Iranian_languages

qas: question: What is another term meaning Iranian languages?
answers: text: Iranic languages

question: What are the Iranic languages a subgroup of?
answers: text: Indo-Iranian languages

question: What are Indo-Iranian languages a subset of?
answers: text: Indo-European language family

question: When did the change from Old Iranian to Middle Iranian occur?
answers: text: 400 BCE

question: What is an example of a Sassanid language?
answers: text: Middle Persian

question: What stage of Iranian languages from 400 BCE to 900 CE includes old Persian?

question: What stage of Iranian language was in use until 400 BCE and included Parthian and Bactrian?

question: When did the change from old Iranian to new Iranian occur?

question: Where are the old Iranian languages Parthian and Bactrian from?
context: The Iranian languages or Iranic languages form a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, which in turn are a branch of the Indo-European language family. The speakers of Iranian languages are known as Iranian peoples. Historical Iranian languages are grouped in three stages: Old Iranian (until 400 BCE), Middle Iranian (400 BCE – 900 CE), and New Iranian (since 900 CE). Of the Old Iranian languages, the better understood and recorded ones are Old Persian (a language of Achaemenid Iran) and Avestan (the language of the Avesta). Middle Iranian languages included Middle Persian (a language of Sassanid Iran), Parthian, and Bactrian.

qas: question: How many different Iranian languages exist?
answers: text: 86

question: In what year were there hundred and 50 to 200 Iranian languages

question: What are some of the largest among the 200 Iranian languages?

question: What were their 86 million of in 2008
context: As of 2008, there were an estimated 150–200 million native speakers of Iranian languages. Ethnologue estimates there are 86 Iranian languages, the largest amongst them being Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, and Balochi.

qas: question: Iranian languages are all said to be derived from which predecessor?
answers: text: Proto-Iranian

question: From what languages does the word Aryao come?
answers: text: Persian and Sanskrit

question: What is any language that descends from ancestral Persian?

question: What word is derived from Sanskrit and Arya?

question: Arya is derived from what ancestral language?
context: The term Iranian is applied to any language which descends from the ancestral Proto-Iranian language. Iranian derives from the Persian and Sanskrit origin word Arya.

qas: question: When was the phrase Iranian language family first used?
answers: text: 1836

question: Who first used the term Iranian language?
answers: text: Christian Lassen

question: Who first used the term Irano-Aryan?
answers: text: Robert Needham Cust

question: When was the phrase Irano-Aryan first used?
answers: text: 1878

question: When did Robert Needham Cust introduced the term Iranian?

question: What term did Christian Lassen using 1878?

question: What did George Abraham Grierson and Christian Lassen contrast?

question: What scholars have revived the term Irano-Aryan
context: The use of the term for the Iranian language family was introduced in 1836 by Christian Lassen. Robert Needham Cust used the term Irano-Aryan in 1878, and Orientalists such as George Abraham Grierson and Max Müller contrasted Irano-Aryan (Iranian) and Indo-Aryan (Indic). Some recent scholarship, primarily in German, has revived this convention.

qas: question: From where did Iranian languages originate?
answers: text: Proto-Iranian

question: What part of the world is it theorized that Indo-Iranian languages came from?
answers: text: Central Asia

question: What society is a strong contender for the common culture speaking Indo-Iranian?
answers: text: Andronovo

question: When did the Andronovo culture exist?
answers: text: 2000 BC

question: What other language did most Iranian languages descend from?

question: What other language besides Nuristani this proto-Iranian descent from?

question: What language does Proto-Indo Iranian descent from?

question: What languages are believed to have originated in central India?
context: All Iranian languages are descended from a common ancestor, Proto-Iranian. In turn, and together with Proto-Indo-Aryan and the Nuristani languages, Proto-Iranian descends from a common ancestor Proto-Indo-Iranian. The Indo-Iranian languages are thought to have originated in Central Asia. The Andronovo culture is the suggested candidate for the common Indo-Iranian culture ca. 2000 BC.

qas: question: What language family did Thracian and Balto-Slavic belong to?
answers: text: Indo-European

question: What Indo-European groups belong to the Satem language family?

question: What language family originated in the mountains of Russia?
context: It was situated precisely in the western part of Central Asia that borders present-day Russia (and present-day Kazakhstan). It was in relative proximity to the other satem ethno-linguistic groups of the Indo-European family, like Thracian, Balto-Slavic and others, and to common Indo-European's original homeland (more precisely, the steppes of southern Russia to the north of the Caucasus), according to the reconstructed linguistic relationships of common Indo-European.

qas: question: Where did early Iranian people establish societies?
answers: text: southeastern Europe, the Iranian plateau, and Central Asia

question: What language came sometime after the breakup of Proto-Iranian?

question: What language broke up after the second millennium BCE?

question: When did the middle Iranian language begin to break off?
context: Proto-Iranian thus dates to some time after Proto-Indo-Iranian break-up, or the early second millennium BCE, as the Old Iranian languages began to break off and evolve separately as the various Iranian tribes migrated and settled in vast areas of southeastern Europe, the Iranian plateau, and Central Asia.

