Oldest English words

English is a branch of the Western group of Germanic languages brought to Britain by Germanic invaders c.390 AD. The earlier Celts spoke an Indo-European language preserved in a few river and place names. Words in English which appear to go back to the old stages of Indo-European (from the North Caucasus and the Lower Volga) are those referring to family relationships such as `father', `mother' and `son' and those for the numbers one to five.
There are eight indigenous languages older than English still in use in the British Isles. These are: Welsh, Cornish, Scots, Irish, Manx, Channel Isles patois, Sheldru or Shelta and Romani.

It was first suggested in 1979 that languages ancestral to English and Latvian )both Indo-European) split c.3500BC.  About 40 words of pre-Indo-European substrate survive in English e.g. Apple (apal), bad (bad), Gold, (gol) and tin (tin) according to researches in 1988.