This is a list comprising the (rough) dates when the first written accounts of a language were found. This does not mean, in any way, that the language in question is of the same age.

It is important to remember that this list only names the dates from when a language is recognised as the same language. For example: French was derived from Latin, yet written accounts of what we now call "Old French" do not appear until 1300 AD. The same rules apply to, for example, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian in their relation to Old Norse.

• Egyptian - ca. 3200 BC
• Greek - ca. 1500 BC
• Aramaic - ca. 1000 BC
• Chinese - ca. 900 BC
• Lydian - ca. 700 BC
• Persian - ca. 525 BC
• Latin - ca. 500 BC
• Ge'ez - ca. 500 BC
• Sanskrit - ca. 250 BC
• Tamil - ca. 200 BC
• Dutch - ca. 500
• Tibetan - ca. 600
• English - ca. 660
• German - ca. 700
• Malayalam - ca. 800
• Spanish - ca. 804
• Italian - ca. 960-963
• Danish - ca. 1100
• Swedish - ca. 1100
• Portuguese - 1189
• Galician - 1189 (modern Galician in the XIX century)
• Russian - ca. 1300-1350
• French - ca. 1300
• Kashmiri - ca. 1350
• Romanian - 1521
• Esperanto - 1887
• Papuan languages - ca. 1900
• Austronesian languages - ca. 1900
• Lingala - 1903

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

Linguistics | Languages | Language histories | Historical linguistics