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Proto-Iranian
Proto-Iranian or Proto-Iranic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Iranian languages branch of Indo-European language family and thus the ancestor of the Iranian languages such as Persian, Pashto, Sogdian, Zazaki, Ossetian, Mazandarani, Kurdish, Talysh and others. Its speakers, the hypothetical Proto-Iranians, are assumed to have lived in the 2nd millennium BC and are usually connected with the Andronovo archaeological horizon (see Indo-Iranians). Proto-Iranian was a satem language descended from the Proto-Indo-Iranian language, which in turn, came from the Proto-Indo-European language. It was likely removed less than a millennium from the Avestan language, and less than two millennia from Proto-Indo-European. Dialects Skjærvø postulates that there were at least four dialects that initially developed out of Proto-Iranian, two of which are attested by texts: # ''Old Northwest Iranian'' (unattested, ancestor of Ossetian) # ''Old Northeast Iranian'' (unattes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE and its daughter languages, and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the proto-Indo-European homeland, original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indo-Iranians
The Indo-Iranian peoples, also known as Ā́rya or Aryans from their self-designation, were a group of Indo-European speaking peoples who brought the Indo-Iranian languages to parts of Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia in waves from the first part of the 2nd millennium BC onwards. They eventually branched out into the Iranian peoples and Indo-Aryan peoples. Nomenclature The term '' Aryan'' has long been used to denote the ''Indo-Iranians'', because ''Ā́rya'' was the self-designation of the ancient speakers of the Indo-Iranian languages, specifically the Iranian and the Indo-Aryan peoples, collectively known as the Indo-Iranians. Despite this, some scholars use the term Indo-Iranian to refer to this group, though the term "Aryan" remains widely used by most scholars, such as Josef Wiesehofer, Will Durant, and Jaakko Häkkinen. Population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, in his 1994 book ''The History and Geography of Human Genes'', also uses the term Aryan to d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Persian
Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as (Iranian).''cf.'' , p. 2. Old Persian is close to both Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit, and all three languages are highly inflected. Old Persian appears primarily in the inscriptions, clay tablets and seals of the Achaemenid era ( to 300 BCE). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran, Romania ( Gherla), Armenia, Bahrain, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt, with the most important attestation by far being the contents of the Behistun Inscription (dated to 522 BCE). In 2007, research into the vast Persepolis Administrative Archives at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago unearthed Old Persian tablets, which suggest Old Persian was a written language in use for practical recording and not only for royal display. Orig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Encyclopedia Of Indo-European Culture
The ''Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture'' (''EIEC'') is an encyclopedia of Indo-European studies and the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The encyclopedia was edited by J. P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams and published in 1997 by Fitzroy Dearborn. Archaeological articles are written by Mallory, linguistic articles are written by Adams, and include a distinguished ''Who's Who'' of 1990s Indo-Europeanists who made contributions as sub-editors. Though it is not a polemic, the work in part extends support to Colin Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis of Indo-European origins The Proto-Indo-European homeland was the prehistoric linguistic homeland, homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), meaning it was the region where the proto-language was spoken before it split into the dialects from which the earliest .... Reviews * * * * Bibliography * 1997 non-fiction books Indo-Europeanist works Encyclopedias of culture and ethnicity Archaeology books {{Proto-Indo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caspian Languages
The Caspian languages are a branch of Northwestern Iranian languages spoken in northern Iran and south-eastern Azerbaijan, south of the Caspian Sea. They are unique in that they share certain typological features with Kartvelian languages The Kartvelian languages ( ; ka, ქართველური ენები, tr; also known as South Caucasian or Kartvelic languages Boeder (2002), p. 3) are a language family indigenous to the South Caucasus and spoken primarily in Geor ....Academic American Encyclopedia By Grolier Incorporated, page 294The Tati language group in the sociolinguistic context of Northwestern Iran and Transcaucasia By D.Stilo, pages 137-185 Languages Caspian languages include: * Deilami† * Gilaki * Talysh * Mazanderani * Semnani * Tati References Languages of Iran {{ie-lang-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Persian Language
Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan language, Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as (Iranian).''cf.'' , p. 2. Old Persian is close to both Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit, and all three languages are highly Inflection, inflected. Old Persian appears primarily in the inscriptions, clay tablets and Seal (emblem), seals of the Achaemenid dynasty, Achaemenid era ( to 300 BCE). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran, Romania (Gherla), Armenia, Bahrain, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt, with the most important attestation by far being the contents of the Behistun Inscription (dated to 522 BCE). In 2007, research into the vast Persepolis Administrative Archives at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago unearthed Old Persian tablets, which suggest Old Persian was a written language in use f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Median Language
