Iranian languages Totally Explained

Everything about Iranian Languages totally explained

ť This article deals with the language family. For languages spoken on the territory of Iran, see Languages of Iran.

The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily, Indo-Iranian mainy spoken by the Iranian Peoples. Avestan is the oldest recorded Iranian language.
Today, there are an estimated 150-200 million native speakers of Iranian languages. The 2005 SIL enumerates 87 varieties of Iranian languages, per number of native speakers, the largest are Persian (ca. 70 million), Pashto (ca. 40 million), Kurdish (35 million) and Balochi (ca. 7 million); to compare these numbers against those for other languages, see list of languages by number of native speakers.

Name

The 'Iranian' languages branch is so named because its principal member languages, including Persian, have been spoken in the area of the Iranian plateau since ancient times, however, as a linguistic classification, 'Iranian' implies no relation with the country of Iran, for which see Languages of Iran.

Early Iranian languages

The Indo-Iranian languages are thought to have originated in Central Asia. The Andronovo culture is the suggested candidate for the common Indo-Iranian culture ca. 2000 BC.
Together with the other Indo-Iranian languages, the Iranian languages are descended from a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-Iranian. This language split up into:

Indo-Aryan languages, including Sanskrit, attested from the 2nd millennium BC; this group includes the Dardic languages of the northwestern Indian subcontinent
Nuristani languages in northeast Afghanistan
Iranian languages, including Avestan (dated to roughly 1000 BC) and Old Persian (attested from 519 BC onwards).

Proto-Iranian thus dates to some time after Proto-Indo-Iranian breakup, or the early second millennium BC, as the Old Iranian languages began to break off and evolve separately as the various Iranian tribes migrated and settled in vast areas of southeastern Europe, the Iranian plateau, and Central Asia.
Linguistically, the Old Iranian languages are divided into two major families and sub classes:

The eastern group

The western group

The southwestern group
The northwestern group

The eastern group includes the Sogdian, Khwarezmian, Saka, and Avestan, (formerly also known as Zend or Old Bactrian). The northwestern branch includes Median, Parthian and Kurdish. The southwestern group includes Persian.
Avestan is mainly attested through the Avesta, a collection of sacred texts connected to the Zoroastrian religion. Old Persian is attested through inscriptions in the Old Persian cuneiform script.

Middle Iranian languages

What is known in Iranian linguistic history as the "Middle Iranian" era is thought to begin around the 4th century BCE lasting through the 9th century. Again, geographically, one can classify these into two main families, Western and Eastern.
The former family includes the languages of Parthian (Arsacid Pahlavi) and Middle Persian, while Bactrian, Sogdian, Khwarezmian, Saka, and Old Ossetic (Scytho-Sarmatian) fall under the latter category. The two languages of the western group were linguistically very close to each other, but quite distinct from their eastern counterparts. On the other hand, the Eastern group retained some proximity to Avestan. They were inscribed in various Aramaic-derived alphabets, which had evolved from the Achaemenid Imperial Aramaic.
Middle Persian (Pahlavi), was the official language of the Sassanids. It was in usage from the 3rd century until the beginning of the 10th century. Pahlavi and Parthian were also the language of the Manichaeans, whose texts also survive in various non-Iranian languages, from Latin to Chinese. The Imperial Aramaic script used in this era experienced significant maturation.

Arab conquest of Persia

Following the Islamic Conquest of Persia (Iran), there were important changes in the role of the different dialects within the Persian empire. The old prestige form of Middle Iranian, also known as Pahlavi, was replaced by a new standard dialect called Dari as the official language of the court. The name Dari comes from the word darbar (دربار), which refers to the royal court, where many of the poets, protagonists, and patrons of the literature flourished (See Persian literature). The Saffarid dynasty in particular was the first in a line of many dynasties to officially adopt the new language in 875CE. Dari is believed to have been heavily influenced by regional dialects of eastern Iran, whereas the earlier Pahlavi standard was based more on western dialects. This new prestige dialect became the ancestor of modern Standard Persian. Medieval Iranian scholars such as Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa (8th century) and Ibn al-Nadim (10th century) associated the term "Dari" with the eastern province of Khorasan, while they used the term "Pahlavi" to describe the dialects of the northwestern areas between Isfahan and Azerbaijan (see Ancient Azari language), and "Parsi" ("Persian" proper) to describe the dialects of Fars. They also noted that the unofficial language of the royalty itself was yet another dialect, "Khuzi", associated with the western province of Khuzestan.
The Islamic conquest also brought with it the adoption of Arabic script for writing Persian, Pashto and Balochi. All three were adapted to the writing by the addition of a few letters. This development probably occurred some time during the second half of the 8th century, when the old middle Persian script began dwindling in usage. The aforementioned script remains in use in contemporary modern Persian. Tajik script was first Latinised in the 1920s under the then Soviet nationality policy. The script was however subsequently Cyrillicized in the 1930s under plans by USSR's government in Central Asia.
The geographical area in which Iranian languages were spoken was pushed back in several areas by newly neighbouring languages. Arabic spread into some parts of Western Iran (Khuzestan), and Turkic languages spread through much of Central Asia, displacing various Iranian languages such as Sogdian and Bactrian in parts of what is today Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Sogdian barely survives in a small area of the Zarafshan valley east of Samarkand, and Saka (as Sariqoli) in parts of southern Xinjiang as well as Ossetic in the Caucasus. Various small Iranian languages in the Pamirs survive that are derived from Eastern Iranian. Turkic also displaced the Persian language spoken in Azerbaijan.

Classification

Iranian languages are divided into Eastern and Western subfamilies, totalling about 84 languages (SIL estimate). Of the most widely-spoken Iranian languages, Kurdish, Persian, and Balochi are all Western Iranian languages, while Pashto is an Eastern Iranian language.

Comparison table

Further Information

Get more info on 'Iranian Languages'.

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