which language came first
where does english fit in with the timing of the first language of man??
6 Answers
Middle English (the language of Chaucer [c. 14th century]) can be understood (but with great difficulty) by modern English speakers. The English of Shakespeare (two centuries latter) is much more accessible (but still causes problems for many modern speakers). Old English (Anglo-Saxon) (the language of Beowulf) sounds completely foreign to English speakers (one might as well be listening to Norwegian/Swedish/German). By way of contrast, El Canto de Mio Cid (contemporary with Beowulf) Like The Canterbury Tales, can be read by modern speakers of Spanish (although, with some difficulty). What this suggests is that over the past 800-900 years, Spanish has (for better or worse) changed more slowly (has been more conservative) than English.
Modern linguistics suggests that all living languages change/evolve over time (perhaps at different rates but, nonetheless, change they do [and the accumulation of changes over several centuries can render the older form of the language unintelligible .to the speaker of the newer form).
Among linguists, the standard for distinguishing between different languages and different dialects, of the same language, is mutual intelligibility. By this measure, Old English and modern English are different languages. (For this reason, I prefer to refer to "Old English" as "Anglo-Saxon").
Turning to "the first language of man", if you mean, based on scientific evidence , the answer is that there is no answer. The evidence suggests that there were spoken languages for many thousands of years before there were written languages and, thus, we have no record of the earliest spoken languages. Judeo-Christian mythology, of course, provides a much simpler account. This myth does not, in fact, identify the "original" language but simply asserts that there was a common language.
English has a germanic base, and in the long time-line of human language is very modern.
Body / sign language came first.
Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) is an early form of the English language which was spoken in England around the year 1000. It is a West Germanic language and therefore is similar to Old Frisian and Old Saxon. It is also quite similar to Old Norse (and by extension, to modern Icelandic). The last point I found somewhat interesting, that is, the parallelism to modern Icelandic...I realize that is referring to Old English, but anyone out there speak any Icelandic? 
It's almost as if Old English has been preserved on that island after all these years....
I'm not an expert and I haven't researched it, but I think it morphed from Saxon (and a bunch of other languages). I have heard Saxon in it's spoken form and it really doesn't sound anything like english. My best guess for the timeline is somewhere between the 5th and 8th centuries. Someone let me know if I'm way off.
