Is Aramaic the Oldest Recorded Language Still Spoken Today?
920539
No, it's Basque.\nSome linguists and anthropologists believe it might have been spoken since the Stone Age, and it might be the language of Cro-Magnon man.
715346
The first human language was spoken about 100,000 years ago in Africa.  That language broke up into dialects and eventually over time into all the human languages of the world today.
68579
I think it was Aramaic or Hebrew. I saw a website that might help: http://phoenicia.org/semlang.html
109820
For most of Egyptian history the language written in actual hieroglyphics or in its cursive counterpart, hieratic, was the literary language initiated in the XII Dynasty (1991-1786) of the Middle Kingdom. \nThat is called "Middle Egyptian." In hieroglyphics or hieratic, therefore, one is only likely to encounter either Middle Egyptian or the earlier literary form of the language, Old Egyptian, the language spoken in the Archaic Period (I & II Dynasties, c. 3100-2680) and the Old Kingdom (III-VI Dynasties, 2680-2159). \nWhile Sir Alan Gardiner, in his great and indispensable Egyptian Grammar [Oxford University Press, 1927, 1964], says that Middle Egyptian was "possibly the vernacular of Dynasties IX-XI," Stephen Fryer has brought to my attention recent research to the effect that the literary language of the XII Dynasty was in some measure an artificial attempt to return to the forms of Old Egyptian. Since the political project of Egyptian Kings was always to restore things "as they were in the beginning," this is not surprising. Middle Egyptian, therefore, may have something like the status of Classical Sanskrit, which restored and fixed the forms of the language of the Vedas but could not undo all the changes that had already occurred in the spoken language.\n\nAlthough Middle Egyptian became the literary and written language, the spoken language continued to change. The language of the New Kingdom (XVIII-XX Dynasties, 1575-1087) and much of the Third Intermediate Period (XXI-XXIV Dynasties, 1087-715) is then called "New" or "Late Egyptian." By the Ramessid Period (Dynasties XIX & XX), most hieratic documents are in Late Egyptian. \nThe best evidence of the pronunciation of Late Egyptian, however, is from the documents found in the diplomatic archives of Amenhotep III and Akhenaton at Amarna, for these documents were kept in Akkadian, not in Egyptian. Akkadian was the diplomatic language of the day, essentially the same language as its two daughter languages, Babylonian and Assyrian; and its system of writing, cuneiform, represented vowels. Late Egyptian grammar also begins to be revealed by hieroglyphic inscriptions during the reign of Akhenaton, when the spoken language briefly replaced Middle Egyptian. Thus, while Old and Middle Egyptian did not have a definite article ("the"), Late Egyptian does, p3, later pronounced "pi" or "pe" in Coptic -- though now it appears that this change had already begun in the actual spoken language of the XII Dynasty.\n\nFollowing Late Egyptian are two stages of the spoken language, Demotic (c. 715 BC-470 AD) and Coptic (c. 400 AD-c. 1600)\n\nCoptic was the last evolution of the Egyptian language before it dies and replaced by Arabic
364778
NO\n\nIt was the day of Pentecost 33 C.E. Weeks earlier, Jews and proselytes from at least 15 regions of the far-flung Roman Empire and beyond had packed Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. On that day, thousands of them heard—not in confusion, as those at ancient Babel did, but with understanding—ordinary people filled with holy spirit proclaim the good news in numerous languages spoken in the empire. \n\nJesus’ disciples could probably speak common Greek, the popular language of the day. They also used Hebrew, the language spoken at the temple. However, on that Pentecost day, they “astonished” their diverse audience by speaking in the native languages of those people. The hearts of the listeners were touched by the vital truths that they heard in their mother tongue.\n\nAmong those ‘speaking in tongues’ today are Pentecostals and Baptists, also Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, and Presbyterians. Jesus said that the holy spirit would ‘guide his disciples into all the truth.’ (John 16:13) Do the members of each of these religions believe that the others who also “speak in tongues” have been guided into “all the truth”? How could that be, since they are not all in agreement? What spirit is making it possible for them to “speak in tongues”?\nIn the first century, when Christians ‘spoke in tongues,’ what they said had meaning to people who knew those languages. (Acts 2:4, 8) Today, is it not true that ‘speaking in tongues’ usually involves an ecstatic outburst of unintelligible sounds?