Iranian languages

The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily, Indo-Iranian. These languages are mainly spoken by the Iranian Peoples. Avestan is the oldest recorded Iranian language.

Geographic distribution of the Iranian languages: Persian (green), Pashto (purple) and Kurdish (turquoise), Baloch (Yellow), as well as smaller communities of other Iranian languages

Today, there are an estimated 150-200 million native speakers of Iranian languages.^[1] The 2005 SIL enumerates 87 varieties of Iranian languages, per number of native speakers, the largest are Persian (ca. 60 million), Kurdish (ca. 25 million), Pashto (ca. 25 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 modern country of Iran. To avoid this confusion, the term Iranic is also used for these branch. Iranian languages are spoken by many ethnic groups including Persians, Tajiks, Kurds (Kurmanji, Sorani ) Pashtus, Balochis, Talishis, Mazandaris, Sangesaris, Tati, Zazas, and Goranis.

Early Iranian languages

Historical distribution in 100 BC: shown is Sarmatia, Scythia, Bactria and the Parthian Empire.

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 several subclasses:

• The eastern group
• The western group
  • The southwestern group
  • The northwestern group

The so-called "eastern" group includes Scythian, even though the Scyths lived in a region extending much further west than the "western" group. Avestan, mainly attested through the Avesta, a collection of sacred texts connected to the Zoroastrian religion, is considered to be between the Western and Eastern group.

The northwestern branch included Median, and Parthian, while the southwestern branch included Old Persian.

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 Western family includes Parthian (Arsacid Pahlavi) and Middle Persian, while Bactrian, Sogdian, Khwarezmian, Saka, and Old Ossetic (Scytho-Sarmatian) 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 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 CE 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

Dark green: Countries where Iranian languages are official. Teal: Regional co-official/de facto status.

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 875 CE. 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 Arabic 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

Main article: List of Iranian languages

IndoEuropean language family Tree.

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. Recently an artificial Iranian language is made; Bararei. It is the language of Barareh, a fictional village in the Iranian television comedy series Shabhaye Barareh (The nights of Barareh). It is most close to Luri dialects, but it also contains elements from languages and dialects of Kermanshahan. It can be spoken in different accent, which resembles those from Sistan and Azerbaijan.

Comparison table

See also

• List of Iranian languages
• Iran
• Iranian peoples
• History of Iran
• Indo-Iranian Languages

Bibliography

Footnotes

Notations

• Schmitt, Rüdiger (ed.) (1989). Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: Reichert. ISBN 3-88226-413-6. 
• Sims-Williams, Nicholas (1996). "Iranian languages". Encyclopedia Iranica 7. Costa Mesa: Mazda. 238-245. 
• Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.) (1996). "Iran". Encyclopedia Iranica 7. Costa Mesa: Mazda. 
• Frye, Richard N. (1996). "Peoples of Iran". Encyclopedia Iranica 7. Costa Mesa: Mazda. 
• Windfuhr, Gernot L. (1995). "Cases in Iranian languages and dialects". Encyclopedia Iranica 5. Costa Mesa: Mazda. 
• Lazard, Gilbert (1996). "Dari". Encyclopedia Iranica 7. Costa Mesa: Mazda. 
• Henning, Walter B. (1954). "The Ancient language of Azarbaijan". Transactions of the Philological Society. doi:10.1111/j.1467-968X.1954.tb00282.x. http://www.azargoshnasp.net/languages/Azari/henningazari/henningazari.htm. 
• Rezakhani, Khodadad (2001). "The Iranian Language Family".

External links

• erani.tk Lists of many similarities between some Iranian languages, in English and Turkish
• Society for Iranian Linguistics
• [1] Iranian EFL Journal
• Persian Language (Persian)