- a multinational state, on the territory of which almost 80 million people live. Among them, more than 60% speak the state language of Iran - Persian. Otherwise, the Persian language is called Farsi; it belongs to the Iranian group of the Indo-European language family.
Some statistics and facts
- The country's constitution establishes the Persian language and the Persian alphabet as the means of official correspondence and production of documents, publication of textbooks and teaching in schools. But minority languages in Iran are also freely used in the press and in educational institutions.
- The second place in terms of prevalence is occupied by the Azerbaijani language. At least 15 million inhabitants of the republic communicate on it.
- Two minority languages in Iran are endangered. This is New Aramaic and Brownie.
- In addition to the state language of Iran and Azerbaijani, one can hear Kurdish and Turkmen, Arabic and Pashto, Armenian and Gilan in the country.
- Modern Farsi has three closely related varieties spoken in Iran, and .
Farsi: history and modernity
For many centuries, since the tenth century, Persian has been the language of international communication in the vast expanse of the eastern part of the Islamic world. He had a considerable influence on the formation and development of the languages of various peoples and his influence extended from to. Words from Farsi were borrowed by many Turkic and modern Indian languages.
The Persian script was created on the basis of Arabic, but some signs for sounds that are absent in Arabic were introduced into the Farsi alphabet.
In addition to Iran, Farsi is widespread in the countries of the Persian Gulf and can be heard in, and. Their own version of Persian is spoken in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and surrounding areas.
In modern Farsi, there are standard or book-written, nationwide colloquial and casual non-standard versions, each of which can be found when communicating with the inhabitants of Iran.
Note to the tourist
Iran is a state that is not very adapted to travel if you do not speak its official language. English-speaking Iranians are a rarity and can only be found in. That is why for a trip to Iran it is better to use the services of agencies that offer tours with licensed guides who speak at least English.
Indo-European language family, the most widely spoken in the world. Its distribution area includes almost all of Europe, both Americas and continental Australia, as well as a significant part of Africa and Asia. Over 2.5 billion people speak Indo-European languages. All the languages of modern Europe belong to this family of languages, with the exception of Basque, Hungarian, Sami, Finnish, Estonian and Turkish, as well as several Altaic and Uralic languages of the European part of Russia.
The Indo-European family of languages includes at least twelve groups of languages. In order of geographical location, moving clockwise from northwestern Europe, these are the following groups: Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Tocharian, Indian, Iranian, Armenian, Hittite-Luvian, Greek, Albanian, Italic (including Latin and the Romance languages derived from it, which are sometimes separated into a separate group). Of these, three groups (Italic, Hitto-Luvian, and Tocharian) consist entirely of dead languages.
Indo-Aryan languages (Indian) is a group of related languages, dating back to the ancient Indian language. Included (together with the Iranian languages and closely related Dardic languages) in the Indo-Iranian languages, one of the branches of the Indo-European languages. Distributed in South Asia: northern and central India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Republic of Maldives, Nepal; outside this region - Romani, Domari and Parya (Tajikistan). The total number of speakers is about 1 billion people. (estimate, 2007).
ancient Indian languages.
Ancient Indian language. Indian languages come from dialects of the ancient Indian language, which had two literary forms - Vedic (the language of the sacred "Vedas") and Sanskrit (created by Brahmin priests in the Ganges valley in the first half - the middle of the first millennium BC). The ancestors of the Indo-Aryans came out of the ancestral home of the "Aryan expanse" at the end of the 3rd - beginning of the 2nd millennium. The related Indo-Aryan language is reflected in proper names, theonyms and some lexical borrowings in the cuneiform texts of the state of Mitanni and the Hittites. Indo-Aryan writing in the Brahmi syllabary originated in the 4th-3rd centuries BC.
The Middle Indian period is represented by numerous languages and dialects that were in use in oral, and then in written form from the middle. 1st millennium BC e. Of these, Pali (the language of the Buddhist Canon) is the most archaic, followed by Prakrits (the Prakrits of inscriptions are more archaic) and Apabhransha (dialects that developed by the middle of the 1st millennium AD as a result of the development of Prakrits and are a transitional link to the New Indian languages ).
The New Indian period begins after the 10th century. It is represented by about three dozen major languages and a large number of dialects, sometimes quite different from each other.
In the west and northwest they border on Iranian (Balochi, Pashto) and Dardic languages, in the north and northeast - with Tibeto-Burman languages, in the east - with a number of Tibeto-Burman and Mon-Khmer languages, in the south - with Dravidian languages (Telugu, Kannada). In India, linguistic islands of other linguistic groups (Munda languages, Mon-Khmer, Dravidian, etc.) are interspersed in the array of Indo-Aryan languages.
1. Hindi and Urdu (Hindustani) - two varieties of one new Indian literary language; Urdu - the state language of Pakistan (the capital of Islamabad), has a written language based on the Arabic alphabet; Hindi (state language of India (New Delhi) - based on the Old Indian script Devanagari.
2. Bengal (State of India - West Bengal, Bangladesh (Kolkata)).
3. Punjabi (eastern part of Pakistan, Punjab state of India).
4. Lahnda.
5. Sindhi (Pakistan).
6. Rajasthani (Northwest India).
7. Gujarati - southwest subgroup.
8. Marathas - Western subgroup.
9. Sinhalese - island subgroup.
10. Nepali - Nepal (Kathmandu) - central subgroup.
11. Bihari - Indian state of Bihar - eastern subgroup.
12. Oriya - Indian state of Orissa - eastern subgroup.
13. Assamese - ind. Assam State, Bangladesh, Bhutan (Thimphu) - east. subgroup.
14. Gypsy.
15. Kashmiri - Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan - Dard group.
16. Vedic - the language of the most ancient sacred books of the Indians - the Vedas, formed in the first half of the second millennium BC.
17. Sanskrit - the literary language of the ancient Indians from the 3rd century BC. to 4th century AD
18. Pali - Central Indian literary and cult language of the medieval era.
19. Prakrits - various colloquial Middle Indian dialects.
Iranian languages- a group of related languages \u200b\u200bas part of the Aryan branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Distributed mainly in the Middle East, Central Asia and Pakistan.
The Iranian group was formed according to the generally accepted version as a result of the separation of languages from the Indo-Iranian branch in the territory of the Volga region and the southern Urals during the period of the Andronovo culture. There is also another version of the formation of the Iranian languages, according to which they separated from the main body of the Indo-Iranian languages on the territory of the BMAC culture. The expansion of the Aryans in ancient times took place to the south and southeast. As a result of migrations, Iranian languages spread by the 5th century BC. in large areas from the Northern Black Sea region to Eastern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Altai (Pazyryk culture), and from the Zagros Mountains, eastern Mesopotamia and Azerbaijan to the Hindu Kush.
