What is the oldest ancient language still in existance ?
I would have thought it would be out of the following :-
1) Greek
2) Persian
3) Hebrew
4) Chinese
I am not sure if Greek and Persian qualify as I am
not sure how close the modern versions relate to
the ancient versions ?
This is a question that has always perplexed me.
Can someone finally solve this and also state
roughly how old each language is ?

The 'Chinese' language should also be knocked out of the running if Greek and Persian are. Regional dialects of Chinese were different enough that they didn't constitute a cohesive language. The efforts to create a unified language had to wait until more modern times, and in turn break the links with the past.

Technically because Hebrew was not continuously used it was artificially rehabilitated in the 19th century. I think that the older versions were in different dialects too.

What about latin?

There's no point eliminating on the basis of "different dialect" - I defy anyone to come up with an ancient language that is still used that hasn't changed in dialect.



Latin isn't used today.

Being a histiry buff I considered learning latin, a rang up this university guy about it said "I want to learn latin" and he said "No you really dont". Considering I have problems with english (my only real tongue, but many claim it cant be my native tongue) and am seem to be pretty bad at languages, I got some high school german, but its pretty bad, I treid to learn japanese, and picked some arabic when i was in the middle east but thats all long gone. I had years of speech therapy when I was young, I talk waaay too fast, and still cant spell, I often know a word, and its meaning but struggle to come close to pronouciation and spelling.

What about Tamil? which has the record that goes beyond to 1AD, and still used in Tamilnadu, India, and Northern Sri Lanka with little bit in Malasiya. It is having unbroken record of more than 2000 years . Sanskrit also comes in close having reccord that goes to 1500BC in the shape of Rigved and spoken in a small parts of Karnataka, and in the temples all over India, not totally out of use .

If you're not sure about Greek and Persian then you should discount Hebrew because as Truthseeker said, it was revived by Zionists in the 19th century and differs from Biblical Hebrew, although I'm not sure how much in relation to the Greek and Persian languages.

Grunting, signals, and body language.