What Classical Language Should I Learn

One press picks a classical language, with its script and the texts it is read for.

What Classical Language Should I Learn

Show all 53
  1. Classical ArabicArabic script. The Arabic of the Quran and of Umayyad and Abbasid poetry and prose.

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How it works

Latin and Ancient Greek are only two of the classical languages. Press the button for one, from Sanskrit to Old Norse to Classic Maya, each with its script and the texts it is read for.

Read the full guide

What counts as a classical language

Wikipedia’s article defines a classical language as one with an independent literary tradition and a large body of ancient written literature. In European classical studies the term means Ancient Greek and Latin. In 1921 the linguist Edward Sapir named five carriers of culture: Classical Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Greek and Latin.

Pick by what you want to read

Nobody learns these to order coffee. Sanskrit opens the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, Old Norse the Eddas and the sagas, Classical Arabic the Quran, Akkadian the Epic of Gilgamesh, Classical Persian the Shahnameh and Old English Beowulf. The script is part of the choice: Middle English, Old French and Middle Welsh use the Latin alphabet, while Akkadian and Classic Maya begin with a new writing system.

Questions and answers

Should I learn Latin or Ancient Greek first?

Latin uses the alphabet you already read, and Ancient Greek starts with the Greek alphabet. Choose by the books: Latin for Cicero, Caesar and Virgil, Greek for the Iliad, the Odyssey and Plato.

What is the oldest written language?

Sumerian. Wikipedia’s article calls it the oldest attested language, written in cuneiform by about 3100 BC and related to no other known language. Egyptian hieroglyphs also date from the late fourth millennium BC.

What are the classical languages of India?

India’s government has given the status to 11, Wikipedia’s article Classical languages of India says: Tamil first, in 2004, then Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia, and in October 2024 Assamese, Bengali, Marathi, Pali and Prakrit.

Are classical languages still used today?

Some are. Classical Japanese is taught in Japanese high schools, Classical Tibetan is a liturgical language of Tibetan Buddhism, and Geʽez, Coptic, Syriac and Classical Armenian are used in church services.

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All 53 classical languages

Europe and the Caucasus 17

  • Ancient Greek Greek alphabet. Read for the Iliad and the Odyssey, and for Plato in the Attic dialect.
  • Classical Armenian Armenian alphabet. First written in the 5th century and still the language of the Armenian liturgy.
  • Gothic Gothic alphabet. Known mostly from a Bible translation, kept in the Codex Argenteus.
  • Koine Greek Greek alphabet. The common Greek of about 300 BC to AD 600, also called New Testament Greek.
  • Latin Latin alphabet. The Latin of Cicero, Caesar and Virgil, and the Latin that textbooks teach today.
  • Middle English Latin alphabet. The English of The Canterbury Tales, written in the late 14th century.
  • Middle High German Latin alphabet. The German of the High Middle Ages, of the Nibelungenlied and Parzival.
  • Middle Welsh Latin alphabet. Nearly all the early manuscripts of the Mabinogion are written in it.
  • Old Church Slavonic Glagolitic and Cyrillic. The first Slavic literary language, of the 9th to 11th centuries.
  • Old East Slavic Cyrillic. The language of the Primary Chronicle and The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.
  • Old English Runes at first, later the Latin alphabet. The language of the Beowulf manuscript.
  • Old French Latin alphabet. Read for the chansons de geste, of which The Song of Roland is the oldest.
  • Old Georgian Georgian script, in its Asomtavruli form. A literary language of the 5th to 11th centuries.
  • Old High German Latin alphabet. German of about AD 500 to 1050, the language of the Hildebrandslied.
  • Old Irish Latin alphabet and Ogham. Irish of the 6th to 10th centuries, kept mainly in manuscript glosses.
  • Old Norse Younger Futhark runes and later the Latin alphabet. Read for the two Eddas and the sagas.
  • Old Occitan Latin alphabet. The language of the troubadours, the first Romance language with a literature.

