As the article says pre-neolithic, if you are not aware Andaman is also home to the sentinelese, a known isolated and uncontacted tribe who have preserved their way of life for 60,000 years of isolation.

Oldest language could be a distinct language that has preserved its uniqueness. Due to the ice age, European languages can not be the oldest.

The isolation of these tribes and the long human habitation in these regions could make the languages some of the oldest as well as primitive.

> the sentinelese, a known isolated and uncontacted tribe who have preserved their way of life for 60,000 years of isolation.

I don't think they have actually been isolated for 60,000 years though. If I understand correctly, they chose to isolate in the 1800's because the British were kidnapping people. Before that they had contact with other Andaman islanders at least. For example, apparently the Sentinelese may speak a language of the Ongan family[1], which would mean that their language most likely diverged sometime within the last millennium or two, I think.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ongan_languages

I hate that it is trendy nowadays to claim that everything is racist. It is just ignorance.

People reuse old words for concepts that don't have their own names. Racism is the most common word for "using pseudoscience to give one group higher status than another"

I think what people who talk about "old languages" use to determine a language's age is something like "what's the earliest date an ancestor of this language was used in writing" or "how long has this area been inhabited by populations genetically similar to modern speakers of this language".

Personally, I think most languages are old, except for constructed languages like Toki Pona that have only existed for a short time.

Well very old languages like Tamil have a very ancient person with whom a modern speaker could have a mutually intelligible conversation. An English speaker could not speak English with someone from 1000 years ago but a Tamil speaker could.

Arabic. I can read/write Arabic texts from 1400+ years ago. As could anyone who studied Arabic at school... Now that I think of it, that’s pretty damn amazing! I can’t say the same for French or English.

Well, the Koran had an enormous stabilizing influence, didn't it?

How is that measured?

Well measuring it exactly is impossible but relatively is easy. For example Tamil has been much more static than Greek which has been much more static than English over the last 1000 years.

English was not really English 1000 years ago, was it? I think a Dane would find Old English/Anglo-Saxon easier reading than an untrained native English speaker would.

Static how? Obviously there is no ancient audio. Is ancient Tamil writing readable by modern Tamil readers?

Written scripts have used to change all over time. It is not possible to read at the get go, but after some practice, yes, any one can read old Tamil. Given that about ~55% [1] of written inscription are from Tamil, it is one of the proficient.

How do you measure the language change [2]? There are several approaches, the one I remember reading about is, you fetch the most basic kernel of a language, like very simple key words (like relations, food, feelings and so on) for about 100 words and then see how many of those words have changed since say last 10 years, last 50 years and 100 years and so on. You try going back as long as you can and you loose few words from 100 words you started, that's you delta.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Indian_epigraphy 2. https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2003/ling001/languag...

> It is not possible to read at the get go, but after some practice, yes, any one can read old Tamil.

The "after some practice" makes this a bit of a squishy claim. For example, Malayalam and Tamil split less than 1000 years ago and are both descendants of Old Tamil. I would be surprised if "after some practice" a Malayalam speaker couldn't also read Old Tamil, or for that matter Modern Tamil (and vice versa for a Modern Tamil speaker learning Malayalam).

So is Tamil somehow older than Malayalam? I think not.

There are many methods to try to determine how an ancient language was spoken, all of them by definition hypothetical, but since linguistic change does follow sensical rules, and happens in gradual steps (i.e. you can almost be sure that the vowel /u/ won't shift to the vowel /a/ in a single generation, and I bet there isn't a single recorded case of that happening, simply because /u/ and /a/ are very far away from each other in the mouth and acoustically).

For instance, we have very solid evidence (but still circumstantial, and therefore this is technically an hypothesis) that the Greek letter η, that now stands for /i/, had a long eh-like sound, likely /ε:/, for this and due to many other changes, we can say that were a Modern Greek speaker to speak with a Greek from the 5th century BC, they would have understood barely anything, barring certain specific words. From tracing how the language changed, according to the extent evidence, we can probably say that this speaker, however, would have mostly (but with difficulty) understood a speaker from 12th century Constantinople in simple day-to-day conversations. At the very least, the two speakers would have the same sound inventories and similar grammar, but somewhat different vocabularies.

I still agree with you that saying one language is older than another is meaningless. At most we can say that a language is probably more conservative than others.

Fortunately, there are Tamil poems written around 200 CE that are still readable and understandable by native speaker. Tamil poems follow strict grammar and structural rules for poems, so they don't change over time (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venpa).

Here is poem that speaks about children being joyous, and how they playfully eat food. A simple ordeal in everyday life. Its about 7 lines and everyday speaker still understands all of it.

https://365paa.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/063/ (poorely translated: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...)

Nice poem. thanks for sharing

Malayalam split from Tamil around 1000 CE. When I said you might need some expertise and training to read old Tamil scripts, I mean this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWIs17rSCg0&list=PLAU5iw78o0.... The video has closed captions if it is difficult to follow. Hope it helps.