The most important milestone in the development of the Iranian languages was the identification of the Western Iranian languages, which spread westward from Deshte-Kevir along the Iranian plateau, and the Eastern Iranian languages opposed to them. The work of the Persian poet Firdousi Shahnameh reflects the confrontation between the ancient Persians and the nomadic (also semi-nomadic) East Iranian tribes, nicknamed by the Persians as Turans, and their habitats as Turan.
In II - I centuries. BC. the Great Central Asian migration of peoples takes place, as a result of which the eastern Iranians populate the Pamirs, Xinjiang, Indian lands south of the Hindu Kush, and invade Sistan.
As a result of the expansion of Turkic-speaking nomads from the first half of the 1st millennium AD. Iranian languages begin to be supplanted by Turkic ones, first in the Great Steppe, and with the beginning of the 2nd millennium in Central Asia, Xinjiang, Azerbaijan and a number of regions of Iran. The relic Ossetian language (a descendant of the Alano-Sarmatian language) in the mountains of the Caucasus, as well as the descendants of the Saka languages, the languages of the Pashtun tribes and the Pamir peoples, remained from the Iranian steppe world.
The current state of the Iranian-speaking array was largely determined by the expansion of the Western Iranian languages, which began under the Sassanids, but gained full strength after the Arab invasion:
The spread of the Persian language throughout the territory of Iran, Afghanistan and the south of Central Asia and the massive displacement of local Iranian and sometimes non-Iranian languages in the respective territories, as a result of which the modern Persian and Tajik communities were formed.
Expansion of the Kurds into Upper Mesopotamia and the Armenian Highlands.
Migration of the semi-nomads of Gorgan to the southeast and the formation of the Baloch language.
Phonetics of Iranian languages shares many similarities with the Indo-Aryan languages in development from the Indo-European state. The ancient Iranian languages belong to the inflectional-synthetic type with a developed system of inflectional forms of declension and conjugation and are thus similar to Sanskrit, Latin and Old Church Slavonic. This is especially true of the Avestan language and, to a lesser extent, Old Persian. In Avestan, there are eight cases, three numbers, three genders, inflectional-synthetic verbal forms of present, aorist, imperfect, perfect, injunctiva, conjunctiva, optative, imperative, there is a developed word formation.
1. Persian - writing based on the Arabic alphabet - Iran (Tehran), Afghanistan (Kabul), Tajikistan (Dushanbe) - southwestern Iranian group.
2. Dari is the literary language of Afghanistan.
3. Pashto - since the 30s the state language of Afghanistan - Afghanistan, Pakistan - East Iranian subgroup.
4. Baloch - Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan (Ashgabat), Oman (Muscat), United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi) - northwestern subgroup.
5. Tajik - Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan (Tashkent) - Western Iranian subgroup.
6. Kurdish - Turkey (Ankara), Iran, Iraq (Baghdad), Syria (Damascus), Armenia (Yerevan), Lebanon (Beirut) - Western Iranian subgroup.
7. Ossetian - Russia (North Ossetia), South Ossetia (Tskhinval) - East Iranian subgroup.
8. Tatsky - Russia (Dagestan), Azerbaijan (Baku) - western subgroup.
9. Talysh - Iran, Azerbaijan - northwestern Iranian subgroup.
10. Caspian dialects.
11. Pamir languages - unwritten languages of the Pamirs.
12. Yagnob - the language of the Yaghnobi, the inhabitants of the Yagnob river valley in Tajikistan.
14. Avestan.
15. Pahlavi.
16. Median.
17. Parthian.
18. Sogdian.
19. Khorezmian.
20. Scythian.
21. Bactrian.
22. Saki.
Slavic group. Slavic languages are a group of related languages of the Indo-European family. Distributed throughout Europe and Asia. The total number of speakers is about 400-500 million people [source not specified 101 days]. They differ in a high degree of closeness to each other, which is found in the structure of the word, the use of grammatical categories, the structure of the sentence, semantics, the system of regular sound correspondences, and morphonological alternations. This proximity is explained by the unity of the origin of the Slavic languages and their long and intense contacts with each other at the level of literary languages and dialects.
The long independent development of the Slavic peoples in different ethnic, geographical, historical and cultural conditions, their contacts with various ethnic groups led to the emergence of differences in material, functional, etc. The Slavic languages within the Indo-European family are closest to the Baltic languages. The similarity between the two groups served as the basis for the theory of the "Balto-Slavic parent language", according to which the Balto-Slavic parent language first emerged from the Indo-European parent language, later splitting into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. However, many scientists explain their special closeness by the long contact of the ancient Balts and Slavs, and deny the existence of the Balto-Slavic language.
It has not been established in which territory the separation of the Slavic language continuum from the Indo-European / Balto-Slavic took place. It can be assumed that it took place to the south of those territories that, according to various theories, belong to the territory of the Slavic ancestral homelands. From one of the Indo-European dialects (Proto-Slavic), the Proto-Slavic language was formed, which is the ancestor of all modern Slavic languages. The history of the Proto-Slavic language was longer than the history of individual Slavic languages.
For a long time it developed as a single dialect with an identical structure. Dialect variants arose later. The process of transition of the Proto-Slavic language into independent languages took place most actively in the 2nd half of the 1st millennium AD. e., during the formation of the early Slavic states in the territory of South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. During this period, the territory of Slavic settlements increased significantly. Areas of various geographical zones with different natural and climatic conditions were mastered, the Slavs entered into relationships with the population of these territories, standing at different stages of cultural development. All this was reflected in the history of the Slavic languages.
The history of the Proto-Slavic language is divided into 3 periods: the most ancient - before the establishment of close Balto-Slavic language contact, the period of the Balto-Slavic community and the period of dialect fragmentation and the beginning of the formation of independent Slavic languages.
Eastern subgroup:
1. Russian.
2. Ukrainian.
3. Belarusian.
Southern subgroup:
1. Bulgarian - Bulgaria (Sofia).
2. Macedonian - Macedonia (Skopje).
3. Serbo-Croatian - Serbia (Belgrade), Croatia (Zagreb).
4. Slovenian - Slovenia (Ljubljana).
Western subgroup:
1. Czech - Czech Republic (Prague).
2. Slovak - Slovakia (Bratislava).
3. Polish - Poland (Warsaw).
4. Kashubian is a dialect of Polish.
5. Lusatian - Germany.
Dead: Old Church Slavonic, Polabsky, Pomeranian.
Baltic group.
The Baltic languages are a language group representing a special branch of the Indo-European group of languages.
The total number of speakers is over 4.5 million people. Distribution - Latvia, Lithuania, previously the territory of (modern) north-east of Poland, Russia (Kaliningrad region) and north-west of Belarus; even earlier (before the 7th-9th, in some places the 12th centuries) up to the upper reaches of the Volga, the Oka basin, the middle Dnieper and Pripyat.
