list of languages by first written accounts

"Ancient Language" redirects here. For other uses, see ancient language (disambiguation).

This is a list of languages by first written accounts which consists of the approximate dates for the first written accounts that are known for various languages.

Because of the way languages change gradually, it is usually impossible to pinpoint when a given language began to be spoken with any precision. In many 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.

There are also various claims regarding still-undeciphered scripts without wide acceptance, which, if substantiated, would push backward the first attestation of certain languages.

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. Oral tradition of epic poetry may typically bridge a few centuries, but in rare cases, over a millennium. An extreme case is the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda: the earliest parts of this text are dated to ca. 1500 BC, while the oldest known manuscript dates to the 11th century AD, corresponding to a gap of approximately 2,500 years.

For languages that have developed out of a known predecessor, dates provided here are subject to conventional terminology. For example, Old French developed gradually out of Vulgar Latin, and the Oaths of Strasbourg (842) listed are the earliest text that is classified as "Old French". Similarly, Danish and Swedish separate from common Old East Norse in the 12th century, while Norwegian separates from Old West Norse around 1300.

Before 1000 BC

Further information: Bronze Age writing

Date	Language	Attestation
c. 3450 BC	Sumerian	Ideographic tablets from the temple archives in Uruk^[1]^[2]
c. 3320 BC	Egyptian	A collection of labels from tomb Uj, perhaps belonging to King Scorpion, in the Umm el-Qa'ab^[3]^[2]
c. 2400 BC	Eblaite
c. 2300 BC	Akkadian
c. 2250 BC	Elamite	Awan dynasty peace treaty with Naram-Sin
c. 1800 BC	West Semitic / proto-Canaanite	Middle Bronze Age alphabets
c. 1800 BC	Luwian
c. 1650 BC	Hittite	Various cuneiform texts and Palace Chronicles written during the reign of Hattusili I, from the archives at Hattusas
c. 1600 BC	Minoan	Linear A
c. 1500 BC	Canaanite	Proto-Canaanite alphabet
c. 1450 BC	Greek	Linear B tablet archive from Bronze Age Pylos
c. 1300 BC	Chinese	Oracle bone script^[4]
c. 1300 BC	Ugaritic

1st millennium BC

Aramaic - c. 950 BC
Hebrew - c. 950 BC: Gezer calendar
Phrygian - c. 800 BC
Moabite - c. 800 BC
Ammonite - c. 800 BC
Old South Arabian - c. 800 BC
Etruscan - c. 700 BC
Umbrian - c. 600 BC
North Picene - c. 600 BC
Lepontic - c. 600 BC
Tartessian - c. 600 BC
Lydian - c. 600 BC
Carian - c. 600 BC
Persian - c. 525 BC: Old Persian cuneiform script
Latin - c. 500 BC: Duenos Inscription^[5]
South Picene - c. 500 BC
Ge'ez - c. 500 BC
Messapian - c. 500 BC
Gaulish - c. 500 BC
Old North Arabian - c. 500 BC
Mixe-Zoque - c. 500 BC: Isthmian script (disputed)
Oscan - c. 400 BC
Iberian - c. 400 BC
Meroitic - c. 300 BC
Faliscan - c. 300 BC
Volscian - c. 275 BC
Sanskrit/Prakrit - c. 250 BC: Edicts of Ashoka
Galatian - c. 200 BC
Tamil - c. 2200 BC^[6]
Celtiberian - c. 100 BC

1st millennium AD

(This list is incomplete.You can help by expanding it!)

Bactrian - - c. 150: Rabatak inscription
Common Germanic/Proto-Norse - c. 160: Vimose inscriptions
Cham - c. 200
Maya - c. 200
Basque - c. 300: Iruña-Veleia archaeological site
Gothic - c. 300: Gothic runic inscriptions; Codex Argenteus
Primitive Irish - c. 300-400: Ogham inscriptions
Georgian - c. 430: a Georgian church in Bethlehem
Kannada - c. 450: Halmidi inscription
West Germanic - 6th century (Old Low Franconian - c. 510: Salic law^[7]; Old High German - c. 550: Pforzen buckle; Old English - Undley bracteate; c. 650: Franks Casket; West Heslerton brooch^[8])
Arabic - 512: pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions
Cambodian - c. 600
Tibetan - c. 600
Udi - c. 600: Mount Sinai palimpsest M13
Telugu - 620
Malay - c. 683
Tocharian - c. 700
Old Turkic - c. 700 Orkhon
Japanese - c. 700
Welsh - c. 700: Tywyn inscriptions
Frisian - c. 750
Hindi - 769: Dohakosh by Saraha
Malayalam - c. 800
Javanese - 804
Old French - c. 842: Oaths of Strasbourg
Tagalog -c. 900: Laguna Copperplate Inscription
Bengali Language -c. 900 charyapada
Russian - c. 950-1000: Gnezdovo inscription, Birch bark documents, Novgorod Codex
Italian - c. 960-963: ^[9]
Old Church Slavonic - 993: Inscription on a gravestone erected by Tsar Samuil of Bulgaria^[10]

1000-1500 AD

(This list is incomplete.You can help by expanding it!)

