[LordGronk]

Historians and linguists generally agree that Sumerian, Akkadian and Egyptian are the oldest languages with a clear written record. All three are extinct

Umm, what? Coptic is a (barely) living Egyptian. It is close enough for us to have deciphered hieroglyphs, hieratic, and demotic, at the old, middle, and late stages. Yes the Greek on the Rosetta stone helped but Coptic sealed the deal, particularly with transliteration. Thus I would say using the term “Egyptian” to refer to any particular language with obvious stages and then saying it’s dead when you have a stage still spoken is absurd, and does a great disservice to linguistic communities that need help. I expect better from a publication as “woke” as Scientific American. Copts and their language may not be thriving nor reviving but news of the death of the Egyptian language is a bit exaggerated.

[zarzavat]

This is why “oldest language” is silly.

Is Old English the same language as Modern English? They are definitely not mutually intelligible. If we can accept them as being the “same” language then why not English and Proto-Indo-European? It’s not like people woke up one day and started speaking a different language. It’s a continuous evolution.

The oldest languages that are still intelligible such that you could go back in time and be sure to be understood are surely the liturgical languages like Arabic and Latin that have been carefully preserved over thousands of years. Without this system of active remembrance, languages naturally become unintelligible with their prior versions.

[LordGronk]

I think a better and more interesting question would, perhaps, be “What is the most conservative language as supported by written and spoken evidence (the variations of ancient greek dialects tracking with orthographic differences shows that it can be done). And Anglo-saxon is not the same as modern English to any degree. 1066 and the great vowel shift saw to that. A great book on the history, and conservative nature of Egyptian is “The Ancient Egyptian Language: An Historical Study” by James Allen. If you really want to get into the weeds “Ancient Egyptian Phonology” by the same author. The latter in particular points out the extreme similarities to more rural Coptic dialects and Egyptian as found in the Heqanakht papyri.

[avhception]

It's interesting to think that the amount of written and spoken words that will be preserved for future generations is higher than ever. Will the future need to understand all these internet texts, podcasts and videos contribute to the ossification of languages?

[NoraCodes]

> I expect better from a publication as “woke” as Scientific American.

This strikes me as a prime example of "woke" having lost all meaning. What would it mean here? Having an orientation towards truth? Giving a shit about minorities?

[becquerel]

Saying racism is without scientific merit, that trans people shouldn't kill themselves, and/or not being overtly fascist.

[heywhatupboys]

you are being deliberately hyperbolic

[TheCaptain4815]

Plus, wasn't Arabic based on Aramaic, which is still spoken today?

[nivertech]

No, Aramaic falls somewhere in between the two. Hebrew is closer to Aramaic since it has borrowed its higher register (similar to how Latin influenced European languages)

Both Hebrew and Aramaic belong to the Northwest Semitic languages[1] family

Furthermore, there is no single attested Arabic language in the same manner as Hebrew, which is one of the Canaanite dialects

There are several proto-Arabic languages[2], but some of the northern ones are likely speculative. While there is evidence of the Ancient North Arabian[3] script, the actual language(s) it represents remain unattested

---

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Semitic_languages

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Arabic_language

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_North_Arabian

[ffhhttt]

Not really, they are not even on the same sub-branch of Semitic languages. Aramaic is closer to Hebrew.

Aramaic is still spoken by Assyrians and IIRC some other Christian groups in the region though.

[retrac]

Coptic is as dead as Latin. No one speaks it as a native language.

[LordGronk]

it has a steady liturgical use and children are raised to understand it in church, along with small spoken revival groups here in the states so, while not exactly living, I would say it’s in a far better state in its community than Latin post vatican 2. But note, I never said it was alive. Just that it’s not as dead as, say, Sumerian (in fact it’s about as alive amongst the coptic community I know as Sumerian was at the time Akkadian was spoken, as a language of identity and education)

[retrac]

That is why I compared it to Latin. It sees steady liturgical use, and in some pockets, children are still raised to understand it in Church, along with spoken revival groups. That is to say, Latin is dead.

[LordGronk]

I would say Coptic and Latin are not exactly a 1 to 1 comparison, primarily because today coptic is attached to a specific ethnic identity and the attempts at community revival that come with that. Of course one might argue that there are Latin revival groups too but equating organised families and expat communities that function like the Copts (or similar groups like the Mandaeans) with, say, internet organised neo-pagans that have little continuity or an organisation like the Catholic Church that solely uses Latin for official documents and discourages its use is, at best, a comparison that lacks any sort of diachronic subtlety.

[ClaraForm]

As a Copt who speaks but doesn't understand very much of what I say, my father can speak it, as does anyone who has a liturgical inclination. I can always go learn more of it, and it will likely remain as alive as it currently is for the foreseeable future. It's impossible to be devout without speaking it, it's impossible to connect to our identity without seeking to be devout.

Just supporting what you're saying.

[retrac]

Coptic is used actively. It remains important. It is spoken by its community, it is very religiously and culturally significant. Sanskrit may have been a better analogy than Latin. And I thank you for your perspective. I was only debating a fairly technical linguistic point.

A living language is a language that is used to teach children how to peel vegetables, that people shout when they stub their toe, and a language lovers whisper together. If none of that is going on, if it is used only in some contexts, by people who start learning it after they already know another language (their native language), then it is probably a dead language.

Perhaps "dead" sounds pejorative, it is meant to be descriptive. Does that intense degree of language use occur? If no one speaks a language as their first, primary language, then the language is generally considered "dead" - even if hundreds of thousands of people use it every day. Another way of looking at it: if Coptic is still used in a thousand years, would it be recognizable? Or would it be like how Latin and Sanskrit are nearly unchanged, since they were last living languages? Living languages evolve.

[wl]

Classical Latin is to Italian as Middle Egyptian is to Coptic. If the former pair are distinct languages, so are the latter. Yes, knowledge of Coptic is what unlocked the Rosetta Stone. But the differences are substantial. Old Egyptian (even if we knew the vowels) and revival Bohairic would be nowhere near mutually intelligible.