 Hello, nice to see you. Language evolution is like biological evolution. It happens minutely, generation after generation, so there's no distinct breaking point between one language and the next language that develops from it. So it's impossible to say that one language is really older than any other one. That being said, each of the following languages that I will mention has a little something special, something ancient that differentiates it from the masses. Let's start with Hebrew. Hebrew is a funny case, since it essentially fell out of common usage around 400 after Christ only to remain as a Jewish liturgical language. However, along with the rise of Zionism, Hebrew went through a revival process to become the official language of Israel. While the modern version differs from the biblical version, native speakers of Hebrew can fully comprehend what is written in the Old Testament and its connected texts. Here is an example of Hebrew from our language index. Let's continue with Tamil. Tamil, a language spoken in countries like Sri Lanka, Singapore and India, is the only classical language that has survived all the way through to the modern world. Languages have found inscriptions in Tamil dating back to the third century before Christ and it has been in continuous use ever since. Unlike Sanskrit, another ancient Indian language that fell out of common usage to become mostly a liturgical language, Tamil continued to develop and is now among the 20 most commonly spoken languages in the world. The language family that most European languages belong to is Indo-European, but they started splitting apart from each other somewhere around 3500 before Christ. They developed from Proto-Indo-European into dozens of other languages, gradually losing the features that they all had shared. One language, however, up in the Baltic language branch of the Indo-European family, retained more of the sounds and grammar rules of Proto-Indo-European than any of its linguistic cousins. And this language can therefore be called one of the oldest living languages in the world. Here is an example of this language of Lithuanian from our language index. In case you haven't heard of Farsi, our next language, it's a language spoken in places like Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Perhaps you might have heard of Persian. Well, they're really actually the same language under a different name. Farsi is the direct descendant of Old Persian, which was the language of the Persian Empire. Modern Persian took form around 800 after Christ and has changed relatively little since then. Speakers of Persian today could pick up a piece of writing from 900 after Christ and read it with considerably less difficulty than an English speaker could read, say, Shakespeare. Let's listen to an example of Farsi from our language index. Icelandic is next on my list. It is another Indo-European language from the North Germanic branch. Many Germanic languages have lost some of the features that other Indo-European languages have, but Icelandic has developed much more conservatively and retained many of these features. Danish governance of the country from the 14th to the 20th century also had very little effect on the language, so it has mostly gone unchanged since Norse settlers brought it there. Icelandic speakers can easily read the sagas written centuries ago. Well, and this is what Icelandic sounds like. I wish you all a welcome to this Malanomian language. My name is Thuridur and I speak Icelandic. The Slavonic language family is relatively young as far as languages go. They only started splitting off from their common ancestor when Cyril and Methodius standardized the language, creating what is now called Old Church Slavonic. They then left what is speculated to be present-day Macedonia and took the language further north during their missionary trip in the 9th century. Macedonian, together with its very close relative Bulgarian, is the language that is most closely related to Old Church Slavonic today. Now here's Basque. Basque is an interesting case. The Basque language is the ultimate linguistic mystery. It is spoken natively by some of the Basque people who live in Spain and France, but it is completely unrelated to French and Spanish or indeed any other language in the world. Linguists have postulated about what it could be related to, but none of the theories have stuck. The only thing that's clear is that it existed in that area before the Romans got there with the Latin that would eventually develop into French and Spanish. Here is a Basque example taken from our language index. Let's move on with Finnish. Finnish may not have been written down until the 16th century, but as with any language, it has a history that stretches back far earlier than that. Despite being a member of the Uralic family, Finnish includes many long words, which were adopted into Finnish from other language families over the centuries. In many cases, Finnish has retained these long words closer to their original form than the languages that descended from them. Let's listen to an example from our language index. Tervet tolua tälle kielitieteen kursille. Nimeni on tuula ja puhun suomea. Now Georgian. Georgian is an interesting case. It is the biggest Carvelian language, and it is the only Caucasian language with an ancient literary tradition. Its alphabet is also quite old. It is thought to have been adapted from Aramaic as far back as the third century before Christ. While not a language island in the same sense as Basque, there are only four Carvelian languages, all spoken by minorities within Georgia, and they are all unrelated to any other languages in the world. Here is an example of Georgian, again, from our language index. Ketili, khas kvala monatsilis mobri zaneba linguistiki sam kursuse. Mem kwiya manana davlapa rakob kartuulat. And interestingly, Georgian has adjectives. Let's listen again. Ba-a-i-ts al-shi-i-ri-nebs. Now the last language on my list is Irish Gaelic. Although Irish Gaelic is only spoken as a native language by a minority of Irish people nowadays, it has a long history behind it. It existed on the islands that are now Great Britain and Ireland, well before the Germanic influences arrived. The fact that really lands it on this list is that it has the oldest vernacular literature of any language in Western Europe. While the rest of Europe was speaking their own languages and was writing in Latin, the Irish decided that they wanted to write in their own language instead. Here is an example of Irish Gaelic. Korum falter riv khulach anaw anas usla jas nsif idjurli in shaw anans le kursi tango leachta is misur rinach jogan agus a shiin gheilge mahanga ruchis. Now of course this list of ten languages is neither complete nor can it be undisputed. There are certainly other contenders such as Kanada, a Dravidian language of India or Chinese whose earliest samples go back as far as 1250 before Christ or even Sanskrit, a language from the mid to late second millennium before Christ that is still spoken by more than 10,000 people as their native language in India. And what about Arabic with its long tradition and its huge modern impact? Well I'm sure you want your language to be among the top oldest living languages too, don't you? Well, but we had to take a decision. Okay, that's it for now. See you again soon.