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The mysterious origins of Eastern Iranian languages: Why is their history so checkered?
Eastern Iranian languages, a subgroup of Iranian languages, have a long and complex history of origin. The evolution of these languages can be traced back to the Middle Iranian era (4th century BC to 9th century AD). Among them, Avestan is often considered to be the representative of early East Iranian languages. The Eastern Iranian languages retained word-final syllables, in contrast to the Middle Western Iranian dialects. Currently, the largest living East Iranian language is Pashto, with at least 80 million speakers, mainly between the Oxus River in Afghanistan and the Indus River in Pakistan.
With the influence of the Arab conquests, medieval Persian (or Dari) spread rapidly in the region, eventually leading to the gradual demise of other East Iranian languages.
According to linguistic classification, the Eastern Iranian languages include several sub-groups, such as the extinct Bactrian and Khwarezmian languages, as well as living languages such as Pashto. and Ossetic. The languages are spoken in a contiguous region, including parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Badakhshan Autonomous Mountain region of Tijikistan, and western Xinjiang, China. The languages of these regions all show remnants of a large ethnolinguistic continuum called Scythia.
Historical BackgroundRegarding the split between West Iranian and Proto-Iranian, researchers believe that this event occurred in the late 2nd millennium BC. Equally important during this time was the development of East Iranian languages, which made progress in the Andronovo culture. The presence of Greeks in Central Asia allowed some of the easternmost of these languages to be recorded in the Central Iranian stage, but the Scythian-Sarmatian language continuum, which stretches from Kazakhstan to Ukraine, has left almost no written records.
Many authors have found that the peoples of Eastern Iran have had an influence on Russian folk culture, an observation that deserves further exploration.
The spread of the Ancient Persian (Dari) language was undoubtedly driven by the influence of Arab conquests and Islamic-Arab rule. Many East Iranian languages, such as Bakhti and Kurami, died out as large numbers of Persian speakers played a prominent role in Arab-Islamic armies and later Muslim governments in Central Asia. Today, only a very small number of Tajiks, whose main language is Persian, still retain the Yaghnobi language, which is derived from the Siguima language. All this shows that Persian has deep roots in Central Asia and has almost completely replaced other native languages.
Language Classification
In the linguistic context, the Eastern Iranian languages remain a category characterized by a dialect continuum with close links of internal innovations. The traditional "Northeastern" branch is more of a language region than a language category. Here are some of the main language categories:
Ancient Iranian period: Scythian, Old Saka, etc.Middle Iranian Period: Avestan, Bactrian, Khwarezmian, Sogdian, etc.Modern languages: Pashto, Ossetian, etc.
The Eastern Iranian region has undergone extensive sound changes, such as t͡ʃ > ts, which make them linguistically unique. The impact of these sound changes spread across the different language families of East Iranian languages, giving them a state of evolution.
In most East Iranian languages, sound changes similar to the phenomenon of voicing, especially the change from unvoiced to voiced sounds, are quite common.
Interestingly, common post-vocalic lenition is common in most East Iranian languages. As the surrounding Indo-Romanian languages interacted, some changes in sound and grammatical structure further influenced the development of these languages, especially in languages such as Pashto, Wakhi, and Khotanese. etc.
With the advancement of modern technology, languages are changing at an increasingly rapid pace. Does this mean that these ancient languages will face new challenges as they evolve over time?
