What was the first language?

Let's avoid the "my religion is better than your religion," please. The topic is "what is the first language" and the rules here are to please back your argument up with links and evidence.

Speculation and opinion are for the Skunk Works area.

then please move this thread there Byrd
it was done by page 3 anyway

Yeah, let's also avoid "my LINKS is better than your link".

have you been listening to anything the moderators in this thread have been saying
posting with links is the only credible way to back what you are saying
if you never post any links ergo you arent credible

i know that we're talking about what the first human language was; but all language is is a way of communicating correct? wouldn't that mean that veloci-raptors take the cake when it comes to the first language? they used clicks, howls, and growls (something of the sort, w/e noises dinosaurs made) to hunt and trap their prey.


i know this is off topic, since we want to know about the first human language, but i just thought i'd make a suggestion.

and if i am wrong about them being able to communicate, but i'm pretty sure i'm not, please let me know

the first post stated


so velociraptors don't count
if they did they would be beaten by Amoebas anyway which have been around for billions of years and communicate via chemical messengers

this has already been mentioned
did you read all of the thread ?

haha, srry bout that

i only read the first page and part of the second, got lazy

Alright guys listen up...linguistics can be a complicated issue and is often-times downright confusing because there's so many branches. Some major language families include,

-Indo-European
-Afro-Asiatic
-Niger-Congo
-Nilo-Saharan
-Dravidian
-So on and so forth

Surprisingly, the language family with the most sub-groups is Niger-Congo consisting of 1,514 languages...even though Niger-Congo is old, it's not THE oldest according to modern linguistics. Most linguistists say Afro-Asiatic is the oldest spoken human language group that we're currently aware of. Afro-Asiatic is the mother branch of all Semitic languages including Hebrew, Akkadian, Amharic, etc. Afro-Asiatic languages include Cu#ic, Omotic, Berber, Egyptian (meaning Ancient Egyptian...not modern Egyptian which is more Arabic than anything else). The roots of the Afro-Asiatic language family are firmly in East Africa...a notion that is supported by MOST mainstream scholars. This coincides with archeological evidence that humans got their start in East Africa. So it would only make sense that the oldest known languages would also begin there.

Now, people have postulated that there is a Mother Tongue that we are not aware of known as the Nostratic Family, but everybody doesn't believe this due to lack of evidence.

Toromos, I commend your knowledge of language... Do you know anything of the Enochian Language? Thank you

I've never heard of an Enochian language. I know of a Book of Enoch, which is considered a pseudepigraphal work of the bible, (probably multiple variations of it actually, I'm not sure) but it was probably written in Hebrew or Greek. Sorry I can't be more helpful.

Enochian is the modern term applied to what Dr John Dee called angelic language. the connection of course between Enoch and Angels is so obvious its not worth mentioning here
good site on it here
www.steliart.com...
try googling angelic script

or angelic language
should be millins of websites that have info

imo its all bollox but thats just me

Well put...not surprised at the fact that the afro-asiatic language group is the oldest, as it makes perfect sense.

Unfortunately it makes little sense to claim Afro-Asiatic is older than any other language group. We can only push our knowledge of the proto language families that the modern language groups derive to around 10,000 ago. Before that we simply do not have adequate data to go on. Even if we accept an out of Africa scenerio for homo sapiens, this would have happened tens of thousands of years before our best knowledge of the proto families.

I can't think of any professional linguist who would claim Afro-Asiatic is older than any other family group. If a cite to an article or otherwise could be provided, I would be happy to look it over.

Readers of this thread might be interested in the site Ask-A-Linguist, and specifically a professional linguist's answer to the question what is the oldest language.

Ask a Linguist FAQ: Oldest Language

Linguists from all over the world answer questions about all aspects of language on this site. It's quite fascinating.

i dont think you will ever know, neither will i, because language is very fluid, it changes and evolves just as thoughts and ideas do. most languages integrate and encorperate previose languages, for example indo-european languages and there latin root. then going farther back, the language that most influenced latin, and so on. so english may very well bee a derivative of the first language

I havent read the entire thread, but i remember watching a special on History Channel, and they said the first spoken language was a form of clicking of the tongue.

I dont know how true this is or where they got this info from.

"First tongue" was just that 'spoken' not written. Evidence of it being the survived writings of ancient peoples are 12 (Sumer, China, Indus, Aram, Myacae, Egypt, Celt, Phoen., Greek, Libya, Etrus., Abor.) which assembled can unite a 30 'sound' communicative system. The Oldest Alphabetic writing of Abraham's progeny best preserves the corpus of symbols drawn from the fixed stars of the Zodiac in connect-the-dots fashion, but only 22 consonants with the vowels as the Sun Moon and visible Planets wandering through them being 7 (as the weekdays). The 1 for "ng" being Chinese was lacking in the Hebrew as evidenced by Shang-Ti being written Shaddai. The translation of earliest writing in petroglyph is accomplished using Hebrew, which given again at Sinai is apparently the key to World languages agreeing (like a Grand Central Sta. of language concepts) at their long confused origins.

[edit on 19-3-2008 by Byrd]

reply to post by CX

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Here's my theory on the first and oldest language, as well as the migration of our ancesters.
The very first language of the world was Aramian, as were the first people. The early greeks called them Atlantians who possesed great knowledge and technologies.The truth is that these people lived their lives in harmony with nature and the spirit under the spirits rules,(one voice, one people, one god).They lived by the 8 fruits of the spirit and were blessed with divine knowledge.They are the lost thirteenth tribe of israel.As time went on the younger generations found it difficult to live the disciplined ways of the spirit.This resulted in these generations becoming out of favour with god.No longer being united as one people the languages were divided as depicted in the bible at the tower of babel. These younger generations dispersed throughout the lands.The Aramian people as well as the israelites were later enslaved by one of their younger generations in Egypt then forced to build the great pyrimads to the heavens in an attempt to reconnect with god the easy way without having to live by the rules set out by him.Having the 1st fruit of the spirit (Unconditional love) rather than destroy their younger generations, they regrettfully agreed to do their bidding even when being whipped and killed by the younger people.God then sent Moses to deliver them. They left egypt with moses in search of the promised land.The Lost tribe were sent ahead to find the promised land and the missing link, following the white cloud of god around the world starting from Egypt, to Asia (Europe) to Mexico(North America), Peru, Easter Island and through the Pacific islands till finally the journey ended in New Zealand(Aotearoa). Meanning (The land of the long white cloud). All the lands the old people went through on the migration, they were enslaved by their younger generations and forced to build for them.The old people cursed the lands when they left resulting in suffering of all the indigenous races throughout the world.New Zealand is the promised land of god where all the world will one day unite under gods grace.