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Eastern Iranian languages
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Eastern Iranian | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Scythia, Central Asia |
| Genetic classification: |
Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Eastern Iranian |
| Subdivisions: |
Northeastern
Southeastern
|
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, but this is uncertain.
They 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.
As opposed to the Middle Western Iranian dialects, Middle Eastern Iranian preserves word-final syllables. 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.
The largest living Eastern Iranian language is Pashto with some 40 million speakers, a major language of Afghanistan and western Pakistan.
Contents |
The Northeastern group has only two living members in two widely separated areas, the Yaghnobi language of 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 the steppes of Central Asia in the 1st millennium BC. The Avestan language itself, the oldest attestation of the Iranian branch, is a member of the group. 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 the Ukraine have survived.
- Avestan, ca. 1300 BC - 7th c. BC (classification uncertain)
- Khwarezmian ca. 4th c. BC - 13th c. AD
- Sogdian, from ca. the 4th c. BC.
- Scythian
- Eastern (Scytho-Khotanese)
- Khotanese, ca. 5th c. AD - 10th c. AD
- Tumshuqese (formerly Maralbashi), 7th c. AD
- Western (Scytho-Sarmatian), from ca. the 8th c. BC
- Eastern (Scytho-Khotanese)
The Southeastern group includes some 11 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by many people in South-Central Asia. Each subfamily in this list contains subgroups and individual languages.
- Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, ed. Schmitt (1989), p. 100.