\n\nIn the first century, the Bible shows, congregations were to limit the ‘speaking in tongues’ to two or three persons who might do that at any given meeting; they were to do it “each in turn,” and if there was no interpreter present they were to keep silent. (1 Cor. 14:27, 28, RS) Is that what is being done today?\n\nThe Bible does indicate how long the ‘gift of tongues’ would be a part of Christian experience. According to the record, this gift and the other gifts of the spirit were always conveyed to persons by the laying on of hands of the apostles of Jesus Christ or in their presence. Thus, after their death and when the individuals who in that way had received the gifts died, the miraculous gifts resulting from the operation of God’s spirit must have come to their end. Such a view agrees with the purpose of those gifts as stated at Hebrews 2:2-4.
797166
Tamil (தமிழ்) is a classical language and one of the major languages of the Dravidian language family. Spoken predominantly by Tamils in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Singapore, it has smaller communities of speakers in many other countries. As of 1996, it was the eighteenth most spoken language, with over 74 million speakers worldwide. It is one of the official languages of India, Singapore and Sri Lanka.\n\nTamil is one of the few living classical languages and has an unbroken literary tradition of over two millennia. The high level of diglossia exhibited by Tamil, and the prestige accorded to classical Tamil, have resulted in much of the vocabulary and forms of classical Tamil being preserved in modern literary Tamil, such that the higher registers of literary Tamil tend towards the classical language. The classical language also forms an important part of Tamil-medium education: verses from the Tirukkural, a classical work, are, for example, taught in primary school. The ordinary form of the modern language used in speech and writing, in contrast, has undergone significant changes, to the extent that a person who has not learnt the higher literary form will have difficulty understanding it.\n\nThe name 'Tamil' is an anglicised form of the native name தமிழ். The final letter of the name, usually transcribed as the lowercase l or zh, is a retroflex r. In phonetic transcriptions, it is usually represented by the retroflex approximant.\n\nThe origins of Tamil, like the other Dravidian languages are unknown, but unlike most of the other established literary languages of India, are independent of Sanskrit. Tamil has the oldest literature amongst the Dravidian languages (Hart, 1975), but dating the language and the literature precisely is difficult. Literary works in India or Sri Lanka were preserved either in palm leaf manuscripts (implying repeated copying and recopying) or through oral transmission, making direct dating impossible. External chronological records and internal linguistic evidence, however, indicate that the oldest extant works were probably composed sometime in the 2nd century CE.\n\nThe earliest extant text in Tamil is the Tolkāppiyam, a work on poetics and grammar which describes the language of the classical period, the oldest portions of this book may date back to around 200 BCE (Hart, 1975). Apart from these, the earliest examples of Tamil writing we have today are rock inscriptions from the 3rd century BCE, which are written in Tamil-Brahmi, an adapted form of the Brahmi script (Mahadevan, 2003). Linguists categorise Tamil literature and language into three periods: ancient (500 BCE to 700 CE), medieval (700 CE to 1500 CE) and modern (1500 CE to the present). During the medieval period, a number of Sanskrit loan words were absorbed by Tamil, which many 20th century purists, notably Parithimaar Kalaignar and Maraimalai Adigal, later sought to remove. This movement was called thanith thamizh iyakkam (meaning pure Tamil movement). As a result of this, Tamil in formal documents, public speeches and scientific discourses is largely free of Sanskrit loan words.\n\nTamil is the first language of the majority in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and in northern, eastern and northeastern Sri Lanka. The language is also spoken by small groups of minorities in other parts of these two countries, most notably in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra, and in Colombo and the hill country in Sri Lanka.\n\nThere are currently sizeable Tamil-speaking populations descended from them in Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, and Mauritius. Many people in Guyana, Fiji, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago have Tamil origins, but the language is spoken only by a small number there-.
