Every Language Is a Universe of Thought

The oldest known written language, Sumerian is a language isolate with no known relatives. Developed by the civilization that invented writing, cities, and complex agriculture in the fertile crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

The lingua franca of the ancient Near East for nearly two millennia. Akkadian is the earliest attested Semitic language, ancestor to Babylonian and Assyrian dialects. It was used for diplomacy from Egypt to Persia.

One of the longest-attested languages in human history, spanning over 3,500 years from the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions to Coptic. Deciphered by Jean-François Champollion in 1822 using the Rosetta Stone.

The only fully developed writing system of the pre-Columbian Americas. Maya script combines logographic and syllabic elements in elaborate glyph blocks. Its decipherment in the late 20th century was one of the greatest intellectual achievements in linguistics.

The lingua franca of the ancient Near East, spoken by Jesus of Nazareth. Aramaic replaced Akkadian as the common language of the region and was the administrative language of the Persian Empire. Several dialects survive today.

The language of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the New Testament. Ancient Greek gave the Western world its foundational vocabulary in philosophy, science, mathematics, medicine, and politics. The Greek alphabet was the first to systematically represent vowels.

The language of the Roman Empire, and through it, the foundation of French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian. Latin remained the language of European scholarship, law, and the Catholic Church for over a millennium after Rome fell.

The language of the Vikings, preserved most fully in the Icelandic sagas and Eddas. Old Norse spread across an enormous territory through Viking expansion and trade. Modern Icelandic remains remarkably similar to Old Norse.

The sacred language of Hinduism and classical language of India. Sanskrit is the oldest attested member of the Indo-European language family and the key to understanding the historical relationships between languages from Iceland to Bangladesh.

The earliest form of English, brought to Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers. Old English is so different from modern English that it is mutually unintelligible. It was a fully inflected Germanic language with grammatical gender, five cases, and complex verb conjugations.