According to one theory, the Baltic languages are not a genetic formation, but the result of an early convergence [source not specified 374 days]. The group includes 2 living languages (Latvian and Lithuanian; sometimes the Latgalian language is distinguished separately, which is officially considered the dialect of Latvian); the Prussian language attested in the monuments, which became extinct in the 17th century; at least 5 languages known only by toponymy and onomastics (Curonian, Yatvingian, Galindian/Golyadian, Zemgalian and Selonian).
1. Lithuanian - Lithuania (Vilnius).
2. Latvian - Latvia (Riga).
3. Latgalian - Latvia.
Dead: Prussian, Yatvyazhsky, Kurzhsky, etc.
German group.
The history of the development of the Germanic languages is usually divided into 3 periods:
Ancient (from the emergence of writing to the XI century) - the formation of individual languages;
Middle (XII-XV centuries) - the development of writing in the Germanic languages and the expansion of their social functions;
New (from the 16th century to the present) - the formation and normalization of national languages.
In the reconstructed Proto-Germanic language, a number of researchers single out a layer of vocabulary that does not have Indo-European etymology - the so-called pre-Germanic substratum. In particular, these are the majority of strong verbs, the conjugation paradigm of which also cannot be explained from the Proto-Indo-European language. The displacement of consonants compared to the Proto-Indo-European language - the so-called. "Grimm's law" - supporters of the hypothesis also explain the influence of the substrate.
The development of the Germanic languages from antiquity to the present day is associated with numerous migrations of their speakers. The Germanic dialects of the most ancient times were divided into 2 main groups: Scandinavian (northern) and continental (southern). In the II-I centuries BC. e. part of the tribes from Scandinavia moved to the southern coast of the Baltic Sea and formed an East Germanic group, opposing the West Germanic (formerly southern) group. The East Germanic tribe of the Goths, moving south, penetrated the territory of the Roman Empire up to the Iberian Peninsula, where they mixed with the local population (V-VIII centuries).
Inside the West Germanic area in the 1st century AD. e. 3 groups of tribal dialects were distinguished: Ingveon, Istveon and Erminon. The migration in the 5th-6th centuries of part of the Ingvaeonic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) to the British Isles predetermined the further development of the English language. The complex interaction of West Germanic dialects on the continent created the prerequisites for the formation of Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old Low Frankish and Old High German languages.
Scandinavian dialects after their isolation in the 5th century. from the continental group they were divided into eastern and western subgroups, on the basis of the first Swedish, Danish and Old Gutnish languages were later formed, on the basis of the second - Norwegian, as well as insular languages - Icelandic, Faroese and Norn.
The formation of national literary languages was completed in England in the 16th-17th centuries, in the Scandinavian countries in the 16th century, in Germany in the 18th century. The spread of the English language outside of England led to the creation of its variants in the USA, Canada, and Australia. The German language in Austria is represented by its Austrian variant.
North German subgroup:
1. Danish - Denmark (Copenhagen), northern Germany.
2. Swedish - Sweden (Stockholm), Finland (Helsinki) - contact subgroup.
3. Norwegian - Norway (Oslo) - continental subgroup.
4. Icelandic - Iceland (Reykjavik), Denmark.
5. Faroese - Denmark.
West German subgroup:
1. English - UK, USA, India, Australia (Canberra), Canada (Ottawa), Ireland (Dublin), New Zealand (Wellington).
2. Dutch - Netherlands (Amsterdam), Belgium (Brussels), Suriname (Paramaribo), Aruba.
3. Frisian - the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany.
4. German - Low German and High German - Germany, Austria (Vienna), Switzerland (Bern), Liechtenstein (Vaduz), Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg.
5. Yiddish - Israel (Jerusalem).
East German subgroup:
1. Gothic - Visigothic and Ostrogothic.
2. Burgundian, Vandal, Gepid, Herul.
Roman group. Romance languages (lat. Roma "Rome") are a group of languages and dialects that are part of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family and genetically ascend to a common ancestor - Latin. The name Romanesque comes from the Latin word romanus (Roman). The science that studies the Romance languages, their origin, development, classification, etc. is called romance and is one of the subsections of linguistics (linguistics).
The peoples who speak them are also called Romance. The Romance languages developed as a result of the divergent (centrifugal) development of the oral tradition of different geographical dialects of the once single folk Latin language and gradually became isolated from the source language and from each other as a result of various demographic, historical and geographical processes.
The beginning of this epochal process was laid by the Roman colonists, who settled the regions (provinces) of the Roman Empire, remote from the capital - the city of Rome, in the course of a complex ethnographic process, called ancient Romanization in the period of the 3rd century BC. BC e. - 5th c. n. e. During this period, the various dialects of Latin are influenced by the substrate.
For a long time, the Romance languages were perceived only as vernacular dialects of the classical Latin language, and therefore were practically not used in writing. The formation of the literary forms of the Romance languages was largely based on the traditions of classical Latin, which allowed them to converge again in lexical and semantic terms already in modern times.
1. French - France (Paris), Canada, Belgium (Brussels), Switzerland, Lebanon (Beirut), Luxembourg, Monaco, Morocco (Rabat).
2. Provencal - France, Italy, Spain, Monaco.
3. Italian - Italy, San Marino, Vatican, Switzerland.
4. Sardinian - Sardinia (Greece).
5. Spanish - Spain, Argentina (Buenos Aires), Cuba (Havana), Mexico (Mexico City), Chile (Santiago), Honduras (Tegucigalpa).
6. Galician - Spain, Portugal (Lisbon).
7. Catalan - Spain, France, Italy, Andorra (Andorra la Vella).
8. Portuguese - Portugal, Brazil (Brazilia), Angola (Luanda), Mozambique (Maputo).
9. Romanian - Romania (Bucharest), Moldova (Chisinau).
10. Moldavian - Moldova.
11. Macedonian-Romanian - Greece, Albania (Tirana), Macedonia (Skopje), Romania, Bulgarian.
12. Romansh - Switzerland.
13. Creole languages are crossed Romance languages with local languages.
Italian:
1. Latin.
2. Medieval Vulgar Latin.
3. Oska, Umbrian, Saber.
Celtic group. The Celtic languages are one of the western groups of the Indo-European family, close, in particular, to the Italic and Germanic languages. Nevertheless, the Celtic languages, apparently, did not form a specific unity with other groups, as was sometimes believed earlier (in particular, the hypothesis of Celto-Italic unity, defended by A. Meie, is most likely incorrect).
