Iranian languages

 ( Indo-european Languages ) 

Some scholars such as John R. Perry prefer the term Iranic as the Anthropology name for the Linguistics family and ethnic groups of this category, and Iranian for anything about the modern country of Iran. He uses the same analogue as in differentiating German from Germanic or differentiating Turkish and Turkic languages.

This use of the term for the Iranian language family was introduced in 1836 by Christian Lassen.Lassen, Christian. 1936. Die altpersischen Keil-Inschriften von Persepolis. Entzifferung des Alphabets und Erklärung des Inhalts. Bonn: Weber. S. 182.
This was followed by Wilhelm Geiger in his Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie (1895). Friedrich von Spiegel (1859), Avesta, Engelmann (p. vii) used the spelling Eranian. Robert Needham Cust used the term Irano-Aryan in 1878,Cust, Robert Needham. 1878. A sketch of the modern languages of the East Indies. London: Trübner. and Orientalism such as George Abraham Grierson and Max Müller contrasted Irano-Aryan (Iranian peoples) and Indo-Aryan (Indic). Some recent scholarship, primarily in German, has revived this convention.Dani, Ahmad Hasan. 1989. History of northern areas of Pakistan. Historical studies (Pakistan) series. National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research.
"We distinguish between the Aryan languages of Iran, or Irano-Aryan, and the Aryan languages of India, or Indo-Aryan. For the sake of brevity, Iranian is commonly used instead of Irano-Aryan".Gilbert Lazard. 1977. Preface in: Oranskij, Iosif M. Les langues iraniennes. Traduit par Joyce Blau.Schmitt, Rüdiger. 1994. Sprachzeugnisse alt- und mitteliranischer Sprachen in Afghanistan in: Indogermanica et Caucasica. Festschrift für Karl Horst Schmidt zum 65. Geburtstag. Bielmeier, Robert und Reinhard Stempel (Hrg.). De Gruyter. S. 168–196.Lazard, Gilbert. 1998. Actancy. Empirical approaches to language typology. Mouton de Gruyter. ,

• The Western Iranian languages, subdivided into:
• Southwestern, of which Persian language (including the Dari, Tajik language, and Hazaragi dialects) and Luri language are the dominant members;
• Northwestern, of which the Kurdish languages are the dominant members.
• The Eastern Iranian languages, subdivided into:
• Southeastern, of which Pashto is the dominant member;
• Northeastern, by far the smallest branch, of which Ossetian is the dominant member.

According to modern scholarship, the are not considered to fall under these categories, and are instead sometimes classified as Central Iranian, since they diverged from Proto-Iranian before the east–west division rose to prominence. It has traditionally been viewed as Eastern Iranian; however, it lacks a large number of Eastern Iranian features and thus is only "Eastern Iranian" in the sense that it is not Western. Encyclopaedia Iranica: EASTERN IRANIAN LANGUAGES. By Nicholas Sims-Williams

The language was situated precisely in the western part of Central Asia that borders present-day Russia and Kazakhstan. It was thus in relative proximity to the other satem ethno-linguistic groups of the Indo-European family, such as Thracian, Balto-Slavic and others, and to common Indo-European's original homeland (more precisely, the Pontic-Caspian Steppe to the north of the Black Sea and the Caucasus), according to the reconstructed linguistic relationships of common Indo-European.

Proto-Iranian thus dates to some time after the Proto-Indo-Iranian breakup, or the early-2nd millennium BCE, as the Old Iranian languages began to break off and evolve separately as the various Iranian tribes migrated and settled in vast areas of Southeast Europe, the Iranian Plateau, and Central Asia.

Proto-Iranian innovations compared to Proto-Indo-Iranian include:Michael Witzel (2001): Autochthonous Aryans? The evidence from Old Indian and Iranian texts. Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 7(3): 1–115. the turning of sibilant fricative *s into non-sibilant fricative glottal *h; the voiced aspirated *bʰ, *dʰ, *gʰ yielding to the voiced unaspirated plosives *b, *d, *g resp.; the Voicelessness unaspirated stops *p, *t, *k before another consonant changing into fricatives *f, *θ, *x resp.; voiceless aspirated stops *pʰ, *tʰ, *kʰ turning into fricatives *f, *θ, *x, resp.

• Avestan, the two languages/dialects of the Avesta (the Liturgy texts of Zoroastrianism).
• Old Persian, the native language of a southwestern Iranian peoples known as Persians.Roland G. Kent: "Old Persion: Grammar Texts Lexicon". Part I, Chapter I: The Linguistic Setting of Old Persian. American Oriental Society, 1953.

