A classical language is any

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

with an independent literary tradition and a large and ancient body of written literature. Classical languages are typically dead languages, or show a high degree of diglossia, as the spoken varieties of the language diverge further away from the classical written language over time.

Classical studies

In the context of traditional European classical studies, the "classical languages" refer to

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, which were the literary languages of the Mediterranean world in

classical antiquity Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD centred on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ...

was the language of Homer and of

classical Athenian Attic Greek is the Greek dialect of the ancient region of Attica, including the ''polis'' of Athens. Often called classical Greek, it was the prestige dialect of the Greek world for centuries and remains the standard form of the language that is ...

, Hellenistic and Byzantine historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to the vocabulary of English and many other European languages, and has been a standard subject of study in Western educational institutions since the Renaissance. Latinized forms of Ancient Greek roots are used in many of the scientific names of species and in other scientific terminology. Koine Greek, which served as a lingua franca in the Eastern Roman Empire, remains in use today as a sacred language in some Eastern Orthodox churches.

became the lingua franca of the early Roman Empire and later of the Western Roman Empire. Despite the decline of the Western Roman Empire, the Latin language continued to flourish in the very different social and economic environment of the Middle Ages, not least because it became the official language of the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

. In Western and Central Europe and in parts of northern Africa, Latin retained its elevated status as the main vehicle of communication for the learned classes throughout the Middle Ages and subsequently; witness especially the Renaissance and Baroque periods. This language was not supplanted for scientific purposes until the 18th century, and for formal descriptions in zoology as well as botany it survived to the later 20th century. The modern international binomial nomenclature holds to this day: taxonomists assign a Latin or Latinized name as the scientific name of each species.

Outside of western civilization

In terms of worldwide cultural importance,

Edward Sapir Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American Jewish anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States. Sap ...

in his book ''Language'' would extend the list to include Chinese, Arabic, and

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

When we realize that an educated Japanese can hardly frame a single literary sentence without the use of Chinese resources, that to this day Siamese and Burmese and Cambodgian bear the unmistakable imprint of the Sanskrit and Pali that came in with Hindu Buddhism centuries ago, or that whether we argue for or against the teaching of Latin and Greek n schools,our argument is sure to be studded with words that have come to us from Rome and Athens, we get some indication of what early Chinese culture and Buddhism, and classical Mediterranean civilization have meant in the world's history. There are just five languages that have had an overwhelming significance as carriers of culture. They are classical Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Greek, and Latin. In comparison with these, even such culturally important languages as Hebrew and French sink into a secondary position.

In this sense, a classical language is a language that has a broad influence over an extended period of time, even after it is no longer a colloquial mother tongue in its original form. If one language uses roots from another language to coin words (in the way that many

European languages Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. Within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Ro ...

use Greek and Latin roots to devise new words such as "telephone", etc.), this is an indication that the second language is a classical language. In comparison, living languages with a large sphere of influence are known as

world language In sociolinguistics, a world language (sometimes global language, rarely international language) is a language that is geographically widespread and makes it possible for members of different language communities to communicate. The term may also b ...

General usage

The following languages are generally taken to have a "classical" stage. Such a stage is limited in time and is considered "classical" if it comes to be regarded as a literary "golden age" retrospectively. Thus, Classical Greek is the language of 5th to 4th century BC

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

and, as such, only a small subset of the varieties of the

Greek language Greek ( el, label= Modern Greek, Ελληνικά, Elliniká, ; grc, Ἑλληνική, Hellēnikḗ) is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Italy ( Calabria and Salento), southe ...

as a whole. A "classical" period usually corresponds to a flowering of literature following an "archaic" period, such as

Classical Latin Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a literary standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It was used from 75 BC to the 3rd century AD, when it developed into Late Latin. In some later period ...

succeeding Old Latin, Classical Sumerian succeeding Archaic Sumerian, Classical Sanskrit succeeding

Vedic Sanskrit Vedic Sanskrit was an ancient language of the Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European language family. It is attested in the Vedas and related literature compiled over the period of the mid- 2nd to mid-1st millennium BCE. It was orally preser ...

Classical Persian Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and u ...

succeeding Old Persian. This is partly a matter of terminology, and for example Old Chinese is taken to include rather than precede Classical Chinese. In some cases, such as those of

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

and Tamil, the "classical" stage corresponds to the earliest attested literary variant.

