The world's youngest language, coming in at only 100 years old (officially), is the South African language of Afrikaans. Surprised? Afrikaans, the natively spoken language of 7 million South Africans, was born from the white Dutch, French, and German colonizers in South Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries.
According to the Engco Forecasting Model explained above, the 5 most spoken languages in 2050 will be Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi and Arabic. The key drivers behind the continued rise in popularity of these languages include population growth, economic predictions and national language policy.
Sumerian can be considered the first language in the world, according to Mondly. The oldest proof of written Sumerian was found on the Kish tablet in today's Iraq, dating back to approximately 3500 BC.
Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.
The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the midrashim) and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden.
VIDEO: Punjabi is now Australia's fastest growing language
Punjabi is now more popular in Australia than it is in India, where it is only the eleventh-most spoken language. More on: Australia. Languages.
Language extinction
Many of the languages spoken today are in constant extinction. Linguistic predictions say that of 6,000 languages that are globally spoken today, around 600 of them after 100 years will have simplified versions or will not exist at all.
But Latin isn't the only dead language, some of the other known dead languages are Sanskrit, Biblical Hebrew, Ancient Greek and Gothic, all of which are still studied both academically and religiously.
Old English – the earliest form of the English language – was spoken and written in Anglo-Saxon Britain from c. 450 CE until c. 1150 (thus it continued to be used for some decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066).
Although languages are defined by rules, they are by no means static, and evolve over time. Some languages are incredibly old and have changed very little over time, such as modern Icelandic, which strongly resembles its parent, Old Norse. Other languages evolve rapidly by incorporating elements of other languages.
The Hebrew language is about 3000 years old. It is currently the official language of Israel, after its extinction, the Israeli people revived it. The Jewish community considers it to be 'holy language' and the Old Testament of the Bible was written in it.
1. Tamil (5000 years old) - Oldest Living Language of the World. Source Spoken by 78 million people and official language in Sri Lanka and Singapore, Tamil is the oldest language in the world. It is the only ancient language that has survived all the way to the modern world.
Children can learn to speak more than one language. They can learn languages at home, at school, or in the community. Some children can speak both languages easily. But sometimes they know one language better than the other.
Some may protest that it is not English but Mandarin Chinese that will eventually become the world's language, because of the size of the Chinese population and the increasing economic might of their nation. But that's unlikely. For one, English happens to have gotten there first.
Every 40 days a language dies. This “catastrophic” loss is being amplified by the climate crisis, according to linguists. If nothing is done, conservative estimates suggest that half of all the 7,000 languages currently spoken will be extinct by the end of the century.
Currently, there are 573 known extinct languages. These are languages that are no longer spoken or studied. Many were local dialects with no records of their alphabet or wording, and so are forever lost. Others were major languages of their time, but society and changing cultures left them behind.
Australian English is a relatively new dialect of English and is over 200 years old. Australian English can be described as a new dialect that developed as a result of contact between people who spoke different, mutually intelligible, varieties of English.
While English is the dominant language in Australia, many people speak a language other than English within their families and communities.
English language
Queensland (80.5% 2021) (81.2% 2016) (84.8% 2011) South Australia (77.6% 2021) (78.2% 2016) (81.6% 2011)
The date of birth of Jesus is not stated in the gospels or in any historical sources, but most biblical scholars generally accept a date of birth between 6 BC and 4 BC, the year in which King Herod died.
He may have stood about 5-ft.-5-in. (166 cm) tall, the average man's height at the time.
So while Jesus' most common spoken language was Aramaic, he was familiar with—if not fluent, or even proficient in—three or four different tongues.