Re: NBC enlightens us on the age of languages

From: Nath Rao (RnNaDthOrMao_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 08/30/04 

Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 16:42:16 -0400

Harlan Messinger wrote:
> "André Keshav" <andre_dumarc@hotte-mail.com> wrote in message
> news:41337f54$1_2@news.bluewin.ch...
>
>>"Harlan Messinger" <hmessinger.removethis@comcast.net>
>>
>>| During the closing ceremonies at the Athens Olympics, during a
>>| performance celebrating the handover of the Olympic flag from Athens
>>| to Beijing, a commentator for NBC, the broadcasting company that
>>| brought these Olympics to US viewers, enlightened us as follows:
>>|
>>| "It's interesting that Chinese and Greek are actually the two oldest
>>| languages in the world, both over 4,000 years old."
>>
>>The choice of those languages is probably not fortuitous though. What
>
> would induce
>
>>someone to think that those languages are the oldest?
>
>
> Is that the age of both their continuous literary traditions?
>

Greek literary tradition goes to about 1400 BCE if you are willing to
extend the term literature to inventories, palace accounts etc, may be
800 BCE otherwise.

I gather the Chinese case is more controversial, with interminable
arguments about dating.

But would Homer understand a modern Greek any better than (to pick at
random) Mahiidasa Aitreya would understand a modern Punjabi or Hindi
speaker?

[Put that way, age sounds bad: An "old" language in one that has exactly
one descendant. But then, that is not really true of Chinese, is it?]