Hebrew
Hebrew is indeed a rather different case, since it essentially fell out of common usage around 400 CE and then remained preserved as a liturgical language for Jews across the world. However, in the 19th and 20th century, Hebrew went through a revival process to be come the official language of Israel. The modern version, of course, differs from the Biblical version, native speakers of Hebrew can fully understand what is written in the Old Testament and its connected texts.
Tamil
This particular language is spoken by about 78 million people and recognized as an official language of India, Sri Lanka and believe it or not, Singapore! It is the only classical language that has survived all the way through to the modern world. Researches have found inscriptions in Tamil dating back to the third century BCE, and it has been in continuous use ever since. Unlike Sanskrit, another ancient Indian language that fell out of common usage around 600 BCE and became mostly a liturgical language, Tamil has continued to develop and is now the 20th most commonly-spoken language in the entire world!
Lithuanian
The language family that majority of European languages belong to is Indo-European, but they started splitting apart from each other probably around 3500 BCE. They developed into dozens of other languages like German, Italian and English. One language, however, up in the Baltic language branch of the Indo-European family, retained more of the feature of what linguists call Proto-Indo-European (PIE), which does not only sound delicious, but, is also the language that they postulate was spoken around 3500 BCE. For whatever reason, Lithuanian has kept more of the sounds and grammar rules from PIE than any of its linguistic cousins, and can therefore be called one of the oldest languages in the world.
Farsi
Its safe to assume that most of you haven’t heard of Farsi, it’s actually a language spoken in modern day Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. You’ve probably heard of Persian, and it also probably conjures up pictures of genies coming out of bottles. They’re actually the same language, just under a different name. Farsi is the direct descendant of Old Persian, which was the language of the Persian Empire. Speakers of Persian today could pick up a piece of writing from 900 CE and read it with considerably less difficulty than an English speaker could read Shakespeare!
Icelandic
This super cool language called Icelandic is another Indo-European language, this time from the North Germanic Branch. Many Germanic languages have streamlined themselves and lost some of the features that other Indo-European languages have, but Icelandic has developed much more conservatively and retained many of these features. The 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 when they came to the country. Fun fact: Icelandic speakers can easily read the sagas written centuries ago.
Macedonian
The Slavic language family, which includes Russian, Polish, Czech and Croatian is relatively young as far as languages go. They only started splitting off from their common ancestor, Common Slavic when Cyril and Methodius standardized the language, creating what is now called Old Church Slavonic, and created an alphabet for it. They came from somewhere just north of Greece, probably in what is now Macedonia, and Macedonian is the language that most closely related to Old Church Slavonic today.
Basque
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 any Romance language (which French and Spanish are famous for) or indeed any other language in the world. Linguists have postulated over the decades about what it could be related to, but none of the theories have able to hold water. The only thing that’s clear is that it existed in that area before the arrival of the Romance languages.
Finnish
Finnish may not have been written down until the 16th century, but as with any other language, it has a history that stretches back far earlier than that. It is a member of the Finno-Urgic language family, which also includes Estonian, Hungarian, and several smaller languages spoken by minority groups across Siberia. Despite that, Finnish includes many loan words, which were adopted into Finnish from other language families over the centuries. In many cases, Finnish has retained these loan words closer to their original form than the language that they came from. The word for mother, aiti, for example, comes from Gothic. The word for king, kuningas, comes from the old Germanic world * kuningaz – which no longer exists in any Germanic language.
Georgian
The Caucasus region is a real hotbed for linguists. The main languages of the three south Caucasian countries, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, come from three entirely different language families. Georgian is the biggest Kartvelian language, and it is the only Caucasian language with an ancient literary tradition. Its beautiful and unique alphabet is also quite old. While not a language island in the same sense as Basque, there are only four Kartvelian languages, all spoken by minorities within Georgia, and they are all unrelated to any other languages in the world.
Irish Gaelic
Last but not least, Irish Gaelic. It is only spoken as a native language by a small majority of Irish people nowadays, however, it does have a long history behind it. It is a member of the Celtic branch of Indo-European languages, and it existed on the islands that are now Great Britain and Ireland well before the Germanic influences arrived. Irish Gaelic was the language from which Scottish Gaelic and Manx( which was used to be spoken on the Isle of Man) arose, but 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 writing in Latin, the Irish decided that they wanted to write in their own language instead!
