Europe’s oldest language gets 21st Century fillip

by Richard on September 21, 2006

Tafarn y Byd is an ‘online pub’ that gives people the chance to meet on the net and chat in Welsh using Skype and, eventually, Skypecast. Makes me wish I was a Welsh speaker.

via BlogCymru

{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Andrew 09.21.06 at 5:45 pm: Welsh is older than Basque (Euskal)? Who knew? Certainly not this dumb American (of Basque descent). Huh.

AC
2 Richard 09.21.06 at 6:23 pm: Well, of course this is a bone of contention. But I live in Wales!
3 Beth 09.22.06 at 8:56 pm: I hate to say it, Richard, but I think Andrew may be right. Thanks for the link, I’m going to enjoy it greatly!
4 Andrew 09.23.06 at 3:43 pm: Beth wrote:

I hate to say it, Richard, but I think Andrew may be right.

Well, I’m at least right about being a “dumb American,” if nothing else.

AC
5 Beth 09.23.06 at 5:33 pm: Goldarn it, Andrew, you saw through my cunning use of ambiguity…
6 Rhys 09.24.06 at 2:01 am: No, I do think Andrew is right. As I recall, most linguists regard Basque as somewhat unique anyway, because it’s a ‘language isolate’. In other words, Basque doesn’t belong to any major language family (unlike Welsh with its Celtic roots, English its Germanic ones). So where the language and people came from, no one seems to know…

Anyway, Richard, why not give learning a bit Welsh a go? Doesn’t have to be a concentrated programme of study, and certainly doesn’t need to involve night classes from the outset. Here is as good a place as any to start. And if it worked for another blogger…
7 Richard 09.24.06 at 7:11 am: I knew that it was only a matter of time before that challenge came…
But if an American can learn Welsh from a website, ther’s not much excuse for a Yorkshireman whose lived here for 13 years.

Except maybe that I’m thicker than him.
8 Basque by the grace of God. 03.01.11 at 1:11 am: Basque is older than welsh n its the oldest language in europe…
9 garicgymro 03.16.11 at 6:15 pm: This question of what Europe’s oldest language is isn’t really coherent (I say this as a native Welsh speaker with a PhD in linguistics). Languages don’t just pop into existence on specific dates. For example, Welsh has been spoken in Britain longer than English in the sense that if you go back far enough in time you’ll get to a point where people in Britain speak a direct ancestor of Welsh, but no one speaks a direct ancestor of English. However, ancestors of English obviously existed elsewhere in Europe at that point, so that means only that Welsh has longer roots in Britain than English, not that it’s actually older.

And remember that languages change. So if we count the language spoken in Britain before the Roman Conquest as Welsh, then we have to say that French, Italian, Spanish, and the other Romance languages are all as old as Latin (because at some point they were Latin).

And I’m afraid that if you want to know which language now spoken in Europe has the longest roots in its current region (which is the only halfway sensible interpretation of “what’s Europe’s oldest language” I can muster), then we just don’t know the answer. We just don’t have sufficient historical evidence to tell how long people in the Basque country, for example, have been speaking Basque (or even ancestral forms of it).
10 getic 04.07.12 at 7:34 pm: One of the most respected archaeologists of our time,Colin Renfrew declarethe Indo-European tree is the I haplogroup population that spread from Balkans. (Indo)? European language has origin thus in Magna (Dacia)covering Romania, Ukrajna,Thracia,Panonia,Greece.The language closest to this is present day Romanian,which is closest to Old Greek and Latina Vulgara.Present day Romanian is the clue to all(Indo)European languages’.Old Dacian old European Latin the lingua franca of all Roman Empire.more…first modern humans in Europe,first civilization in Europe,all was discovered on our land.the eminent Russian linguist and historian Igor M.D’iakonov declare.the Balkan-Carpathian region? has all the features known for Proto-Indo-European culture.GRAY AND ATKINSON – in The theory of Indo-European origins declare language is the cornerstone of all (Indo) european languages, it is oldest, lexically richest, with best preserved old archaic terms not found in Latin but found in Old Medieval French for example, most homogenius on large theritory, linguistically closest to Old Koine Greek and Old Vulgar Latin. Old Valachian languge was spoken in all Balkans, mostly north of Jiricek line, Magna Moldavia spread before Turkish and Russian expansion in north of Black Sea up to Crimea. >>’