919434
not so very long ago huge numbers of people in southern and central europe spoke latin.\n\nbut as the people in spain began to get more interested in talking to each other than in talking to italians, their language slowly evolved from latin to spanish.\n\nthe same thing happened in france, italy, romania.\n\nit is impossible to preserve a language against the wish of its speakers: people use a language to communicate with the people they want to talk to.\n\nit is just as impossible to stop new languages from evolving. a thousand years ago there was no recognisable english language, but as the need for one developed it appeared.\n\nthere are already dialects of english which are nearly unintelligible to speakers of the standard dialect (jamaicans and nigerians have forms of english which are on the verge of becoming separate languages).\n\nyou cannot tell a language what to do:- it tells you.
941106
The bottom line of Poki's post is "because someone said so". But that isn't true. \n\nThe oldest book on earth, a copy of Isaiah found with the dead sea scrolls, is essentially identical to what we have today. Through the dead sea scrolls we have again proven that the Bible that we have is reliable and accurate and consistent in it's message. There is no scholarly authority or archaeological evidence that proves otherwise. Nada. \n\nSaying the Bible is corrupt is just the same old lie; "Yea, hath God said...?"
10928
Tamil is a classical language and one of the major languages belonging to the Dravidian language family. Spoken predominanty by Tamilians in South India and Sri Lanka, it has smaller communities of speakers in many other countries. As of 1996, it was the 18th most spoken language in the world with over 74 million speakers worldwide.\n\nAs one of the few living classical languages, Tamil has an unbroken literary tradition of over two millennia. The written language has changed little during this period, with the result that classical literature is as much a part of everyday Tamil as modern literature. Tamil schoolchildren, for example, are still taught the alphabet using the átticúdi, an alphabet rhyme written around the first century A.D..
552711
Map-making dates back to the Stone Age and appears to predate written language by several millennia. One of the oldest surviving maps is painted on a wall of the Catal Huyuk settlement in south-central Anatolia (now Turkey); it dates from about 6200 BC. [Harvey 2000, p. 142].
274209
...worlds oldest profession
459500
It isn't from millions of years in the past, only a few thousand. We translate many languages that old, such as Egyptian and various Cuneiform languages. But knowledge of Hebrew has been remarkably preserved through the millennia compared to these other languages, and we also have many other linguistic tools at our disposal to help us get accurate translations of the Hebrew texts.
81892
It seems that when Jean François Champollion deciphered the ancient Egyptian writing (using Rosetta Stone and others), he discovered that it was still quite similar with Coptic despite the time difference. Coptic hasn't been a spoken language since the 1600's, but is the liturgical language of the coptic church and hence has been well preserved (as Latin has been).\n\nSo I think he used coptic to get the ponunciations.\n\nAbout "Ra": We don't really know what the vowel is. In fact, I don't think we know any vowels!\n\nHopefully and expert is online and can give a better answer!\nCheck out the source. I Didn't have time to read it properly.
603030
The oldest instrument in the world is the human voice.
244377
I am thinking the city of Jericho is one of the oldest cities.\nBUT we have signs of Indo Eruopean civilizations 10,000 years old and older.
508739
Arabic is a cousin language of Hebrew, as well as aramaic. The early armenian Christians came from the early Syrian Church which would have used the Aramaic form of the word. \n\nIn Hebrew it is Elohim. In arabic it is Allah. The words ligustically are quite similar and do come from each other.
11232
It's a Semetic language.  Some common semetic languages include Arabic and Hebrew.  If you want more information, follow the Wikipedia link.