Antiquity

* Classical Sumerian (literary language of Sumer, c. 26th to 23rd centuries BC) *

Middle Egyptian The Egyptian language or Ancient Egyptian ( ) is a dead Afro-Asiatic language that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts which were made accessible to the modern world following the deciphe ...

(literary language of Ancient Egypt from c. the 20th century BC to the 4th century AD) *

Old Babylonian Old Babylonian may refer to: *the period of the First Babylonian dynasty (20th to 16th centuries BC) *the historical stage of the Akkadian language Akkadian (, Akkadian: )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Camb ...

(the Akkadian language from c. 20th to 16th centuries BC, the imitated standard for later literary works) * Middle Assyrian (the Akkadian language from c. 16th to 13th centuries BC) *

(the form of Sanskrit before Classical standardization was used in Vedic texts from c. 15th to 10th centuries BC) *

Classical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of t ...

(the language of the Tanakh, in particular of the

prophetic books The prophetic books are a division of the Christian Bible, grouping 18 books ( Catholic and Orthodox canon) or 17 books (Protestant canon, excluding Baruch) in the Old Testament. In terms of the Tanakh, it includes the Latter Prophets from the ...

of c. the 7th and 6th centuries BC) * Old Persian (court language of the Achaemenid Empire, 6th to 4th centuries BC) * Classical Chinese (based on the literary language of the

Zhou Dynasty The Zhou dynasty ( ; Old Chinese ( B&S): *''tiw'') was a royal dynasty of China that followed the Shang dynasty. Having lasted 789 years, the Zhou dynasty was the longest dynastic regime in Chinese history. The military control of China by ...

from c. the 5th century BC) * Classical Greek (

Attic dialect Attic Greek is the Greek dialect of the ancient region of Attica, including the ''polis'' of Athens. Often called classical Greek, it was the prestige dialect of the Greek world for centuries and remains the standard form of the language that is ...

of the 5th century BC) * Classical Sanskrit (described by Pāṇini's Ashtadhyayi of the 4th century BC) * Classical Tamil ( Sangam literature c. 2nd century BC to 2nd century AD, defined by Tolkāppiyam) Quote: "Chart 1 literature: 1. the "Urtext" of the ''Tolkappiyam'', i.e. the first two sections, ''Eluttatikaram'' and ''Collatikaram'' minus later interpolations, ca. 100 BC 2. the earliest strata of bardic poetry in the so-called ''Cankam'' anthologies, ca. 1 Cent. BC–2 Cent. AD." * Classical Pali (Buddhist Canon used this language from 2nd centuries BC) *

(literary language of the 1st century BC) * Classical Mandaic (literary Aramaic of Mandaeism, 1st century AD) * Classical Syriac (literary Aramaic of the Syriac Christianity, 3rd to 5th centuries) *

Middle Persian Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle ...

(court language of the Sassanid Empire, 3rd to 7th centuries) * Classical Coptic (language of Egypt and the

Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria The Coptic Orthodox Church ( cop, Ϯⲉⲕ̀ⲕⲗⲏⲥⲓⲁ ⲛ̀ⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ⲛ̀ⲟⲣⲑⲟⲇⲟⲝⲟⲥ, translit=Ti.eklyseya en.remenkimi en.orthodoxos, lit=the Egyptian Orthodox Church; ar, الكنيسة القبطي� ...

, 3rd to 13th centuries, liturgical language to the present day)

Middle Ages

* Ge'ez (language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Garima Gospels are dated from the 5th century to the 10th century by various scholars) * Classical Armenian (oldest attested form of

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

from the 5th century and literary language until the 18th century) * Classical Arabic (based on the language of the

Qur'an The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , s ...

, 7th century to present) * Classical Kannada (court language of Rashtrakuta empire, earliest available literary work is the '' Kavirājamārga'' of 850 AD)''Encyclopædia Britannica'', 2008. "Kannada literature" Quote: "''The earliest literary work is the ''Kavirājamārga'' (c. AD 850), a treatise on poetics based on a Sanskrit model.''" * Old Saxon (language of Saxon Christian literature, 9th to 12th centuries) *

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

(language of '' Beowulf'' and the '' Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' with many divergent written dialects, but partially standardized in West Saxon form) * Old French (language of Chivalric romance, 8th to 14th centuries) * Old Georgian (language of Georgia, 5th to 11th centuries.) * Old East Slavic (language of the Kievan Rus', 9th to 13th centuries) * Angkorian Old Khmer (language of the Khmer Empire, 9th to 14th centuries) * New Persian (language of classical Persian literature, 9th to present) *

Old Nubian Old Nubian (also called Middle Nubian or Old Nobiin) is an extinct Nubian language, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century AD. It is ancestral to modern-day Nobiin and closely related to Dongolawi and Kenzi. It was used throughou ...

