What is the oldest Native American language?

Answer 1

Your question supposes that all native languages have always remained the same as they are today or were at first contact with Europeans, which is far from correct. Languages evolve over time and it can be shown that the historic languages of native Americans developed from a much smaller number of prehistoric languages such as proto-Algonquian, proto-Siouan, proto-Athapaskan and so on.

This points to all modern and historic Algonguian languages (for example) such as Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Maliseet, Powhatan, Mahican, Delaware, Ojibwe and Cree evolving from a single parent language used many thousands of years ago, before anyone was around who could witness and record it. The same for all Siouan and Athapaskan languages.

One controversial theory says that all native American languages evolved from a single, even older, parent language used in north-East Asia and attempts have been made to show correlations between many of the different historic language groups. One obvious one is the prefix ni- or n- for "I" or "me" which is found in many parts of the Americas.

Since we are talking about a time before written history when no native Americans were writing anything about their languages - and a time before the historic tribal groups had developed and before their languages as we recognise them had evolved - we can only speculate, guess and theorise about the prehistoric origins of native American languages.