    There are no records recognizably written in any modern language from 2300 BC. They can be recognizably written in an ancestral form of the language, but no language can remain self-intelligible over 4300 years.
    - wsxcde 9y ago
      I made a mistake. I should have said 300 BC not 2300 BC. Also, yes, they are in an older form the language.

Frondo 9y ago

Just FYI, Telugu is spoken by like 70 million people. It's nice that there are 365 more articles written in it, but there is also a wide variety of media being churned out in Telugu every day, like Tollywood cinema.

thaumasiotes 9y ago

What would make one regional language older than another one?

_jgdh 9y ago
I think there are a couple of ways to prove this. Archeological records of say, inscriptions in one language would help. If an inscription is older than any inscription in another language, it's possibly older. Another way would be linguistic analysis that demonstrates that one language is derived from another. For example, in India many languages are influenced by Sanskrit so Sanskrit is probably older than all of them, with a few exceptions like Tamil, which show much less influence. In India this is a pretty contentious issue. People like to claim that they're a part of a much older tradition and that makes their culture better. This is related to the claim by people who speak more widely spoken languages that these languages should replace the older, less popular languages - for example "why can't you Tamil speakers learn to speak Hindi?"
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  Two regional Indian languages spoken today are, by necessity, equally old. It's not so common for new languages to form. > in India many languages are influenced by Sanskrit so Sanskrit is probably older than all of them Sanskrit is older than modern languages in the sense that it is from a premodern period. That doesn't apply to living languages. We can say that Latin is an older form of Portuguese; it is nonsensical to say that Portuguese is older than Spanish. They're both Latin. Spanish has a noticeable amount of influence from Arabic, since Arabic speakers conquered the south of Spain and ruled there for a while. I don't see how this is evidence that Arabic is an older language than Spanish is, though.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - _jgdh 9y ago
    No, I don't think so. If people have been speaking Language A for 2 millennia, it's 2 millennia old. If they've been speaking Language B for 15 centuries, it's 15 centuries old. Just because A and B are both spoken today doesn't make them equally old. That's as absurd as saying you and I are both alive today so we must be the same age. It's interesting that you mention Spain. Are you familiar with the Basque language? It has almost no influence from the Romance languages spoken in all areas surrounding Basque country like French and Spanish. It's the last descendant of the pre-Indo-European languages spoken in Western Europe. Would you claim that Basque and Spanish are equally old? Influence doesn't imply that the influenced language is younger. A language being entirely derived from another, like Hindi from Sanskrit and the Romance languages from Latin, does imply that they're younger than Sanskrit and Latin.
    - Grustaf 9y ago
      >Would you claim that Basque and Spanish are equally old? If by Spanish you mean the modern history of the language, since its branching off from the other Romance languages, then you could say it's younger, but this is just an accident of naming, caused by the extrinsic fact that there are other surviving dialects of Latin with their own nation states. If Latin had only survived in the form of Spanish, we would probably either call it Latin, or see Latin as Old Spanish. Either way we wouldn't see it as less old than Basque. And from a linguistic point of view, unless you think Basque and IE languages derive from separate innovations of language (sort of like wings have evolved separately in birds and bats - analogy rather than homology), the language that is today called Spanish is of course just as old as the language called Basque.
    - thaumasiotes 9y ago
      > Would you claim that Basque and Spanish are equally old? Think. How could it possibly be otherwise? > If people have been speaking Language A for 2 millennia, it's 2 millennia old. If they've been speaking Language B for 15 centuries, it's 15 centuries old. Just because A and B are both spoken today doesn't make them equally old. But you just made that up. As has already been pointed out, all modern languages have been spoken for exactly the same period of time, with a few rare exceptions. The fact that two languages are both spoken today is sufficient to conclude that they are equally old, unless you happen to know exactly when one of them originated.
- hrasyid 9y ago
  > If an inscription is older than any inscription in another language, it's possibly older No, it just means that the first language has an older written tradition. I really doubt that "the oldest" language" has any meaning at all, given that most (all?) living natural languages gradually evolved from an ancestor language. Like the other poster said, it's nonsensical to say whether Spanish and Portuguese is older because they both just evolved from being a variation of Latin. Or like, all current variant of English evolved from the English spoken in England some hundred years ago (which is different from British English today). What does it mean to say whether British, American or Australian English is older?
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    > I really doubt that "the oldest" language has any meaning at all, given that most (all?) living natural languages gradually evolved from an ancestor language. There are some newer languages, which evolved quite suddenly rather than gradually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Creole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Creole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah_language There is no reason to believe that any regional language of India could have arisen in this way, though.
wsxcde 9y ago
In India, it ends up being the availability of records that are (a) decipherable and (b) recognizably in that language. Among the so-called Indian "regional" langauges, the oldest Tamil records date back to about 2300 BC, while the oldest available records of Kannada/Telugu are a few hundreds of years younger. It's quite likely these languages existed long before these written records, but records are what decide the oldness olympics.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  There are no records recognizably written in any modern language from 2300 BC. They can be recognizably written in an ancestral form of the language, but no language can remain self-intelligible over 4300 years.
  - wsxcde 9y ago
    I made a mistake. I should have said 300 BC not 2300 BC. Also, yes, they are in an older form the language.