The spread of the Celtic languages, as well as the Celtic peoples, in Europe is associated with the spread of the Hallstatt (VI-V centuries BC), and then the La Tène (2nd half of the 1st millennium BC) archaeological cultures. The ancestral home of the Celts is probably located in Central Europe, between the Rhine and the Danube, but they settled very widely: in the 1st half of the 1st millennium BC. e. they penetrated the British Isles, around the 7th century. BC e. - in Gaul, in the VI century. BC e. - to the Iberian Peninsula, in the V century. BC e. they spread to the south, cross the Alps and come to northern Italy, finally, by the 3rd century. BC e. they reach Greece and Asia Minor.
We know relatively little about the ancient stages of the development of the Celtic languages: the monuments of that era are very scarce and not always easy to interpret; nevertheless, data from the Celtic languages (especially Old Irish) play an important role in the reconstruction of the Indo-European parent language.
Goidel subgroup:
1. Irish - Ireland.
2. Scottish - Scotland (Edinburgh).
3. Manx - dead - the language of the Isle of Man (in the Irish Sea).
Brythonic subgroup:
1. Breton - Brittany (France).
2. Welsh - Wales (Cardiff).
3. Cornish - dead - in Cornwall - a peninsula southwest of England.
Gallic subgroup:
1. Gallic - has died out since the formation of the French language; was distributed in Gaul, Northern Italy, the Balkans and Asia Minor
Greek group. The Greek group is currently one of the most peculiar and relatively small language groups (families) within the Indo-European languages. At the same time, the Greek group is one of the most ancient and well-studied since antiquity.
Currently, the main representative of the group with a full set of language features is the Greek language of Greece and Cyprus, which has a long and complex history. The presence of a single full-fledged representative today brings the Greek group closer to the Albanian and Armenian, which are also actually represented by one language each.
At the same time, other Greek languages and extremely isolated dialects existed earlier, which either died out or are on the verge of extinction as a result of assimilation.
1. Modern Greek - Greece (Athens), Cyprus (Nicosia)
2. Ancient Greek
3. Middle Greek, or Byzantine
Albanian group:
Albanian (alb. Gjuha shqipe) is the language of the Albanians, the indigenous population of Albania itself and part of the population of Greece, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Lower Italy and Sicily. The number of speakers is about 6 million people.
The self-name of the language - "shkip" - comes from the local word "shipe" or "shpee", which actually means "stony soil" or "rock". That is, the self-name of the language can be translated as "mountain". The word "shkip" can also be interpreted as "understandable" (language).
Armenian group:
Armenian is an Indo-European language, usually classified as a separate group, rarely combined with Greek and Phrygian. Among the Indo-European languages, it is one of the ancient written languages. The Armenian alphabet was created by Mesrop Mashtots in 405-406. n. e. (see Armenian script). The total number of speakers around the world is about 6.4 million people. During its long history, the Armenian language has been in contact with many languages.
Being a branch of the Indo-European language, Armenian later came into contact with various Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages, both living and now dead, adopting from them and bringing to our days much of what direct written evidence could not preserve. At different times, Hittite and hieroglyphic Luvian, Hurrian and Urartian, Akkadian, Aramaic and Syriac, Parthian and Persian, Georgian and Zan, Greek and Latin came into contact with the Armenian language at different times.
For the history of these languages and their speakers, the data of the Armenian language are in many cases of paramount importance. These data are especially important for urartologists, Iranianists, Kartvelists, who draw many facts of the history of the languages they study from Armenian.
Hitto-Luvian group. The Anatolian languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages (also known as the Hitto-Luvian languages). According to glottochronology, they separated quite early from other Indo-European languages. All languages of this group are dead. Their carriers lived in the II-I millennium BC. e. on the territory of Asia Minor (the Hittite kingdom and the small states that arose on its territory), were later conquered and assimilated by the Persians and / or Greeks.
The oldest monuments of the Anatolian languages are the Hittite cuneiform and Luvian hieroglyphics (there were also brief inscriptions in the Palai language, the most archaic of the Anatolian languages). Through the work of the Czech linguist Friedrich (Bedřich) the Terrible, these languages were identified as Indo-European, which contributed to their decipherment.
Later inscriptions in Lydian, Lycian, Sidetic, Carian, and other languages were written in Asia Minor alphabets (partially deciphered in the 20th century).
Dead:
1. Hittite.
2. Luuvian.
3. Palai.
4. Carian.
5. Lydian.
6. Lycian.
Tocharian group. The Tocharian languages are a group of Indo-European languages consisting of the dead "Tocharian A" ("Eastern Tocharian") and "Tocharian B" ("Western Tocharian"). They were spoken in the territory of modern Xinjiang. The monuments that have come down to us (the first of them were discovered at the beginning of the 20th century by the Hungarian traveler Aurel Stein) date back to the 6th-8th centuries. The self-name of the carriers is unknown, they are called “Tochars” conditionally: the Greeks called them Τοχ?ριοι, and the Turks - toxri.
Dead:
1. Tocharian A - in Chinese Turkestan.
2. Tocharsky V - ibid.
Indo-European language family; distributed in the Near and Middle East, in the Caucasus. The Iranian language group includes more than 50 languages, dialects and dialect groups. The number of Iranian speakers is estimated at 100 million (1999). There are three periods in the history of Iranian languages: Old Iranian languages, Middle Iranian languages, New Iranian languages. The period of the ancient Iranian languages covers the beginning of the second millennium BC. - 4-3 centuries BC Median, Avestan, Old Persian, Scythian languages existed in this period. The period of the Middle Iranian languages covers the 4th-3rd centuries BC. - 8-9 centuries AD: Middle Persian (Pahlavi), Parthian, Bactrian, Saka, Sogdian, Khorezmian, Middle Ossetian (Alanian) languages. From 8-9 woks, the period of new Iranian languages began: Persian, Tajik, Farsi-Kabuli (Dari), Pashto (Afghan), Baloch, Kurdish, Ossetian, Tat, Talysh, Yagnob, Pamir languages. The Iranian languages of all three periods are divided into two groups: eastern and western.
In the western group, the northwestern and southwestern subgroups are distinguished. In the eastern group, the division into northeastern and southeastern subgroups is less clear than in the western group. The Western Iranian group of languages continues the historical line of development of the languages and dialects of the western part of the Iranian Highlands, where they spread by the middle of the first millennium BC. The Eastern Iranian group of languages goes back to the Iranian dialects of Central Asia and adjacent regions. The languages of the southwestern group include: from the languages of the ancient and middle periods - Old Persian and Middle Persian (Pahlavi); from modern languages - Persian, Tajik, Dari, Tat. The northwestern languages include: from the ancient period - Median; from the middle - Parthian; from modern languages - Balochi, Kurdish, Gilan, Mazanderan, Talysh, Semnan. The northeastern Iranian languages include: from the ancient period - Scythian; from the middle period - Alanian, Sogdian, Khorezmian; from modern languages - Ossetian and Yagnob. The southeastern Iranian languages include: from the middle period - Saka languages, Bactrian, Khotan, Tumshuk languages; from modern languages - Pashto (Afghan), Pamir languages (Shugnano-Rushan group, Wakhan, Yazgulyam, Ishkashim, Munjan, Yidga). Typologically, the Iranian languages are heterogeneous. The ancient Iranian languages in their morphological type are inflectional-synthetic with a developed system of declension and conjugation forms. In the new Iranian languages, the inflectional-analytical type was preserved only in Pashto, and most languages became inflectional-analytical with elements of agglutination.
