漢語常被認(rèn)為是一種非常古老的語言。從某種意義上說，這種說法不免失之偏頗。人類所有的語言都可追溯到朦朧的史前時期，但目前我們還無法確定這些語言是否都同宗同源。//五千年前華夏祖先說漢語的方法同英語人士的祖先說英語的方式大致相似。而從另一種意義上說，漢語確實也是一種很古老的語言。今天所存留下來的最早的漢字已有近四千年的歷史 。 // 這些文字均為甲骨雕文。大部分銘文為神諭圣旨，內(nèi)容大都與政治事件和宗教活動有關(guān)，有些則是關(guān)于天氣和戰(zhàn)爭的記錄。// 漢語有豐富的古代文字作品，源遠流長，遠非其他一種語言的文字可與之媲美。一些最古老的文字屬象形文字。//

Chinese is often termed a very old language. In a sense such a statement is misleading. All human languages go back to the dim uncertainty of prehistory, and at present we have no way of knowing for sure whether or not they can all be traced back to the same root.// Five thousand years ago the ancestors of Chinese people spoke an early form of Chinese language in much the same way that the ancestors of English-speaking people were using an early form of the English language. In a sense, however, Chinese is indeed a very old language. The earliest written forms of Chinese in existence today date back nearly 4,000 years.// These writings are incisions on bones and tortoise shell. Most of the inscriptions are oracular, dealing mostly with political and religious events, or with weather or warfare.// Chinese has an abundance of ancient writings that reach back continuously in time further than the writings of any other language in the world. Some of the earliest written Chinese characters were quite pictographic.//