Middle East and Africa 17

  • Akkadian Cuneiform. The language of the Epic of Gilgamesh tablets and of the law code of Hammurabi.
  • Avestan Avestan alphabet. The language of the Avesta, the scripture of Zoroastrianism.
  • Biblical Aramaic The Aramaic used in the books of Daniel and Ezra in the Hebrew Bible.
  • Biblical Hebrew Paleo-Hebrew letters at first, later the Hebrew alphabet. The language of the Hebrew Bible.
  • Classical Arabic Arabic script. The Arabic of the Quran and of Umayyad and Abbasid poetry and prose.
  • Classical Persian Persian alphabet. The Persian of the 10th to 18th centuries: the Shahnameh, Rumi and Hafez.
  • Classical Syriac Syriac alphabet. An Aramaic of Edessa from the 1st century AD, read in the Peshitta Bible.
  • Coptic Coptic alphabet. The last stage of Egyptian; the Nag Hammadi texts are mostly in its Sahidic dialect.
  • Geʽez Geʽez script. The old language of Ethiopia and Eritrea, read in the Kebra Nagast and in church.
  • Hittite Hittite cuneiform. One of the oldest written Indo-European languages, from ancient Anatolia.
  • Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphs and hieratic. The classical form of Egyptian, spoken in the Middle Kingdom.
  • Middle Persian Pahlavi scripts. The Persian of the Sasanian Empire, kept up later by Zoroastrian priests.
  • Old Persian Old Persian cuneiform. Known above all from the Behistun Inscription, its oldest known text.
  • Ottoman Turkish Ottoman Turkish alphabet. In its classical form, the language of Ottoman poetry and administration.
  • Phoenician Phoenician script, a consonant alphabet that became the basis of the Greek alphabet.
  • Sumerian Cuneiform. The oldest attested language, written by about 3100 BC, and related to no other.
  • Ugaritic An alphabet of cuneiform signs. Found at Ugarit in 1928; its best-known text is the Baal Cycle.

South and Southeast Asia 6

  • Ardhamagadhi Prakrit A Prakrit of ancient India, used by Jain scholars and kept in the Jain Agamas.
  • Old Javanese Kawi script. The language of the kakawin court poems, such as the Kakawin Ramayana.
  • Old Tamil Tamil-Brahmi script. Its earliest long text is the Tolkappiyam, a work on grammar and poetics.
  • Pali Written in many scripts, from Sinhala to Thai. The language of the Theravada Buddhist canon.
  • Sanskrit Devanagari among other scripts. The language of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
  • Vedic Sanskrit The language of the Vedas, kept by word of mouth for centuries before it was written down.

East and Central Asia 9

  • Chagatai Perso-Arabic script. A Turkic literary language of Central Asia, read in the Baburnama.
  • Classical Chinese Chinese characters. The literary language of China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam until the 20th century.
  • Classical Japanese Kanji and kana. Based on the Japanese of the Heian period and still taught in Japanese high schools.
  • Classical Mongolian Mongolian script. Took shape after 1600 with the translation of the Tibetan Buddhist canon.
  • Classical Tibetan Tibetan script. The language of the early Buddhist texts translated into Tibetan from Sanskrit.
  • Middle Korean Chinese characters, and Hangul from 1446. The Korean described in the Hunminjeongeum.
  • Middle Mongol The Mongolian of the Mongol Empire, read in The Secret History of the Mongols.
  • Old Japanese Man’yogana, a use of Chinese characters. The 8th-century Japanese of the Kojiki and the Man’yoshu.
  • Old Turkic Old Turkic script. Read on the Orkhon inscriptions of 732 and 735.

The Americas 4

  • Classic Maya Maya hieroglyphs. The main language of the inscriptions of the classical Maya period.
  • Classical Kʼicheʼ Latin alphabet. A Mayan language of 16th century Guatemala, the language of the Popol Vuh.
  • Classical Nahuatl Latin alphabet, earlier the Aztec script. The Nahuatl of 16th and 17th century central Mexico.
  • Classical Quechua Latin alphabet. The Quechua of the Inca Empire and the colony, read in the Huarochirí Manuscript.