qas: question: What characteristic of Middle Iranian civilization is shown by the number of different languages and their speakers?
answers: text: linguistic diversity

question: How many of the Middlie Iranian tongues have remained in existence since ancient time?
answers: text: two

question: What characteristic of middle Iranian civilization is shown by the limited number of languages and speakers?

question: How many middle Iranian languages are still spoken today?

question: What languages were spoken by a limited number of people?
context: The multitude of Middle Iranian languages and peoples indicate that great linguistic diversity must have existed among the ancient speakers of Iranian languages. Of that variety of languages/dialects, direct evidence of only two have survived. These are:

qas: question: In which historical record does Old Persian appear in exemplary form?
answers: text: the Behistun inscription

question: When was the Behistun inscription written?
answers: text: 520 BC

question: During what century was the change from Old to Middle Persian well underway?
answers: text: 4th century BC

question: What dialect was spoken in northwestern Iran

question: What official purpose was Middle Persian being used for in the fourth century BC?

question: What inscription was composed in the 4th Century BC.

question: In which document composed in 520 BC was old Persian grammatically incorrect?

question: During what century was the change from old to middle Persian just beginning?
context: Old Persian is the Old Iranian dialect as it was spoken in south-western Iran by the inhabitants of Parsa, who also gave their name to their region and language. Genuine Old Persian is best attested in one of the three languages of the Behistun inscription, composed circa 520 BC, and which is the last inscription (and only inscription of significant length) in which Old Persian is still grammatically correct. Later inscriptions are comparatively brief, and typically simply copies of words and phrases from earlier ones, often with grammatical errors, which suggests that by the 4th century BC the transition from Old Persian to Middle Persian was already far advanced, but efforts were still being made to retain an "old" quality for official proclamations.

qas: question: What ancient religious document exists in two versions and includes Old Iranian language?
answers: text: Avestan

question: What is the contemporary name of the religion which Avesta was part of?
answers: text: Zoroastrianism

question: What language shows a level of maturity corresponding to Old Avestan?
answers: text: Rigvedic Sanskrit

question: What language shows the same level of development as Younger Avestan?
answers: text: Old Persian

question: What dialect is the Avesta language from?

question: How many dialects of the Avesta language or there?

question: What religion is vohu daena the contemporary name for?

question: Why did old Persian retained its old characteristics long after the old Iranian languages

question: What language shows the same level of development as old Avestan
context: The other directly attested Old Iranian dialects are the two forms of Avestan, which take their name from their use in the Avesta, the liturgical texts of indigenous Iranian religion that now goes by the name of Zoroastrianism but in the Avesta itself is simply known as vohu daena (later: behdin). The language of the Avesta is subdivided into two dialects, conventionally known as "Old (or 'Gathic') Avestan", and "Younger Avestan". These terms, which date to the 19th century, are slightly misleading since 'Younger Avestan' is not only much younger than 'Old Avestan', but also from a different geographic region. The Old Avestan dialect is very archaic, and at roughly the same stage of development as Rigvedic Sanskrit. On the other hand, Younger Avestan is at about the same linguistic stage as Old Persian, but by virtue of its use as a sacred language retained its "old" characteristics long after the Old Iranian languages had yielded to their Middle Iranian stage. Unlike Old Persian, which has Middle Persian as its known successor, Avestan has no clearly identifiable Middle Iranian stage (the effect of Middle Iranian is indistinguishable from effects due to other causes).

qas: question: What language is Carduchi thought to have become?
answers: text: Kurdish

question: What language did Herodotus invent a name for?
answers: text: Scythian

question: What language to Kurdish become?

question: What cannot be inferred from the impact on a neighboring language?

question: What kind of substrate is Middle Iranian?

question: Who reported vocabulary for old Persian?
context: In addition to Old Persian and Avestan, which are the only directly attested Old Iranian languages, all Middle Iranian languages must have had a predecessor "Old Iranian" form of that language, and thus can all be said to have had an (at least hypothetical) "Old" form. Such hypothetical Old Iranian languages include Carduchi (the hypothetical predecessor to Kurdish) and Old Parthian. Additionally, the existence of unattested languages can sometimes be inferred from the impact they had on neighbouring languages. Such transfer is known to have occurred for Old Persian, which has (what is called) a "Median" substrate in some of its vocabulary. Also, foreign references to languages can also provide a hint to the existence of otherwise unattested languages, for example through toponyms/ethnonyms or in the recording of vocabulary, as Herodotus did for what he called "Scythian".

qas: question: What are the two main divisions of Iranian tongues?
answers: text: western and eastern

question: Which language is associated with the western branch of Iranian?
answers: text: Old Persian

question: Which language is associated with the eastern branch of Iranian?
answers: text: Avestan

question: What languages are grouped into northern and southern branches?

question: What language is associated with the Western branch of old Persian?

question: What language is associated with the Eastern branch of Avestan?

