What is an active language that hasn’t changed much over the course of its evolution?
Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at
5:57 am
I know that most languages start with many changes based on region and other languages influencing; but once a language has been established, what language hasn't changed much?
For instance, a branch of the Celtic languages like Welsh, or a branch of the Romance languages like the Catalan language. Have these changed much since they were established as a spoken language? Have any others?
Any languages that you know of that haven't changed much?
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Tagged with: catalan language • celtic languages • hasn • romance languages • spoken language • welsh
Filed under: Welsh Language
Icelandic has changed very little since the middle ages. Modern Icelanders have no difficulty reading medieval sagas.
Latin continued evolving with use, even when it was just church and scientific Latin.
Sanskrit may not have changed at all, but it is an artificial construct language, and does not see much use either.
As for stuff like Celtic languages, thy have evolvd a lot : Modern Irish or Welsh are quite far from their medieval forms, similarly, Breton have evolved quite distinctly away from Welsh. I doubt any romance language, even Catalan, is still close enough to its medieval form for no evolution to be arguable.
The answer for your question :
The language which hasnt changed since evolution is SANSKRIT
(The first language of India). This language is 3000 years old and
b’liv me …. it hasn’t changed even 1% since its evolution.
All the Indian languages have developed from Sanskrit.
maybe latin
I’d suggest you look up Romansh or Luxembourgish. These have been relativelly stable over the last 800-1000 years.
Latin and sanscrit both have had major changes. Ancient latin is no longer a spoken language but has remained stable in writing. Sanskrit has made many changes. See info about that here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit
In my linguistic class it was said that languages stay similar to the original language when a people *leave* their place of origin and are isolated. While on the other hand those who stay in a place the language evolves more. (example from the class: those in the Appalachian mountains speak in a dialect that is more like that in England during Shakespearian times than those in England speak now.) I don’t know the professors sources and I know that I really didn’t answer the question, but maybe I gave you more to think about.
Icelandic, Faroese
I would say Arabic. Many countries have altered it a bit, but there are still many countries that observe the "true" arabic.