Slovenian - 972-1093: (Freising manuscripts)
Hungarian - c. 1000: the Charter of the Nuns of Veszprémvölgy
Balinese - c.1000
Ossetic - c. 1000
Catalan - c. 1028: Jurament Feudal^[11]
Piedmontese - 1080
Aragonese and Spanish - centuries X-XI: Glosas Emilianenses (date from Spanish wikipedia)
Croatian - c. 1100: Baška tablet
Danish - c. 1100
Swedish - c. 1100
Nepal Bhasa - 1114: "The Palmleaf from Uku Bahal"
Middle Dutch - c. 1150: ^[12]
Portuguese and/or Galician - 1189
Bosnian - 1189: The Charter of Kulin
Czech - c. 1200-1230
Western Lombard - c. 1250: Sordello da Goito, "Sirventese lombardesco"
Polish - c. 1270: Book of Henryków
Yiddish - 1272
Thai - c. 1292
Old Norwegian - c. 1300
Batak - c.1300
Finnic - c. 1300 Birch bark letter no. 292 (Finnish proper: Abckiria, 1543)
Old Prussian - c. 1350
Kashmiri - c. 1350
Komi - 1372
Albanian - c. 1400
Korean - 1446 (Hunmin Jeongeum)
Maltese language - c. 1470: Cantilena

After 1500 AD

Date	Language	Attestation	Notes
1521	Romanian	Neacşu's letter.
1530	Latvian
1535	Estonian
1539	Classical Nahuatl	Breve y mas compendiosa doctrina cristiana en lengua mexicana y castellana	Possibly the first printed book in the New World. No copies are known to exist today.^[13]
1543	Modern Finnish	Abckiria by Mikael Agricola.
1545	Lithuanian
ca. 1550	New Dutch/Standard Dutch	Statenbijbel	The Statenbijbel is commonly accepted to be the start of Standard Dutch, but various experiments were performed around 1550 in Flanders and Brabant. Although none proved to be lasting they did create a semi-standard and many formed the base for the Statenbijbel.
1554	Wastek	A grammar by Andrés de Olmos.
1600	Buginese
ca. 1650	Ubykh	The Seyahatname of Evliya Çelebi.
1692	Sakha (Yakut)
ca. 1695	Seri	Grammar and vocabulary compiled by Adamo Gilg.	No longer known to exist.^[14]
1728	Swahili	Utendi wa Tambuka
1743	Chinese Pidgin English
1770	Guugu Yimithirr	Words recorded by James Cook's crew.
1814	Māori language		systematic orthography from 1820 (Hongi Hika)
1819	Cherokee
ca. 1830	Vai
1832	Gamilaraay	Basic vocabulary collected by Thomas Mitchell.^[15]
ca. 1900	Papuan languages
ca. 1900	Other Austronesian languages.
1903	Lingala
1984	Gooniyandi

Constructed languages

Date	Language	Attestation	Notes
1879	Volapük		An artificial language created by Johann Martin Schleyer.
1887	Esperanto	Unua Libro	An artificial language created by L. L. Zamenhof.
1907	Ido		An artificial language based on Esperanto.
1917	Quenya		An artificial language created by J. R. R. Tolkien.
1928	Novial		An artificial language created by Otto Jespersen.
1935	Sona	Sona, an auxiliary neutral language	An artificial language created by Kenneth Searight.
1951	Interlingua	Interlingua-English Dictionary	An artificial language created by the International Auxiliary Language Association.
1955	Loglan		An artificial language created by James Cooke Brown.
1985	Klingon		An artificial language created by Marc Okrand.
1987	Lojban		An artificial language based on Loglan created by the Logical Language Group.

References

^ Shupp, Mike. Some Problems for Mesopotamian Archaeology. Archived from the original on 2002-12-06. Retrieved on 2007-01-17.
^ ^a ^b Lawler, Andrew (2001-06-29). Writing Gets a Rewrite. Retrieved on 2007-06-04.
^ Mattessich, Richard (2002-06). The oldest writings, and inventory tags of Egypt. The Accounting Historians Journal. Retrieved on 2006-10-05.
^ William G. Boltz, Early Chinese Writing, World Archaeology, Vol. 17, No. 3, Early Writing Systems. (Feb., 1986), pp. 420-436 (436)
^ Vine, Brent. A Note on the Duenos Inscription. Retrieved on 2006-09-20.
^ Iravatham Mahadevan (2003). Early Tamil Epigraphy from the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. Cambridge, Harvard University Press. ((excerpt. Retrieved on 2007-05-22., review. The Hindu review. Retrieved on 2007-05-22.)
^ Onze Taal. Livios.org. Retrieved on 2006-09-20.
^ Oldest written English?. Cronaca.com.
^ History of the Italian language.. Retrieved on 2006-09-24.
^ Krause, Todd B.; Slocum, Jonathan (2007). Old Church Slavonic Online: Series Introduction. Linguistics Research Center, College of Liberal Arts, The University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved on 2007-07-14.
^ MORAN, J. i J. A. RABELLA (ed.) (2001). Primers textos de la llengua catalana. Proa (Barcelona). ISBN 84-8437-156-5.
^ Various texts, among whom the Servaaslegende by Henderik van de Veldeke
^ Schwaller, John Frederick (1973). "A Catalogue of Pre-1840 Nahuatl Works Held by The Lilly Library". The Indiana University Bookman 11: 69-88.
^ Marlett, Stephen A.. "The Structure of Seri" (PDF).
^ Austin, Peter K. The Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi) Language, northern New South Wales — A Brief History of Research