The ratio of inflectional and analytical forms in different languages is not the same. Most Iranian languages (Old Persian, Avestan, Khotanosak, Sogdian, Persian, Tajik, Dari, Tat, Gilan, Mazand, Ossetian, Yagnob) from a typological point of view belong to the languages of the nominative system. Middle Persian, Parthian, Kurdish, Zaza, Gurani, Balochi, Talysh, Semnan, Pashto, Ormuri, Parachi are mixed languages (nominative construction with transitive verbs in all tenses and moods and with intransitive present indicative and subjunctive moods; with transitive verbs in the past tenses; the construction of the sentence is ergative or ergative-like). Iranian languages have had a great influence on the languages and cultures of neighboring peoples.
The countries of Europe, Pakistan and the Caucasus among the Iranian peoples, whose number is currently estimated at approximately 200 million people. The Ethnologue Directory lists a total of 87 Iranian languages. In fact, the exact number of them cannot be calculated due to the uncertainty of the status of the language/dialect of many idioms. The largest number of native speakers are Persian (about 90 million, including Tajik and Dari), Pashto (about 43 million), Kurdish (about 30 million) and Balochi (10 million). Most of the "small" Iranian languages have several thousand speakers.
The term "Iranian languages" arose in Western science in the middle. 19th century to designate a group of languages that are genetically related to Iran as an ethno-cultural region and are closely or very distantly related to the Persian language that has dominated over the past millennium.
In the philistine consciousness, confusion of "Persian" and "Iranian" is still not uncommon. It should be remembered that the "Iranian language" is not understood as the dominant language of Iran (Persian), but one of the many languages of the Iranian group (which includes Persian). Moreover, one should not think that every Iranian language must be perceptibly similar to Persian. Due to the very early differentiation of the group, for most Iranian languages, kinship with Persian (or any other Iranian) can only be shown by means of comparative historical linguistics and is not obvious at a superficial glance.
The Iranian languages are descendants of the undocumented ancient Iranian (proto-Iranian) language that existed within the 2nd millennium BC. e., which in turn separated from the pra-Aryan (common Aryan), common ancestor with the Indo-Aryans approximately at the end of the 3rd - beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. in the territory of Central Asia. Presumably, the Proto-Iranians inhabited the area of Bronze Age cultures in the south of Central Asia: late BMAK and Yaz.
The differentiation of the ancient Iranian from the general Aryan is characterized primarily by changes at the phonetic level, the main of which are:
The recorded history of Iranian languages spans about 3 millennia. Traditionally, Iranian languages are chronologically divided into three periods: ancient, middle and new. Clear criteria exist only for the ancient Iranian languages: these are languages of the “ancient type”, largely preserving the Aryan and, deeper, the Indo-European inflectional synthetic structure. The Middle Iranian languages show, to varying degrees, the destruction of inflection and a movement towards analyticism and agglutination. New Iranian languages are called living Iranian languages, as well as languages that have become extinct in recent times.
Relatively clear continuity at all three stages is demonstrated only by the chain Old Persian - Middle Persian - New Persian (Farsi). Many extinct languages do not have descendants, and most of the New Iranian languages do not have ancestors recorded in written sources. All this greatly complicates the study of the history of the Iranian languages and their genetic connections, and, consequently, their classification. The latter is traditionally built on the dichotomy of the Western Iranian and Eastern Iranian subgroups, each of which is divided in turn into the northern and southern zones.
In the ancient Iranian era, defined approximately as the period before the 4th-3rd centuries. BC e. (based on Persian data), Old Iranian speakers spread over vast territories from the Zagros in the southwest to western China and probably Altai in the northeast, and from the Northern Black Sea region in the northwest to the Hindu Kush in the southeast. This expansion caused the collapse of the ancient Iranian unity and marked the beginning of the formation of separate Iranian languages.
We have two securely recorded Old Iranian languages:
There are also data on two other ancient Iranian languages that have come down to us in the foreign language transfer of names and ancient borrowings into non-Iranian languages:
Based on the data of Iranian languages, recorded later, it should be assumed the existence of other ancient Iranian languages / dialectal areas, restored by methods of comparative historical linguistics. In ancient times, the Iranian languages were still very close to each other and were mutually intelligible dialects. The isoglosses that divided the group into Western and Eastern languages were only just emerging. In particular, the position of the Avestan language is not completely clear. Traditionally, it is interpreted as eastern, primarily on the basis of the area described in the Avesta (eastern Iran, Afghanistan, southern Central Asia), although it shows quite a few differentiating features characteristic of later Eastern Iranian languages. Therefore, some researchers define it as "central".
The "central range" as opposed to the marginal (peripheral) can be traced on the basis of a number of features. This is manifested primarily in the fact that the western and eastern languages adjacent to the supposed original Avestan area demonstrate unity in phonetic development, opposed by "deviations" on the periphery of the western and eastern subgroups. In particular, according to the development of *ś and *ź reflexes, the following zones are distinguished:
1. Central (*ś > s, *ź > z, *śuV > spV, *źuV > zbV, where V is a vowel): Avestan, northwestern, northeastern and most southeastern 2. Southwestern / Persian (*ś > ϑ, *ź > δ (> d), *śuV > sV, *źuV > zV) 3. Scythian (also *ś > ϑ, *ź > δ) - obviously an independent development parallel to Persian. 4. Saka (*ś > s, *ź > z, but *śuV > šV, *źuV > žV): Saka and Wakhan (see below).
In fact, some other phonetic features are also “peripheral”, on which the West-East dichotomy is traditionally built. For example, the characteristic Eastern Iranian development *č > s (h > ts) did not cover the Sogdian area in addition to the Avestan.
Actually East Iranian signs are the innovative development of occlusive:
Other differentiating features of the western and eastern subgroups in phonetics (for example, *h > zap. h, east. ø (zero), *ϑ > zap. h, ost. ϑ, t, s) developed obviously later than the ancient era and are also worn statistical in nature, do not cover all the languages of their areas and vary greatly in positions. Similarly, specific "Western" or "Eastern" morphemes and lexemes are often not limited to their area and may also occur in the language of another subgroup.
