List of languages by first written account information
This is a list of languages arranged by age of the oldest existing text recording a complete sentence in the language. It does not include undeciphered writing systems, though there are various claims without wide acceptance, which, if substantiated, would push backward the first attestation of certain languages. It also does not include inscriptions consisting of isolated words or names from a language. In most cases, some form of the language had already been spoken (and even written) considerably earlier than the dates of the earliest extant samples provided here.
A written record may encode a stage of a language corresponding to an earlier time, either as a result of oral tradition, or because the earliest source is a copy of an older manuscript that was lost. An oral tradition of epic poetry may typically bridge a few centuries, and in rare cases, over a millennium. An extreme case is the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda: the earliest parts of this text date to c. 1500 BC,[1] while the oldest known manuscripts date to c. 1040 AD.[2]
Similarly the oldest Avestan texts, the Gathas, are believed to have been composed before 1000 BC, but the oldest Avestan manuscripts date from the 13th century AD.[3]
^Jamison, Stephanie W. (2008). "Sanskrit". In Woodward, Roger D. (ed.). The Ancient Languages of Asia and the Americas. Cambridge University Press. pp. 6–32. ISBN 978-0-521-68494-1. pp. 6–7.
^Witzel, Michael (1997). "The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools : The Social and Political Milieu" (PDF). In Witzel, Michael (ed.). Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies. pp. 257–348. ISBN 978-1-888789-03-4. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-08-04. Retrieved 2018-10-04. p. 259.
^Hale, Mark (2008). "Avestan". In Woodward, Roger D. (ed.). The Ancient Languages of Asia and the Americas. Cambridge University Press. pp. 101–122. ISBN 978-0-521-68494-1.
and 28 Related for: List of languages by first written account information
This is a listoflanguages arranged by age of the oldest existing text recording a complete sentence in the language. It does not include undeciphered...
page is a listof lists oflanguages. SIL International's Ethnologue: Languagesof the World lists over 7,100 spoken and signed languages. The International...
element of the psyche". By this definition, the term includes languages attested from ancient times in the listoflanguagesbyfirstwrittenaccounts, and...
date of attestation in writing (epigraphy). see listoflanguagesbyfirstwrittenaccounts. the conservative nature of a given language (low rate of language...
following listof notable constructed languages is divided into auxiliary, ritual, engineered, and artistic (including fictional) languages, and their...
Was Written is the second studio album by American rapper Nas, released on July 2, 1996, by Columbia Records. After the modest commercial success of his...
of Ice and Fireby George R. R. Martin The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson Star Wars by George Lucas Listoflanguagesbyfirst written...
varieties belong to the same language or not. The following is a listof groupings of Romance languages, with some languages and dialects chosen to exemplify...
languages" refer to Greek and Latin, which were the literary languagesof the Mediterranean world in classical antiquity. Greek was the languageof Homer...
Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians; both families together are sometimes known as Indic languages. Languages spoken by the remaining 2.31% of the...
literary non-fiction) sorted by the number oflanguages into which they have been translated. Only translations published by established, independent publishers...
the first 100 words make up about half of all written English. According to a study cited by Robert McCrum in The Story of English, all of the first hundred...
languages in China. The predominant language is Standard Chinese, which is based on Beijingese, but there are hundreds of related Chinese languages,...
language families for written and spoken languages are not easily mapped onto signed languages. Some of the current understandings of sign language relationships...
thirty-five languages are spoken in South Africa, twelve of which are official languagesof South Africa: Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, South African Sign Language, Swazi...
changes in particular languages to reconstruct the pre-history oflanguages and to determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families (comparative...
of ancient India Sindhology History History of ancient numeral systems History of India History of Pakistan History of writing Listoflanguagesby first...
Philippine-type languages, Indonesian-type languages and post-Indonesian type languages: The first group includes, besides the languagesof the Philippines...
listof dictionaries considered authoritative or complete by approximate number of total words, or headwords, included. Figures do not take account of...
Telugu is one of the six languages designated as a classical languageby the Government of India. It is the 14th most spoken native language in the world...
Global Information