What is the Oldest Language Still in Use?
There may be languages older in history, but Tamil, an Indian language used in Tamil Nadu in India is said to be the continuously used oldest spoken language with a literary history dating back to the beginnings of the first millennium Languages such as Greek, Latin and Sanskrit are certainly more ancient but they are not practised as forms of speech in everyday matters . . The second part of your question. All majorliterary languages of the Dravidian family viz Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada are either derived from Tamil or largely influenced by its structure, though all of them grew independently, reflecting the individual genius of the users. Thus Malayalam has, like Marathi and Bengali, has created new forms of literary genre. Does this help?