Written Tamil have continuously evolved all along, the recent being around 1950 when printing became prevalent. The language itself changed very little, however only written letters survive and to know what was written 1000 years before you need some training.

Expert opinions might be different. Hope I am getting some information.

To give a sense of the differences the numbers one through ten in written tamil:

ondru, irandu, moondru, nangu, aintu, aru, ezhu (prounced like eru), ettu, ompattu, pattu

in modern:

oru, rendu, moonu, nalu, intu, aru, elu (or eru), ettu, ompati, pattu

"Modern Tamil" is actually classical Tamil. The written language is basically fixed in form to the language of the first millenium CE (the Thirukural, a collection of aphorisms by a Jain monk from the 3-4th century is relatively understandable to modern readers of Tamil). The spoken language continued to develop and depending on your dialect is completely different! It's the equivalent if english speakers spoke modern english, and wrote like Beowulf. It is possible and common to be a native speaker of Tamil and not be literate. The situation is similiar in many other languages like Arabic. In general Malayalam speakers are not literate in Tamil, because classical Malayalam, though very similiar to classical Tamil gramatically, has a heavily Sanskritic vocabulary, while classical Tamil tends to not use sanskrit words. Incidentally, the earliest Tamil, the Cankam literature, is completely different, and was already incomprehensible by the end of the first millenium when commentaries were written to effectively translate it.

While we don't have ancient audio, we can learn something about how a language was spoken by analyzing poetry with strict pronunciation rules. There's research in Chinese (I believe the original researcher was named Chen Li) to reconstruct how Chinese words used to be pronounced by analyzing poems that were supposed to rhyme but no longer do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Chinese_phonology

Yes

Thirukural[1] is a classic Tamil text on philosophy and secular ethics, which is considered to be at-least 1500 years old. Many verses of this text can be easily read and understood by anyone with intermediate level proficiency in Tamil. And so are most text from Sangam literature[2], which are even older. Thiruvasagam[3] and other Bakthi literature are widely used as a prayer hymns and can be understood with basic language training.

Tamil has two forms. Sentamil and Koduntamil, both survived till date. Sentamil is the formal/literary form and Koduntamil is the colloquial form used by common people. Koduntamil is made of simplified and shortened forms of words from Sentamil, some loan words and slang words. Due to the cultural and political influences in the last few centuries, there are many loan words from European and Persian languages in Koduntamil.

Other Dravidian languages[4] such as Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada has heavy influence of Sanskrit. There were efforts to Sankritise Tamil as well by using Sankrit words in Tamil syntax, which was called Manipravalam. Manipravalam was in use till early 20th century. In the beginning of 20th century, Tanittamil Iyakkam[5] aka Pure Tamil Movement restored the language and Maripravalam is no more in use. The formal Tamil used today, such as in news bulletins and official documents, is very close to the classical form.

Pure Tamil Movement, the two language policy[6] adopted by Tamil Nadu government and related efforts helped preserve the language. Although the Tamil speaking population is lesser compared to other languages such as Hindi and Telugu, Tamil has a thriving art, literature and media industry which are economically successful too.

Recent archeological research at Keezhadi has revealed a 6th century BCE Sangam era settlement in Vaigai river valley[7]. If more research confirms the findings, Tamil would be one among the oldest surviving classical languages.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirukku%E1%B9%9Fa%E1%B8%B7

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangam_literature

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiruvasagam

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravidian_languages

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanittamil_Iyakkam

[6] https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/policy-lessons-in-tami...

[7] https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/keeladi-fi...

This politicization and purification drive has made tamil to some extent less usable. Far from preserving tamil, many in the current generation can not read, write or understand tamil.

It is lacking in modern technical literature and comics. Most kids in school memorize tirukural, without understanding a word. Pushing the burden on preserving old language on kids is actually driving them from the language itself.

> This politicization and purification drive has made tamil to some extent less usable. Far from preserving tamil, many in the current generation can not read, write or understand tamil.

Can you elaborate on how you concluded that Tamil has become less usable? Citing sources will be helpful.

I have to kind of agree with the parent comment. I lived in Madurai for 3 years, where the people take great pride in the language. Your anecdote of little kids being able to comprehend the Thirukural was oft repeated, though I failed to see it in action. There were couplets from the Thirukural painted inside the city bus, and not once could one of my Tamil classmates actually grok the text. As a non-Tamil who learnt the script, I could read the words about as well as they could, transcribed as it is in the modern Tamil script. They clearly understood more than I did (which was close to none), but not enough to comprehend the text in any meaningful way. They could understand a word or two of the couplet, and kind of guess the meaning of the text. This was a far cry from the trope of 3 year olds reciting the Thirukural. For context, these were Masters students, for whom Tamil was the primary language. In my class of 15 people, there were perhaps two or three who could comprehend these texts with any level of competency.