Language lovers are being encouraged by experts to look into history when studying a modern foreign language to help with their studies.

The team at Busuu, the language-learning app, have compiled a list of the oldest languages in the world along with their origins, to help language learners when studying.

The top five oldest languages still used today:

Egyptian (2690 BC – Present)

Sanskrit (1500 BC – Present)

Greek (1450 BC – Present)

Chinese (1250 BC – Present)

Aramaic (1100 BC – Present)

These elegant and ancient languages have long histories and they’ve been adapted over centuries and millennia, so that people across the globe can still use them to this day.

Languages on the list such as Italian, Korean and Chinese are modern descendants of their ancient predecessors.

It can be tough to determine the oldest language still in use without getting into the lineage of a language. Many claim to hold the top spot, but it is difficult to know for sure.

A spokesperson from Busuu said: “It’s amazing to see that some of the world’s oldest languages have stood the test of time and are still being used today.

“Those who are thinking of learning Italian, Korean or Chinese may be surprised to hear that these languages have been around for thousands of years. Understanding the heritage of your native language can be extremely interesting.”

1. Egyptian – 2690 BC

The first known complete sentence in Ancient Egyptian was recorded in roughly 2690 BCE, making it over 4700 years old.

While the Egyptian language by and large hasn’t been spoken by regular people since the nineteenth century, it is technically still in use today. Coptic is the language that has been derived from the Ancient Egyptians – it’s is used as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the Coptic Catholic Church.

2. Sanskrit – 1500 BC
Like Coptic, Sanskrit is largely used in religious texts and ceremonies that persist today, with a place in Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism.

However, Sanskrit words and phrases are also frequently used by bureaucratic institutions – from missile names to school mottos – in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and other parts of South and Southeast Asia.

Interestingly, several thousand people report Sanskrit as their first language on India’s census each time it’s performed, though it’s believed no one speaks it as their first language today.

3. Greek – 1450 BC
Greek is probably the oldest language still spoken as a primary, day-to-day language. While Modern Greek has evolved significantly from the Greek spoken in ancient times, the language of Greece today is a definitive descendant of the language of Homer and those who came before him.

Mycenaean Greek, the first attested iteration of Greek, first appeared in 1450 BCE, 700 or so years before The Odyssey hit the scene. And today, contemporary Greek has approximately 13.5 million native speakers.

4. Chinese – 1250 BC
The first attested Old Chinese goes back to a set of inscriptions on oracle bones dated to roughly 1250 BCE.

Of course, there are many different language varieties and dialects in China today, so Chinese is a fairly broad term here – but many of today’s most used varieties (including Mandarin and Cantonese) fall within the Sino-Tibetan language family and are descended from the Old Chinese.

5. Aramaic – 1100 BC
The Aramaic alphabet was the precursor to both the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets and has survived well into its 4th millennium. There are somewhere between 800,000 and 1,000,000 speakers of Neo-Aramaic languages in the world today.