Everything about The Eastern Iranian Languages totally explained
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.
Northeastern
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
Ukraine have survived.
Southeastern
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.
Pamir languages
Pashto (including Waziri)
- Northern Pashto
- Southern Pashto
- Wanetsi
Further Information
Get more info on 'Eastern Iranian Languages'.
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