Old Persian was an Old Iranian dialect as it was spoken in southwestern Iran (the modern-day province of Fars province) by the inhabitants of Fars province, Persia, or Persis who also gave their name to their region and language. Genuine Old Persian is best attested in one of the three languages of the Behistun inscription, composed , and which is the last inscription (and only inscription of significant length) in which Old Persian is still grammatically correct. Later inscriptions are comparatively brief, and typically simply copies of words and phrases from earlier ones, often with grammatical errors, which suggests that by the 4th century BCE the transition from Old Persian to Middle Persian was already far advanced, but efforts were still being made to retain an "old" quality for official proclamations.

The other directly attested Old Iranian dialects are the two forms of Avestan language, which take their name from their use in the Avesta, the Liturgy texts of indigenous Iranian religion that now goes by the name of Zoroastrianism but in the Avesta itself is simply known as vohu daena (later: behdin). The language of the Avesta is subdivided into two dialects, conventionally known as "Old (or 'Gathic') Avestan", and "Younger Avestan". These terms, which date to the 19th century, are slightly misleading since 'Younger Avestan' is not only much younger than 'Old Avestan', but also from a different geographic region. The Old Avestan dialect is very archaic, and at roughly the same stage of development as Vedic Sanskrit. On the other hand, Younger Avestan is at about the same linguistic stage as Old Persian, but by virtue of its use as a sacred language retained its "old" characteristics long after the Old Iranian languages had yielded to their Middle Iranian stage. Unlike Old Persian, which has Middle Persian as its known successor, Avestan has no clearly identifiable Middle Iranian stage (the effect of Middle Iranian is indistinguishable from effects due to other causes).

In addition to Old Persian and Avestan, which are the only directly attested Old Iranian languages, all Middle Iranian languages must have had a predecessor "Old Iranian" form of that language, and thus can all be said to have had an (at least hypothetical) "Old" form. Such hypothetical Old Iranian languages include Old Parthian. Additionally, the existence of unattested languages can sometimes be inferred from the impact they had on neighbouring languages. Such transfer is known to have occurred for Old Persian, which has (what is called) a "Median language" substrate in some of its vocabulary. vi(2). Documentation. Also, foreign references to languages can also provide a hint to the existence of otherwise unattested languages, for example through toponyms/ethnonyms or in the recording of vocabulary, as Herodotus did for what he called "Scythian" and in one instance, Median language ( σπάκα "dog").

Two of the earliest dialectal divisions among Iranian indeed happen to not follow the later division into Western and Eastern blocks. These concern the fate of the Proto-Indo-Iranian first-series palatal consonants, *ć and *dź:

• Avestan and most other Iranian languages have Deaffrication and depalatalized these consonants, and have *ć > s, *dź > z.
• Old Persian, however, has fronted these consonants further: *ć > θ, *dź > *ð > d.

• Avestan and most other Iranian languages have shifted these clusters to sp, zb.
• In Old Persian, these clusters yield s, z, with loss of the glide *w, but without further fronting.
• The Saka language, attested in the Middle Iranian period, and its modern relative Wakhi language fail to fit into either group: in these, palatalization remains, and similar glide loss as in Old Persian occurs: *ćw > š, *dźw > ž.

A division of Iranian languages in at least three groups during the Old Iranian period is thus implied:

• Persid (Old Persian and its descendants)
• Sakan (Saka, Wakhi language, and their Old Iranian ancestor)
• Central Iranian (all other Iranian languages)

It is possible that other distinct dialect groups were already in existence during this period. Good candidates are the hypothetical ancestor languages of Alanian/Scytho-Sarmatian subgroup of Scythian in the far northwest; and the hypothetical "Old Parthian" (the Old Iranian ancestor of Parthian) in the near northwest, where original *dw > *b (paralleling the development of *ćw).

The Western family includes Parthian (Parthia Pahlavi) and Middle Persian, while Bactrian, Sogdian language, Khwarezmian, Saka language, and Old Ossetic (Scythians-Sarmatians) fall under the Eastern 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 was an areal entity whose languages retained some similarity to Avestan. They were inscribed in various Aramaic-derived alphabets which had ultimately evolved from the Achaemenid Imperial Aramaic script, though Bactrian was written using an adapted Greek alphabet.

Middle Persian (Pahlavi) was the official language under the Sassanid dynasty in Iran. It was in use from the 3rd century Common Era until the beginning of the 10th century. The script used for Middle Persian in this era underwent significant maturity. Middle Persian, Parthian, and Sogdian were also used as literary languages by the , whose texts also survive in various non-Iranian languages, from Latin to Chinese. Manichaean texts were written in a script closely akin to the Syriac script.Mary Boyce. 1975. A Reader in Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian, p. 14. The Achomi language (Larestani/Khodmooni) language is considered a surviving remains of Pahlavi Middle Persian,گويش مردم اوز. نسرين انصاف پور و محمد رفيع ضيايى 1396