| Eastern Iranian | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Scythia, Central Asia |
| Linguistic classification: | Indo-European
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| Subdivisions: |
Northeastern
Southeastern
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The Eastern Iranian languages are a subgroup of the Iranian languages emerging in Middle Iranian times (from ca. the 4th century BC). The Avestan language is often classified as early Eastern Iranian. The largest living Eastern Iranian language is Pashto, with some 50 million speakers between the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and the Indus River in Pakistan. As opposed to the Middle Western Iranian dialects, the Middle Eastern Iranian preserves word-final syllables.
The living Eastern Iranian languages are spoken in a contiguous area, in Afghanistan as well as the adjacent parts of western Pakistan, Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province of eastern Tajikistan, and the far west of Xinjiang region of China, while it also has two other living members in widely separated areas, the Yaghnobi language of northwestern Tajikistan (descended from Sogdian) and the Ossetic language of the Caucasus (descended from Scytho-Sarmatian). These are remnants of a vast ethno-linguistic continuum that stretched over most of Central Asia in the 1st millennium BC.
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Eastern Iranian is thought to have separated from Western Iranian in the course of the later 2nd millennium BC, and was possibly located at the Yaz culture.
With Greek presence in Central Asia, some of the easternmost of these languages were recorded in their Middle Iranian stage (hence the "Eastern" classification), while almost no records of the Scytho-Sarmatian continuum stretching from Kazakhstan west across the Pontic steppe to Ukraine have survived.
Eastern Iranian are divided into a Northeastern and a Southeastern branch. In spite of this separation, Eastern Iranian remained a single dialect continuum subject to common innovation.
According to Encyclopædia Iranica, the Northeastern group includes most Eastern Iranian languages, including Pashto and Pamir languages, while it does not include the Old-Iranian Avestan language.[1]
However, SIL Ethnologue lists the following languages as Northeastern Iranian:
The southern group includes Pashto, Pamir languages, and Ormuri-Parachi.[1] Pashto is spoken in eastern, southern and few other parts of Afghanistan, and western Pakistan. Pamir languages are spoken in the Pamir Mountains. Ormuri is spoken in Kaniguram in South Waziristan area of Pakistan, but there may be still some speakers in Baraki Barak in Logar province of Afghanistan. Parachi is spoken in the upper part of Nijrab, north of Kabul.
Contrary to Encyclopædia Iranica, SIL Ethnologue classifies Ormuri-Parachi as Northwestern Iranian, and it lists Pashto and the Pamir languages of Munji, Yidgha, Sanglechi-Ishkashimi, Shughni-Yazgulyami (Shughni, Sarikoli and Yazgulyam) and Wakhi as Southeastern Iranian.[2]
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