4 ms·

> 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 tradit

> 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.