The Middle Iranian era is defined in the range of the 4th century BC. BC e. - IX century. n. e. This chronology is conditional and is based primarily on Persian data, while such a “Middle Iranian” language as Khorezm existed until the 14th century, but did not leave a new Iranian descendant who has survived to this day.
The middle epoch of the development of the Iranian languages is characterized by the destruction of Old Iranian inflection and the strengthening of analyticism. The inflectional system collapsed most rapidly and completely in the Western Iranian languages (although the verbal conjugation has been preserved), the Eastern languages have long preserved and often retain to this day significant remnants of the inflectional system.
During this era, the Iranian languages continued to diverge, and while maintaining relative proximity, free mutual understanding between them was essentially lost. The range of the Iranian languages has already begun to be more clearly divided into western and eastern zones (along the line dividing Parthia and Bactria), one can also already trace the differentiation of each zone into “south” and “north”. Monuments of 6 Middle Iranian languages have been preserved. There are also glosses, meager records or onomastic data for other Middle Iranian dialects.
There is not enough data to classify the Yuezhi dialects, whose Iranian-speaking nature is reconstructed on the basis of glosses in Chinese chronicles.
Conventionally, the neo-Iranian period dates from the time after the Arab conquest of Iran and to this day. In terms of research, this period is distinguished by the fact that, first of all, thanks to the active research of European scientists, numerous unwritten New Iranian languages and dialects were literally discovered and studied, either unknown stories at all, or poorly covered by any external sources. The circumstances of the formation and development of many new Iranian languages often remain unclear with all certainty, and sometimes they are simply unknown. Many linguistic communities, devoid of their own literary or supra-dialect form, represent a linguistic continuum of languages/dialects with an indefinite status.
In the Neo-Iranian era, the New Persian language comes to the fore, spreading over vast territories (from Khuzestan to the Ferghana Valley), displacing and continuing to displace both large Iranian languages and local dialects and exerting a significant adstrative influence on the remaining Iranian and non-Iranian languages of the region (from the Ottoman empire to Bengal). At the same time, the Arabic language (in most languages, again through the medium of New Persian) - the language of Islam, had a colossal, primarily lexical influence on all New Iranian (except Ossetian).
Non-Persian Iranian languages/dialects have been preserved mainly in the peripheral regions of Greater Iran, primarily in the mountains (Pamir, Hindu Kush, Zagros, Suleiman Mountains), or territories separated by mountains (Caspian region, Azerbaijan), or desert and desert areas. Some of these linguistic communities also experienced expansion in the New Iranian time (Kurdish languages, Pashto, Balochi), although they were influenced by New Persian.
At the same time, the displacement of the Iranian languages, including New Persian, was also observed and is observed, primarily from the Turkic languages. Especially dramatic changes took place in the steppe part of the Iranian world, where its last remnant, the Alans, were finally disintegrated in the beginning. II millennium AD e. A descendant of the Alanian language, the Ossetian language, has been preserved in the Caucasus Mountains. Significantly ousted (from a number of regions - completely) Iranian languages \u200b\u200bwere in Central Asia and Azerbaijan.
The Iranian languages in the southwest border on the Arabic language, whose influence as the language of Muslim culture has proved to be especially great.
In the northwest, north and northeast, the Turkic languages (Oguz and Karluk subgroups) closely adjoin the Iranian languages. In many areas, the Iranian-speaking areas are interspersed in the Turkic-speaking massifs, and there are also interspersed Turkic languages in predominantly Iranian-speaking areas. The Persian language has had a huge impact on the Turkic languages of the region (lexical and sometimes phonetic), and many Turkisms are also observed in the Iranian languages.
To the east, the Iranian languages are bordered by the Nuristani, Dardic, Indo-Aryan languages as well as the isolated Burushaski language. In the Hindu Kush-Indian region, the listed languages, together with the Iranian ones present here (Pashto, Pamir, Parachi, Ormuri, to some extent the eastern dialects of Baloch) form a Central Asian language union that arose on the basis of a local non-Indo-European substratum. The characteristic features of this language union are the occurrence of retroflex consonants, vigesimal count and some others.
In areal terms, the Ossetian language differs sharply from other Iranian languages, which has undergone significant substrate and adstratum influence from the languages of the Caucasus, manifesting itself in phonetics, morphology and vocabulary.
The languages of the middle period are characterized by a system of vocalism with opposition in brevity / longitude: a - ā, i - ī, u - ū, (e -) ē, (o -) ō. The contraposition by brevity/longitude has been preserved in Baloch, most of the Shugnano-Rushan, Munjan, Yaghnob and Digor, and residually in Pashto and Yazgulyam. Already in these languages, a qualitative opposition of short and long vowels has additionally developed. In most of the new Iranian languages, the quantitative correlation in brevity/longitude was replaced by correlation in strength/weakness, instability/stability, reducibility/irreducibility. The quantitative opposition in the Mazenderan language has been completely lost.
The qualitative development of vowels in comparison with the Proto-Iranian state is characterized by the development of mid-rise vowels, including in many languages the mid-vowel (e - ə - o or e - ů - o). In the lower rise, many languages have developed a front-to-back opposition (æ - å)
Some Western Iranian languages have positional allophones β and δ. The Kurdish language is distinguished by the development of aspirated voiceless stops and the opposition of r and rolling ř. In many dialects, instability and dropout reveals h.
In the Ossetian language, under the influence of the Caucasian languages, the opposition of three rows of stops has developed (voiced aspirated - voiced - deaf abruptive)
Under the influence of Arabic and Turkic, the uvular stop q entered the phonetic system of most Iranian languages.
All Iranian languages of the non-ancient period are characterized by the collapse of the inflectional-synthetic system, the strengthening of analyticism and the development of agglutination. However, this trend manifested itself to varying degrees in different languages.
In the languages of the middle and new periods, there is a contrast in two numbers, while in most languages the plural indicator is agglutinative, going back to the former genitive plural. (*-ānām > *-ān(a)) or to the abstract suffix *-tāt > *-tā / *-t.
The system of case declension was best preserved in Sogdian and Khotanosak (6 cases), but here, too, it is greatly simplified in the monuments of the late period. In Khorezmian, 3 cases can be distinguished, in Bactrian - 2. Of the new Eastern Iranian, the two-case (plus vocative form) inflectional system was preserved by Pashto and Munjan. Of the western ones - Kurdish, Semnan, Talysh, Tati dialects. The two-case system in Shugnano-Rushani is greatly reduced (mainly in pronouns). Languages such as Persian, Luro-Bakhtiar, dialects of Fars, Lara, Semnan bands, Central Iranian, Ormuri and Parachi, following the Middle Persian and Parthian, have lost their declension and express case relations exclusively with the help of prepositions, postpositions and isafet. In some languages, on the basis of the remnants of inflection and postpositions, a secondary agglutinative declension system arose: Baloch - 4 cases; Gilan and Mazenderan - 3 cases, Sangesari, Yagnob, South Pamir, Vakhan, Yazgulyam - 2 cases. In Ossetian, under Caucasian influence, a rich agglutinative case system with 9 cases has developed.
