Top 10 Classical Languages

The Top Ten
1 Tamil

Tamil is the most dominating language of South Asia. It survived through several invasions. We still have traces of Tamil scripts. Our literature talks about Trade of Tamils with Greek, Roman and other European countries. On the other hand, some so called Tamil liberation groups exploit Tamil language, culture and traditions for their self-goals. Tamils are lovely people who share food and resources with their neighbors. Tamils should feel proud about their language and must not fall victim for terrorism in the name of language.

2 Armenian

Armenian derives directly from the Proto-Indo-European family, and may stand at the root of the Indo-European languages due to the new hypothesis of the language family origin in the Armenian Highlands. At the same time, it is pleasing to the ear, most logical and very expressive as contemporary language.

There is lots of logic in Armenian vocabulary and Alphabet is almost perfect. Armenian has so many different, little ways (sometimes hard to explain) to express various emotions an attitudes!

3 Latin

Stuff you should know about Latin: It exists different forms of Latin and the easiest one for people that knows Spanish is Neo Latin. Latin is a subject, object, verb language and has no words such as the, of, with and shall, as well as some extra like yes and no. The closest one to no is non which means not nor thou shalt not, depending on the sentence of course. When referring to the language do you say Latin lingua, but lingua means also tongue in Latin, so lingua Latin basically means the Latin tongue. Latin is a language beautiful in music, classical to death metal. Lots of words have been taken from Latin.

4 Assyrian

Assyrian Language is a one of living language of Middle East. That most of words of other language has assyrian roots

Assirian, also Neo-aramaic is language of Jesus Christ. This is also true and It sounds, like mixture of Arabic and Hebrew.

5 Ancient Greek

From Homeric texts to Greek philosophy, drama, medicine, Christian classics, patristics, and Byzantine manuscripts, Greek is the language that carries a vast cultural memory that extends to medieval, modern, and contemporary European culture, the Latin corpus, and has a unique influence on monotheistic religions and cultures through original texts and commentaries (Arab world, Slavic world, Iranian world). Greek is the basis for the world's largest theological traditions (in terms of the number of members), but it is also the basis for modern and contemporary scientific inquiry (in medicine, natural sciences, mathematics, etc.).

Additionally, Greek is pretty much why people started classifying languages as "classic" in the first place. In a way, it is the definition of a classical language. All languages are important, though, and this ranking makes no sense.

6 Anglo Irish
7 Hebrew

According to the bible, G-d said "A light shall be" in Hebrew. The hebrew was the one language until Babilon's tower. All the years Hebrew was spoken by the Jewish religious people, and all their holy books are written in Hebrew. Since 48' it's the formal language in Israel.

Not only the first spoken language, it's the first truly written language.
Hebrew is past classical. I would call it the human 'root language'.

A jew from 3000 because easy to understand another jew today.

8 Old Norse

Anything that has to do with Vikings is cool in my book!

9 Arabic

+ Aramaic (Assyrian) might've influenced the Arabic alphabet, but Arabic for sure influenced Aramaic in vocabulary and grammar. Hebrew got influenced and reconstructed thanks to both.

Eloquent and deeply rich when spoken in its classical form.

Arabic is the Father of all Muslim languages.

10 Chinese

Chinese sounds like English but it's writing shows it is classical.
It origins the world's first language.

The Contenders
11 Japanese
12 Malayalam

YES malayalam is one of the big classical one. Many persons misunderstood that it is the mixture of Tamil and sanskrit. But by the approval of government of India it is a big classical language

Hello friends malayalam is old language I agreed, don't compare with Tamil, Tamil always top in the world.

Malayalam language has mostly Tamil words and numeric and the letters are resembles Tamil letters.

13 French
14 Persian

Persian language is driven from middle Persian and the middle Persian also related to old Persian, so it has a long story. The first Persian inscriptions are written in 5th century (B.C) and the language is somehow still alive.

About Persian literature, it goes without saying that it has awesome rich literature. So according to the definition of "Classic languages", I think Persian language is the most classic language in the world.

Many people think Persian is Arabic at the first encounter, but just in 1 minute, they realize that these two are totally different and that Persian is so much more sweeter and rhythmic which applies for the alphabet as well. It's so much more older than any other language in Middle East and is really easy to learn.

15 Kannada

Kannada is one of the oldest languages of India. It is very simple, sweet and easy to both learn and use. It is definitely better than Tamil language which sounds very harsh and ugly I have no idea how it is in the #1 place it does not even deserve to be in top 10. Just because a language is old it doesn't mean it is better. It has very beautiful literature or script and it is 99.99 percent logically correct and it has been declared as a 2nd language with beautiful and perfect script in the world after some European language. So it definitely deserves to be in the #1 spot so people please vote up and help this amazing language to reach #1 spot where it deserves to be.

16 Sanskrit

Sanskrit is the real classical language. It is the most perfect language of the world.
It vast history spans four millennia.
Sanskrit remained the language of all the intellectual people of south asia and south east asia for thousands of years. It was court language of several major empires.
Sanskrit is the literary language of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. Most of their sacred texts are written in Sanskrit like Vedas, Upanishadas, Puranas and epics Ramayana and Mahabharata.
Apart from these, Sanskrit also produced vast scientific literature in mathematics, medicine and astronomy along with works in dramas and poetry of high literary value which are not comparable to any other in ancient world.

17 Hindi

Hindi is not classical language. It is just the simplification of Sanskrit with some mix of parsi and urdu before 200 years. But it is the most spoken language in India despite the fact that India has rich tradition of 2 wordly recognized classical languages: Tamil and Sanskrit.

Hindi is not a traditional language. It is a mixture of Dheva Nagari a north Indian language and urudhu. Unfortunately it becomes the mostly speaking language in India mainly in north India. Tamil language only has status of Indias national language when compared with its tradition and classical scripts.

18 Telugu

Telugu is also classical but not so as that of Tamil and Sanskrit. Tamil is the mother which gave the ovum of grammar and sperm of words was by Sanskrit to give birth to 3 new languages called Telugu, kannada, malayalam... Among this Telugu is eldest and malayalam is the yougest!

True. Tamil is worlds oldest and classical language which gives birth to Dravidian languages like kannada, malayalam and Telugu. It is the worlds number 1 classical language.

Telugu is the sweetest language. It has very good script.

19 Marathi

Marathi is such a beautiful language. It was derived from Maharashtri Prakrit and it is older than Hindi. Marathi has a unique kind of boldness and energy to it but it is also very pleasant to here.

Marathi is a aryan language with a great dravidian vocabulary influence on it.
It is one of the oldest language in india.

Marathi is the most beautiful and complete language.

20 Sinhalese

This person does not know the history Sinhala is one of the oldest languages and a supporting doc is attached. IMG_8653.png

21 Bangal
22 Lithuanian

Closest living language to Sanskrit.

23 Turkish

Proto-Turkish language dates back to 14.000 years because. Concerned fellows may check the The Academy of Sciences of the USSR records.

24 Albanian
25 Old English

So brash, so exciting! A powerful language indeed.

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