Georgian Among 10 Oldest Languages Still Spoken in the World Today

"Language evolution is like biological evolution – it happens minutely, generation by generation, so there’s no distinct breaking point between one language and the next language that develops from it. Therefore, it’s impossible to say that one language is really older than any other one; they’re all as old as humanity itself. That said, each of the languages below has a little something special—something ancient—to differentiate it from the masses."- theculturetrip.com

Lani Seelinger of theculturetrip.com has compiled a list of the ten oldest languages still spoken in the world today. Georgian features at number nine after Hebrew, Tamil, Lithuanian, Farsi, Icelandic, Macedonian, Basque and Finnish, and followed by Irish Gaelic.

"The Caucasus region is a real hotbed for linguists. The main languages of the three south Caucasian countries, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, come from three entirely different language families – respectively Indo-European, Turkic, and Kartvelian. Georgian is the biggest Kartvelian language, and it is the only Caucasian language with an ancient literary tradition. Its beautiful and unique alphabet is also quite old – it is thought to have been adapted from Aramaic as far back as the third century AD. While not a language island in the same sense as Basque, there are only four Kartvelian languages, all spoken by minorities within Georgia, and they are all unrelated to any other languages in the world."- says Seelinger. Of Basque, she says: "The Basque language is the ultimate linguistic mystery. It is spoken natively by some of the Basque people who live in Spain and France, but it is completely unrelated to any Romance language (which French and Spanish are) or indeed any other language in the world. Linguists have postulated over the decades about what it could be related to, but none of the theories have been able to hold water. The only thing that’s clear is that it existed in that area before the arrival of the Romance languages – that is, before the Romans got there with the Latin that would eventually develop into French and Spanish."

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PHOTO: Royal Charter of King Erekle II (1720-1798)