Which is older English or Arabic?

1. 57

   ayanivposted 15 years ago

   Which is older English or Arabic?

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   1. 59

      fenchtopperposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Awesome

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2. 83

   vox vocisposted 15 years ago

   The earliest Proto-Arabic written texts are from the 8th century BC and Pre-Classical Arabic from the 2nd century BC. English as a West Germanic language and a variety of Proto-Germanic languages dates to the 1st century BC and Old English developing into modern English dates to the 5th century AD. So, Arabic is older.

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3. 0

   Ruach Eishposted 14 years ago

   They are roughly the same.  The earliest English inscriptions found by archaeologists are around 1500 years old, so we assume English came into being sometime around 500AD or so, although it is probably older than that but just hadn't been written down yet.  Arabic comes from the Afro-Asiatic family of languages, is related to Aramaic, Hebrew etc and descended from the  ancient "West Semitic" dialect but Classical Arabic itself only began to appear around 328AD.  Again, as with most languages, it was probably older but hadn't been written down yet.

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4. 75

   lawrence01posted 10 years ago

   Arabic mainly comes from the older Aramaic and dialects spoken in Arabia around 2,000 years ago (classical Arabic is around 1,500 years old and was the dialect spoken by Mohammed) . English is a mixture of four languages (German, French, Greek and Latin with Norse and Gaelic thrown in occasionally) and only really came together around the time of William the conqueror so Arabic is the oldest.

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5. 83

   Deborah Minterposted 7 years ago

   Arabic.....Is an older language than English.

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6. 85

   Guckenbergerposted 7 years ago

   I would say that Arabic is older, but that partly depends on where one draws the line between a language and a dialect. I actually think that one could make a good argument for either or in this situation.

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