A number of Iranian languages have completely lost their gender category: Middle Persian, Parthian, all new southwestern, Talysh, Baloch, Gilan, Mazenderan, Parachi, dialects of the Semnan band, (almost all) dialects of Central Iran, Sivendi, Ossetian, Yagnob, Vakhan, South Pamir, Sarykol. The dichotomy of two genders (male and female) was preserved in Khotanosak, Sogdian, Khorezmian; of the modern ones - Pashto, Munjan, dialects of the southern Tati, where it is expressed in the case endings of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, sometimes in nominal verb forms, articles. In a number of languages, it manifests itself only in the declensions of nouns and isafet indicators (Kurdish, Sangesar, Semnan). In others - the form of names, agreement with the nominal verb form, etc. (Shugnano-Rushan, Yazgulyam, Ormuri)
All Iranian languages are characterized by the preservation of the presence with an inflectional conjugation for 3 persons and two numbers. The subjunctive and imperative forms are also formed from the basis of the presence in most languages. The past tense, formed from the same stem and opposed to the present tense with the help of personal endings (and augment), was preserved only in Sogdian and Khorezmian, of the new ones - in Yagnob. The rest of the Iranian languages are characterized by an innovative form of the past tense (preterite), formed analytically from the perfect participle in *-ta and the copula in the form of the conjugated form *asti "is". On the basis of this preterial basis, especially numerous analytical forms of the perfect, pluperfect, present-definite, passive, etc., are also formed in many languages.
Due to the “passive” meaning of the former perfect participles in *-ta from transitive verbs in Iranian languages, an ergative construction of the phrase in the past tense is developing while maintaining the nominative - in the present: Middle Persian, Parthian, Kurdish, Zaza, Balochi, Talysh, Semnan, Sangesari, Pashto, ormuri, parachi. With this type, the verb agrees in person, number (and gender) with the logical object of the action, and the subject, if there is a declension, takes shape in the indirect case.
Such languages as Persian, Tat, Gilyan, Mazenderan, Ossetian, dialects of the Semnan band, Luro-Bakhtiyar, Pamir, under the influence of the nominative structure of phrases in the present, lost their ergativity in the past tense and were reorganized into a completely nominative type. Residual phenomena of ergativity are observed in the dialects of Central Iran.
From the point of view of contensive typology, modern Iranian languages are divided into nominative and mixed nominative-ergative languages (see above).
The ancient Iranian languages had a largely free word order, with a general tendency to put the predicate at the end of the phrase, and the definition before the defined. In most modern Iranian languages, the word order SOV (subject - object - predicate) has been fixed. the exception is the Munjanian with the SVO order characteristic of the Hindu Kush-Himalayan range.
The setting of a definition, even expressed by a noun in the form of an oblique case (in the function of the genitive), before the determined, has been preserved, in particular, in Pashto and Ossetian. In many Western Iranian languages (in particular, in Persian, Kurdish, etc.), from definitive constructions with a relative pronoun (*ya-), “Iranian” izafet developed, in which the definition follows the definitive, shaped connecting vowel: pesar-e šāh “king’s son »< *puϑrah yah xšāyaϑyahyā «сын, который царя»; kuh-e boland «высокая гора» < *kaufah yah br̥źa(nt) «гора, которая высокая».
The new Iranian era is characterized by the inclusion of all Iranian languages (except Ossetian) in the common area of Muslim culture. During this period, Arabic borrowings penetrated massively into the Iranian languages, successfully covering, to one degree or another, all lexical layers, especially cultural vocabulary. At the same time, the sharp spread and rise of the Persian language, which was already outlined in the Sasanian era, took place, which became the language of culture, the city and the office and the courts of the rulers. All Iranian languages of the region have undergone a significant lexical influence of closely or distantly related Persian, as well as the Arabic lexicon learned by it. Most speakers of minor Iranian languages remain bilingual today, so the number of Persianisms in such languages is practically unlimited.
Also in the last millennium, there has been a close lexical interaction of the Iranian languages with the Turkic ones. In Persian itself, the number of Turkisms is quite significant. They cover primarily military and everyday vocabulary. Especially many Turkisms penetrate into the speech of the Iranian-speaking inhabitants of the Turkic states (in Kurdish, Zaza, Tat, northern dialects of Tajik).
From the point of view of the predominant ways of borrowing modern international vocabulary, Iranian languages can be divided into three zones:
Throughout history, the Iranian-speaking peoples have adapted the most diverse types of scripts of the surrounding peoples to record their language.
For the first time, the Old Persian language (VI, possibly VII century BC) received systematic writing, for which a syllabary was developed on the basis of Akkadian cuneiform, the principle of which somewhat resembles the structure of the Indian syllabary brahmi.
Aramaic writing became much more widespread, adapted for recording Iranian languages in the middle period not purposefully, but spontaneously, by saturating Aramaic texts with Iranian words and then reading Aramaic words in the form of heterograms of Alexander the Great.
With the conquest of Iran by the Arabs, experiments began on adapting the Iranian languages to writing in Arabic writing. In addition to the developed in the X century. The richest New Persian literature is also known for records in Arabic writing in Mazenderan, Azeri, Khorezm. Later, the first literary monuments appeared in Kurdish, Pashto, Gurani. The Arabic script is currently used in the following languages:
Latin in a specific form is used to record languages under Turkish-Azerbaijani influence.
The spread of the Cyrillic alphabet is associated with Soviet nation-building, while all languages using the Cyrillic alphabet survived the “Latin” stage in the 1930s and 40s:
Short or quite sporadic attempts to publish books in Cyrillic in Yaghnob, Shugnan, Kurdish, and Tat are known. For Tat, within the community of Mountain Jews, the Hebrew square script was also used. All other Iranian languages are unwritten.
Different Iranian languages are not equal in terms of the number of speakers, the development of literature, official status and degree of prestige. If at one extreme there will be Persian, the absolute hegemon in the Iranian-speaking space over the past millennium, the state language of a regional power with the richest literature, then at the other - Munjan, an unwritten everyday language of several thousand Hindu Kush mountaineers who have lost even folklore in their native language.
A number of Iranian languages have confessional significance. First of all, these are cult languages or languages of religious literature that are not used in everyday life and secular literature.
In the USSR - in the Tajik SSR, the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and the South Ossetian Autonomous Region, and some other regions of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Previously, they also existed in the form of separate centers in the Northern Black Sea region, Turkmenistan, Eastern Turkestan, and the Eastern Pamirs. The total number of speakers is 81 million people.
