Trisha Shetty (Editor)

Indo Iranian languages

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Proto-language:
  
Proto-Indo-Iranian

Glottolog:
  
indo1320

ISO 639-5:
  
iir

Indo-Iranian languages

Geographic distribution:
  
South, Central, Western Asia, South East Europe and the Caucasus / Total speakers = approximately about 1.5 billion in 15 countries

Linguistic classification:
  
Indo-European Indo-Iranian

Subdivisions:
  
Indo-Aryan Iranian Nuristani

The Indo-Iranian languages or Indo-Iranic languages, constitute the largest and easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European language family. It has more than 1 billion speakers, stretching from the Caucasus (Ossetian) and the Balkans (Romani) eastward to Xinjiang (Sarikoli) and Assam (Assamese), and south to the Maldives (Maldivian).

Contents

The common ancestor of all of the languages in this family is called Proto-Indo-Iranian—also known as Common Aryan—which was spoken in approximately the late 3rd millennium BC. The three branches of modern Indo-Iranian languages are Indo-Aryan, Iranian, and Nuristani. Additionally, sometimes a fourth independent branch, Dardic, is posited, but recent scholarship in general places Dardic languages as archaic members of the Indo-Aryan branch.

Languages

Indo-Iranian consists of three groups:

  • Indo-Aryan (Indic)
  • Iranian (Iranic)
  • Nuristani

    • Most of the largest languages (in terms of native speakers) are a part of the Indo-Aryan group: Hindustani (Hindi–Urdu, ~590 million), Bengali (205 million), Punjabi (100 million), Marathi (75 million), Gujarati (50 million), Bhojpuri (40 million), Awadhi (40 million), Maithili (35 million), Odia (35 million), Marwari (30 million), Sindhi (25 million), Rajasthani (20 million), Chhattisgarhi (18 million), Assamese (15 million), Sinhalese (16 million), Nepali (17 million), and Rangpuri (rajbanshi) (15 million). Among the Iranian branch, major languages are Persian (60 million), Pashto (ca. 50 million), Kurdish (35 million), and Balochi (8 million), with a total number of native speakers of more than 1471 million. Numerous smaller languages exist.

    History

    The Indo-Iranian languages derive from a reconstructed common proto-language, called Proto-Indo-Iranian.

    The oldest attested Indo-Iranian languages are Vedic Sanskrit (ancient Indo-Aryan), Older and Younger Avestan and Old Persian (ancient Iranian languages). A few words from another Indo-Aryan language (see Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni) are attested in documents from the ancient Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia and Syria and the Hittite kingdom in Anatolia.

    Features

    Innovations shared with other languages affected by the satem sound changes include:

  • Fronting and assibilation of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) palato-velar stops: *ḱ, *ǵʰ, *ǵ > *ĉ, *ĵʰ, *ĵ
  • The merger of the PIE labiovelar and plain velar stops: *kʷ, *gʷʰ, *gʷ > *k, *gʰ, *g
  • The Ruki sound law

    • Innovations shared with Greek include:

  • The vocalization of the PIE syllabic nasals *m̥, *n̥ to *a
  • Grassmann's law

    • Innovations unique to Indo-Iranian include:

  • The lowering of PIE *e to *a
  • *o was also lowered to *a, though this occurred in several other Indo-European languages as well.
  • Brugmann's law

    • References

    Indo-Iranian languages Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA