Eastern Iranian languages

The Eastern Iranian languages or Eastern Iranic languages are a group of related languages that belong to the larger family of Iranian languages. They began to develop during the Middle Iranian era, which lasted from the 4th century BC to the 9th century AD. One of the earliest forms of these languages is the Avestan language, which differs from the Western Iranian languages of the same time by keeping the endings of words that end in syllables.

Today, the largest living Eastern Iranian language is Pashto, spoken by around 40 to 60 million people living between the Amu River in Afghanistan and the Indus River in Pakistan. The second most spoken is Ossetic, with about 600,000 speakers in Ossetia, a region split between Georgia and Russia.

Most of these languages are spoken in a connected area including southern and eastern Afghanistan, nearby parts of western Pakistan, the Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region in eastern Tajikistan, and western parts of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in western China. Two other languages, the Yaghnobi language in northwestern Tajikistan and Ossetic in the Caucasus, are found far from this main area. These languages are remains of a much larger group that once spanned Central Asia, parts of the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, and Western Asia during the first millennium BC, known as Scythia. This spread continued until the 4th century AD, influenced by groups such as the Sarmatians.

History

Western Iranian is thought to have separated from Proto-Iranian during the later part of the second millennium BC, not long after Avestan. This likely happened in the Yaz culture. Eastern Iranian languages developed from Proto-Iranian and were spoken within the Andronovo horizon.

Because of the Greek presence in Central Asia, some of these eastern languages were recorded during their Middle Iranian stage. However, almost no records exist of the Scytho-Sarmatian languages that stretched from Kazakhstan across the Pontic steppe to Ukraine. Some believe the Eastern Iranian people influenced Russian folk culture.

After the Arab conquests, Middle Persian/Dari spread around the Oxus River region, Afghanistan, and Khorasan. The Persian language replaced Eastern Iranic languages like Bactrian and Khorezmian. Only a few speakers of Yaghnobi, which came from Sogdian, remain today among the mostly Persian-speaking Tajik people in Central Asia. This change happened because many Persian-speaking people came with the Arab-Islamic armies and later governments like the Samanids, helping spread the Persian language.

Classification

Eastern Iranian languages form a group of related languages that developed over time. They are often considered a region of shared language changes rather than a strict family tree.

These languages include several ancient and modern dialects. From very old times, we have languages like Scythian and Avestan. During the middle period, languages such as Bactrian, Khwarezmian, and Sogdian were spoken. Today, we still hear languages like Pashto, Wakhi, and Ossetian.

The family tree shows groups like Northeastern and Southeastern. Northeastern includes branches such as Scythian, which led to modern Ossetian, and Sogdo-Bactrian, which includes old Bactrian and Sogdian. Southeastern includes languages like Ormuri, Parachi, and Pashto.

Characteristics

The Eastern Iranian area has seen many changes in sounds, such as turning t͡ʃ into ts.

Most Eastern Iranian languages share a big change where certain sounds like b, d, and g become softer. This change happens between vowels in both Eastern and Western Iranian languages, but in Eastern Iranian, it also happens at the start of words. This change did not happen in the ancient Avestan language or in Ormuri-Parachi.

First, these sounds changed into softer versions: b became like β, d became like ð, and g became like ɣ. The sound /ɣ/ has mostly stayed the same. The b sound has mostly turned into /v/, but the d sound has changed in different ways. In some languages like Pashto and Munji, it turned into /l/, but in Yaghnobi and Ossetian, it turned back into a d sound.

The combinations ft and xt have also become softer, except in Ormuri-Parachi and maybe Yaghnobi.

The languages close to Indo-Aryan languages have been influenced by them. This can be seen in how certain sounds changed, like in Pashto, Wakhi, and others. A specific change happened in some dialects of Pashto where a sound turned into x or x̌. For example, the word for "meat" is ɡuṣ̌t in Wakhi and γwaṣ̌a in Southern Pashto, but it changes to guxt in Shughni and γwax̌a in Central and Northern Pashto.