The historical and genetic classification divides the Iranian languages into 2 main groups: western and eastern, with the division of each of them into northern and southern subgroups (for the eastern group, the division is not entirely clear). The northern Western Iranian languages are: a) dead - Median, Parthian, b) living - Kurdish, Baloch, Talysh, Gilyan, Mazanderan, a number of small non-written languages of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and the languages of Parachi and Ormuri; to the south: a) the dead - Old Persian, Middle Persian, b) the living - Persian, Tajik, Dari (Farsi-Kabuli), Khazar, Kumzari, a number of minor languages and dialects of Iran. The northern Eastern Iranian languages include: a) the dead - Scythian, Alanian, Sogdian, Khorezmian, b) the living ones - Ossetian, Yagnob; to the south: a) dead: Bactrian, Saka languages (or dialects): Khotan, Tumshuk, etc., b) living: Afghan (Pashto) and a number of languages \u200b\u200bthat make up an areal group known as Pamir languages: the Shugnan-Rushan language group, Yazgulyam, Vakhan, Ishkashim (according to some signs, Munjan and Yidga adjoin them). Dead Avestan has a number of western and eastern features.
Typologically, the Iranian languages are heterogeneous. In vocalism, the ancient Iranian languages - Avestan and Old Persian - retain the correlation of duration, which in the languages of subsequent periods loses its position, being retained only in part of the phonemic pairs (in the Baloch, Yaghnob, Shugnano-Rushan group), passing into the correlation of stability (the main part of the languages) or disappearing completely (Mazanderan). In consonantism, there are 4 types of systems: the 1st type is close to the pra-system (ancient languages, as well as Persian, Tajik, Tat, Gilyan, Mazanderan, part of the Kurdish dialects); the remaining types are with later correlations: 2nd - aspirations (northern Kurdish dialects, eastern Balochi dialects, parachi); 3rd - cerebrality (Afghan, Munjan and Yidga, Wakhan, Ishkashim, Parachi, Ormuri, Baloch, Khazar; conditionally also Yazgulyam and Shugnan-Rushan group); 4th - abruptiveness (Ossetian). In morphology, the Old Iranian languages retain the inflectional form formation and the ablaut of the root and affix; declension and conjugation are multitype. Ternary systems of number (singular, dual, plural), gender (male, female, neuter). The name contains a multi-case inflectional paradigm. In the verb, person and number are expressed by inflection, the opposition active - medialis (version) is also inflection, active - passive (own voice) suffixally. Species characteristics (duration; one-time, completeness; effectiveness, state) are expressed by the types of stems (respectively, present, aorist, perfect), the category of time - by the type of inflection and augment. Moods are associated with types of stems and inflections. The beginnings of analytical constructions.
In later languages, the unification of the types of form formation in the name and the verb, the withering away of the ablaut. Binary systems of number (in all languages), gender (neuter gender relics only in Saka and Sogdian); in a number of languages, the genus is dying out (Persian, Tajik, etc.). Simplification of the case system with restructuring in many languages according to the agglutinative principle (in Ossetian - under Caucasian influence; Gilyan, Mazanderan, Talysh, Baloch, etc.). Death of cases (Persian, Tajik, Tat, etc.) with agglutination of the number affix. Postpositive (in Persian, Tajik, Sangisari, Gilan, Balochi, Parachi, Kurdish, etc.) and prepositive (in several languages) indefinite article. The verb has new analytical and secondary inflectional forms based on participles. Person and number are expressed by inflection (new and old), enclitics, separable indicators, connectives, auxiliary verbs; voice - the presence of secondary passive forms, specific characteristics - analytical forms, preverbs, complex verbal verbs; the category of time - by the types of stems, endings, the construction of the form as a whole, less often by the augment (Yagnobi language).
The syntax of a number of languages is characterized by an isafet construction with a preposition of the defined, designed by a special indicator (Persian, Tajik, Kurdish, Avromani, etc.). In many languages, ergative (or ergative-like) construction of a sentence with transitive verbs in the past tenses with object (Afghan, Munjan, Kurdish, etc.) or subjective (Yazgulyam, Rushan, etc.) agreement of the verb.
The periodization of the Iranian languages into ancient, middle and new periods is based on extralinguistic features (cultural-historical, etc.). According to linguistic features, 2 periods are distinguished: ancient (Old Persian, Avestan, Median, Scythian languages) and subsequent (all other languages).
The first monuments of ancient Persian writing are cuneiform inscriptions (starting from the 6th century BC). The Avestan hymns, transmitted orally for many centuries, were written down around the 4th century. AD special alphabet based on Middle Persian. Monuments of the Middle Persian (from the 2nd-3rd centuries AD), Parthian (from the 1st century BC), Sogdian (from the 4th century AD) and partially Khorezmian (from the 3rd century BC). BC) languages are written in varieties of Aramaic writing (part of the Khorezmian texts came down in Arabic writings of the 12th-13th centuries in the Arabic alphabet). The Khotanosak language (since the 7th century AD) used a variety of Brahmi, Bactrian (about the 2nd century AD) used the Greek alphabet. Persian, Dari, Afghan, Balochi use variations of the Arabic alphabet.; Tajik, Ossetian, Tat - alphabets based on Russian graphics. The Kurds of the USSR use Russian graphics, some of the Kurds of Syria and Iraq use Latin, and the rest use Arabic. Other languages are practically unwritten.
The study of living languages began at the end of the 17th century, and of ancient languages from the 18th century. At the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. the consolidated work "Grundriss der iranischen Philologie" summed up the previous research. In the 20th century new monuments of dead languages (including previously unknown ones) were discovered, living languages were studied (and discovered). Generalization of the material from the historical and genetic positions - in the works of I.M. Orange; from historical and typological - in the "Experience of the Historical and Typological Study of Iranian Languages" (vols. 1-2, 1975).
Literature
Oransky I.M. Introduction to Iranian Philology. M., 1960; 2nd ed., M., 1988.
Oransky I.M. Iranian languages. M., 1963.
Oransky I.M. Iranian languages in historical coverage. M., 1979.
Essays on the history of the study of Iranian languages. M., 1962.
Iranian languages, in the book: Languages of Asia and Africa, vol. 2. M., 1978.
Fundamentals of Iranian linguistics, book. 1. Ancient Iranian languages, book. 2. Central Iranian languages, book. 3. New Iranian languages: Western group, Caspian languages, book. 4. New Iranian languages: Eastern group. M., 1979-1987.
Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie. bd. 1. Abt. 1-2. Strassburg, 1895-1904.
Handbuch der Orientalistic. Abt. 1. Bd. 4. Abschn. 1. Leiden-Köln, 1958.
D. I. Edelman
IRANIAN LANGUAGES
(Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary. - M., 1990. - S. 200-201)
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