Median (also Medean or Medic) is an extinct Iranian language which was spoken by the now extinct ancient Medes. It belongs to the Northwestern branch of the Iranian language family, which includes many other much more recently attested and different languages such as Kurdish, Old Azeri, Talysh, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Zaza–Gorani and Baluchi. Attestation Median is attested only by numerous loanwords in Old Persian. Nothing is known of its grammar, “but it shares important phonological isoglosses with Avestan, rather than Old Persian. Under the short lived period of Median rule … Median must to some extent have been the official Iranian language in western Iran”. No documents dating to Median times have been preserved, and it is not known what script these texts might have been in. So far only one inscription of pre- Achaemenid times (a bronze plaque) has been found on the territory of Media from the time Media and Persia were under the control of the Neo-As ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avestan Language
Avestan ( ) is the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. It belongs to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family and was originally spoken during the Old Iranian period ( – 400 BCE) by the Iranians living in the eastern portion of Greater Iran. After Avestan became extinct, its religious texts were first transmitted orally until being collected and put into writing during the Sasanian period ( – 500 CE). The extant material falls into two groups: Old Avestan ( – 900 BCE) and Younger Avestan ( – 400 BCE). The immediate ancestor of Old Avestan was the Proto-Iranian language, a sister language to the Proto-Indo-Aryan language, with both having developed from the earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian language. As such, Old Avestan is quite close in both grammar and lexicon to Vedic Sanskrit, the oldest preserved Indo-Aryan language. Name The Avestan texts consistently use the term Arya, i.e., Iranian, for the speakers of Avestan. The same term also app ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wakhi Language
Wakhi (, , IPA: ikwɔr zik is an Indo-European language in the Eastern Iranian branch of the language family spoken today in Wakhan District, Northern Afghanistan, and neighboring areas of Tajikistan, Pakistan and China. Classification and distribution Wakhi is one of several languages that belong to the areal Pamir language group. It is believed to be a descendant of the Scytho-Khotanese language once spoken in the Kingdom of Khotan. The Wakhi people are occasionally called Pamiris and Guhjali. It is spoken by the inhabitants of the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan, parts of Gilgit-Baltistan (the former NAs) of Pakistan, the Gorno-Badakhshan region of Tajikistan, and Xinjiang in Western China. The Wakhi use the self-appellation 'X̌ik' (ethnic) and suffix it with 'wor'/'war' to denote their language as 'X̌ik-wor' themselves. The noun 'X̌ik' comes from ''*waxša-ī̆ka-'' (an inhabitant of ''*Waxša-'' 'Oxus', for Wakhan, in Wakhi 'Wux̌.' There are other equivalents ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Khotanese Language
Saka, or Sakan, was a variety of Eastern Iranian languages, attested from the ancient Buddhist kingdoms of Khotan, Kashgar and Tumshuq in the Tarim Basin, in what is now southern Xinjiang, China. It is a Middle Iranian language. The two kingdoms differed in dialect, their speech known as Khotanese and Tumshuqese. The Saka rulers of the western regions of the Indian subcontinent, such as the Indo-Scythians and Western Satraps, are traditionally assumed to have spoken practically the same language. This has however been questioned by more recent research. Documents on wood and paper were written in modified Brahmi script with the addition of extra characters over time and unusual conjuncts such as ''ys'' for ''z''. The documents date from the fourth to the eleventh century. Tumshuqese was more archaic than Khotanese, but it is much less understood because it appears in fewer manuscripts compared to Khotanese. The Khotanese dialect is believed to share features with the mode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prods Oktor Skjaervo
Prods Oktor Skjærvø (sometimes written P.O. Skjaervo in English) is Emeritus Professor of Iranian Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, where he succeeded Richard Frye as Aga Khan Professor of Iranian Studies. Born in Steinkjer, Norway, Skjærvø is a hyperpolyglot, familiar with historical and living languages including Old Norse, Norwegian, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Latin, Larestani, Kumzari, Bashkardi, Pashto, Yidgha, Yaghnobi, Munji, Old Khotanese, Avestan, Old Persian, Pahlavi, Manichean Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, Khotanese, New Persian, Ossetic, Kurdish, Tokharian, Vedic, and Classical Sanskrit. Education In 1963 Skjærvø enrolled at the University of Oslo where he studied French, Latin, and Sanskrit, with a semester in 1965 at the Sorbonne in Paris. He earned his B.A. () in 1970. In 1974 he completed his M.A. with the thesis, (''Investigations into the ver ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avestan
Avestan ( ) is the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. It belongs to the Iranian languages, Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family and was First language, originally spoken during the Avestan period, Old Iranian period ( – 400 BCE) by the Arya (Iran), Iranians living in the Avestan geography, eastern portion of Greater Iran. After Avestan Language death, became extinct, its religious texts were first transmitted Oral literature, orally until being collected and Sasanian Avesta, put into writing during the Sasanian empire, Sasanian period ( – 500 CE). The Avesta, extant material falls into two Variety (linguistics), groups: Old Avestan ( – 900 BCE) and Younger Avestan ( – 400 BCE). The immediate ancestor of Old Avestan was the Proto-Iranian language, a sister language to the Proto-Indo-Aryan language, with both having developed from the earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian language. As such, Old Avestan is quite close in both grammar and lexi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
