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The world has about 7,111 languages according to Ethnologue. A staggering third of these languages are endangered and only spoken by very few people, 1000 speakers at best. What is even more serious is that more than 50% of the world’s population is covered by 23 major languages.
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Languages appeared about 100.000 years ago and have been evolving ever since. Languages are always in a state of flux; some die out and some branch out and give us more languages. Exceptionally, some languages have survived long periods of time and erosion and made it to the modern world. Here are 10 of the most ancient languages that are still spoken today:
1. Hebrew:
Year: 10th Century BC
Country: Israel
Number of speakers: 9 million
2. Basque:
Year: Unknown
Country: Basque
Number of speakers: about 750,000
3. Arabic:
Year: 1000 BC
Country: Countries of the Arab league
Number of speaker: 310 million
4. Tamil:
Year: 300 BC
Country: India and Sri Lanka
Number of speakers: about 80 million
5. Persian:
Year: 600BC
Country: Iran
Number of speakers: 110 million.
6. Greek:
Year: 1450 - 1350 BC
Country: Greece
Number of speakers: 13 million
7. Chinese:
Year: 1250 BC
Country: China
Number of speakers: 1.2 billion
8. Lithuanian:
Year: 1500 AD
Country: Baltic region
Number of speakers: about 3 million
9. Icelandic:
Year: 1100 AD.
Country: Iceland
Number of speakers: 358,000 people
10. Irish Gaelic:
Year: 4 A.D
Country: Ireland
Number of speakers: 1.2 million