(language of Nubia, 9th or 10th to 15th centuries) *

Old Javanese Old Javanese or Kawi is the oldest attested phase of the Javanese language. It was spoken in the eastern part of what is now Central Java and the whole of East Java, Indonesia. As a literary language, Kawi was used across Java and on the island ...

(language of

literature, used primarily during Hindu-Buddhist Javanese kingdom era from 10th to 15th centuries) *

Old Bulgarian Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic literary language. Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and othe ...

(language of the First Bulgarian Empire during its Golden Age, 10th century, earliest manuscript is ''Freising manuscripts'') * Classical Tibetan (religious and literary language of Tibet, 10th century to present) * Classical Japanese (language of Heian period literature, 10th to 12th centuries) * Middle Korean (language of Goryeo and Joseon, 10th to 16th centuries) * Old Occitan (language of the troubadours, 11th to 14th centuries) * Middle High German (language of

Medieval German literature Medieval German literature refers to the literature of Medieval Germany. It can be subdivided into two main periods: *Old High German literature (750–1050) is the product of the monasteries and is almost exclusively religious in nature *Middle H ...

, 11th to 14th centuries) * Old Serbian (language of

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hungar ...

before its conquest by the Ottoman Empire, 11th to 14th centuries) * Classical Telugu (The earliest available literary work is the Telugu Mahabharata, 1067 AD) *

Classical Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was de ...

(The earliest extant prose work is the ''Ramacharitam'', 12th century)K. Ramachandran Nair in Ayyappapanicker (1997), p.301 *

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...

(language of the Viking Age, from the 12th century) * Middle Bulgarian (language of the Second Bulgarian Empire, 12th to 15th centuries) * Middle Low German (language of the Hanseatic League, 12th to 17th centuries) * Old Uyghur (Turkic language which was spoken in Qocho from the 9th–14th centuries and in Gansu) * Classical Maithili (12th century, language of ''Varna Ratnākara'', Vidyapati's works, forms basis for Brajabuli and Sadhubhasha Bengali and other eastern vernacular languages ) * Classical Icelandic (the language of the

Icelandic sagas The sagas of Icelanders ( is, Íslendingasögur, ), also known as family sagas, are one genre of Icelandic sagas. They are prose narratives mostly based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and early el ...

, 13th century) * Classical Catalan (language of literature in the Crown of Aragon, 13th to 14th centuries) * Classical Manding (language of the Mali Empire, 13th to 16th centuries) *

Old Ruthenian Ruthenian ( Belarusian: руская мова; Ukrainian: руська мова; Ruthenian: руска(ѧ) мова; also see other names) is an exonymic linguonym for a closely-related group of East Slavic linguistic varieties, particularly t ...

(one language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 13th to 16th centuries) * Old Anatolian Turkish (11th to 15th centuries) * Classical Ge'ez (language of Golden Age of Ge'ez literature, 13th to 16th centuries) * Classical Irish or

Classical Gaelic Classical Gaelic or Classical Irish () was a shared literary form of Gaelic that was in use by poets in Scotland and Ireland from the 13th century to the 18th century. Although the first written signs of Scottish Gaelic having diverged from Ir ...

(language of the 13th to 18th centuries Scottish and Irish Gaelic literature) * Classical Wolof (language of the

Wolof Empire Wolof or Wollof may refer to: * Wolof people, an ethnic group found in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania * Wolof language, a language spoken in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania * The Wolof or Jolof Empire Jolof (french: Djolof or ') may refer to eith ...

, 13th to 19th centuries) *

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...

(language of The Canterbury Tales, 14th to 15th centuries, with many divergent written dialects, but partially standardized based on London speech) * Middle French (language of the

French Renaissance The French Renaissance was the cultural and artistic movement in France between the 15th and early 17th centuries. The period is associated with the pan-European Renaissance, a word first used by the French historian Jules Michelet to define th ...

, 14th to 17th centuries) * Classical Hungarian (language of

Hungarian literature Hungarian literature is the body of written works primarily produced in Hungarian,

, 14th to 15th centuries) * Classical Songhai (lingua franca of the

Songhai Empire The Songhai Empire (also transliterated as Songhay) was a state that dominated the western Sahel/Sudan in the 15th and 16th century. At its peak, it was one of the largest states in African history. The state is known by its historiographical ...

, 14th to 16th centuries) * Early New High German (language of the Holy Roman Empire, the German Renaissance, and the

Protestant Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and ...

, 14th to 17th centuries) *

Classical Malay Malay was first used in the first millennia known as Old Malay, a part of the Austronesian language family. Over a period of two millennia, Malay has undergone various stages of development that derived from different layers of foreign influen ...

(language of

Maritime Southeast Asia Maritime Southeast Asia comprises the countries of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and East Timor. Maritime Southeast Asia is sometimes also referred to as Island Southeast Asia, Insular Southeast Asia or Oceanic Sout ...

, 14th to 18th centuries) * Middle Oriya (language of Odia literature, 14th to 19th centuries) * Chagatai (classical Turkic language of Central Asia and the Volga, 14th to early 20th centuries)

Pre-Colonial Americas

* Classical Maya (the language of the mature Maya civilization, 3rd to 9th centuries) * Classical Nahuatl (lingua franca of 16th-century central Mexico) * Classical Quechua (lingua franca of the 16th-century Inca Empire) * Classical Kʼicheʼ (a

Mayan language Mayan most commonly refers to: * Maya peoples, various indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica and northern Central America * Maya civilization, pre-Columbian culture of Mesoamerica and northern Central America * Mayan languages, language family spoken ...

of 16th-century Guatemala) * Classical Tupi (language of 16th to 18th centuries

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

) * Classical Mapuche (language of 16th to 19th centuries Chile) * Chinook Jargon (trade language of Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest, 19th century)

Early modern period

* Awadhi (lingua franca of Northern India during Mughal rule led to its use by poets, 14th to 18th centuries) * Renaissance Italian (language of the Italian Renaissance, 15th to 16th centuries) * Late Old Portuguese (language of Portuguese Golden Age, 15th to 16th centuries) *

Early Modern Spanish Early Modern Spanish (also called ''classical Spanish'' or '' Golden Age Spanish'', especially in literary contexts) is the variant of Spanish used between the end of the fifteenth century and the end of the seventeenth century, marked by a serie ...

(language of the Spanish Golden Age, 15th to 17th centuries) * Classical Azeri (lingua franca of the Caucasus Mountain region and language of Azeri literature, 15th to 18th centuries) * Classical Danish (lingua franca of the Kalmar Union and Denmark-Norway from the 15th to the 19th centuries and language of

Danish literature Danish literature () a subset of Scandinavian literature, stretches back to the Middle Ages. The earliest preserved texts from Denmark are runic inscriptions on memorial stones and other objects, some of which contain short poems in alliterative ...

from the 16th to the 19th centuries) * Old Lithuanian (the other language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 16th to 17th centuries) *

Early Modern English Early Modern English or Early New English (sometimes abbreviated EModE, EMnE, or ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transition from Middle E ...

(language of King James Bible and Shakespeare, 16th to 17th centuries) * Middle Polish (language of the

Polish Golden Age The Polish Golden Age was the Renaissance period in Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, roughly corresponding to the period of rule of the King Sigismund I the Old and his son, Sigismund II Augustus, the last of the Jagiellonian Dynasty monar ...

, 16th to 18th centuries) * Classical Ottoman Turkish (language of poetry and administration of the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

, 16th to 19th centuries) * Manchu language (language of the Manchus who ruled China, 16th–20th centuries) * Early Modern Dutch (language of the Dutch Golden Age, 17th century) * Early Modern French (language of

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

under Louis XIV to Napoleon, 17th to 18th centuries) * Classical Ladino (language of Sephardic Jewish literature, 17th to 19th centuries) * Classical Russian (language of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

, 18th to 19th centuries) * Classical Mongolian language (the language of Mongolian literature and translations of Tibetan Buddhist religious texts from 1700–1900) * Sadhu Bhasha (the modern language Bengali from 1820s to 1940s) * Classical Yiddish (language of the Yiddish Renaissance, 19th–20th centuries) * Classical Newari (language of Malla kingdom and lingua franca in India-Tibet trade)

References

* *

External links

* {{Authority control