question: What were the centers of imperial power in Persia?
context: Conventionally, Iranian languages are grouped in "western" and "eastern" branches. These terms have little meaning with respect to Old Avestan as that stage of the language may predate the settling of the Iranian peoples into western and eastern groups. The geographic terms also have little meaning when applied to Younger Avestan since it isn't known where that dialect (or dialects) was spoken either. Certain is only that Avestan (all forms) and Old Persian are distinct, and since Old Persian is "western", and Avestan was not Old Persian, Avestan acquired a default assignment to "eastern". Confusing the issue is the introduction of a western Iranian substrate in later Avestan compositions and redactions undertaken at the centers of imperial power in western Iran (either in the south-west in Persia, or in the north-west in Nisa/Parthia and Ecbatana/Media).

qas: question: What elements of Proto-Indo-Iranian did not diverge according to the ensuing split between eastern and western variants?
answers: text: *ć and *dź

question: What type of letters are *ć and *dź?
answers: text: first-series palatal consonants

question: What Iranian dialects did not follow the Western and Eastern blocks?

question: What type of valves are c and dz?
context: Two of the earliest dialectal divisions among Iranian indeed happen to not follow the later division into Western and Eastern blocks. These concern the fate of the Proto-Indo-Iranian first-series palatal consonants, *ć and *dź:

qas: question: What languages share a similar situation?
answers: text: Nuristani languages

question: What other elements of early Iranian languages problematize the east-west division?
answers: text: *ćw and *dźw

question: What is the linguistic categorization of *ćw and *dźw?
answers: text: consonant clusters

question: What is contrary to the state of affairs in the Nuristani languages?

question: What other elements of early Iranian language support the East-West division?
context: As a common intermediate stage, it is possible to reconstruct depalatalized affricates: *c, *dz. (This coincides with the state of affairs in the neighboring Nuristani languages.) A further complication however concerns the consonant clusters *ćw and *dźw:

qas: question: What may have also been in use at the time?
answers: text: other distinct dialect groups

question: Precursors of what subset of Scythian are theorized to have existed?
answers: text: Alanian/Scytho-Sarmatian

question: What possible predecessor of Pathian is thought to have existed?
answers: text: Old Parthian

question: What was not in use at the time?

question: What is the ancestor of old Iranian?

question: c parallel the development of what other two letters?

question: Scythian was the ancestor of what other languages?
context: It is possible that other distinct dialect groups were already in existence during this period. Good candidates are the hypothethical ancestor languages of Alanian/Scytho-Sarmatian subgroup of Scythian in the far northwest; and the hypothetical "Old Parthian" (the Old Iranian ancestor of Parthian) in the near northwest, where original *dw > *b (paralleling the development of *ćw).

qas: question: When did the age of Middle Iranian come to a close?
answers: text: 9th century

question: What are the two main divisions of Middle Iranian?
answers: text: Western and Eastern

question: What era began in the ninth century?

question: What language was divided into a northern and southern division?
context: What is known in Iranian linguistic history as the "Middle Iranian" era is thought to begin around the 4th century BCE lasting through the 9th century. Linguistically the Middle Iranian languages are conventionally classified into two main groups, Western and Eastern.

qas: question: Bactrian, Sogdian, and Saka are examples of what type of Iranian language?
answers: text: Eastern

question: Which language bears a resemblance to the diversity of eastern Iranian languages?
answers: text: Avestan

question: Where did the the alphabets used by eastern languages come from?
answers: text: Aramaic

question: What did the Bactrian language use for writing?
answers: text: Greek script

question: What family includes party on an Old Persian?

question: What family includes Bactrain, Sogdian and old Iranian?

question: Where did the alphabet used by Western languages come from?

question: What script was used for Persian rating?
context: The Western family includes Parthian (Arsacid Pahlavi) and Middle Persian, while Bactrian, Sogdian, Khwarezmian, Saka, and Old Ossetic (Scytho-Sarmatian) fall under the Eastern category. The two languages of the Western group were linguistically very close to each other, but quite distinct from their eastern counterparts. On the other hand, the Eastern group was an areal entity whose languages retained some similarity to Avestan. They were inscribed in various Aramaic-derived alphabets which had ultimately evolved from the Achaemenid Imperial Aramaic script, though Bactrian was written using an adapted Greek script.

qas: question: What is another term for Middle Persian?
answers: text: Pahlavi

question: When did Middle Persian start being u sed?
answers: text: 3rd century CE

question: What are three languages employed by the Manichaeans?
answers: text: Middle Persian, Parthian and Sogdian

question: What was the writing of Manichaean documents similar to?
answers: text: Syriac script

question: Underwood dynasty was old Persian the official language?

question: What language was in use in Iran before the third century?

question: What are three spoken languages use by the Manchaeans?

question: Latin and Chinese writing were similar to what texts?
context: Middle Persian (Pahlavi) was the official language under the Sasanian dynasty in Iran. It was in use from the 3rd century CE until the beginning of the 10th century. The script used for Middle Persian in this era underwent significant maturity. Middle Persian, Parthian and Sogdian were also used as literary languages by the Manichaeans, whose texts also survive in various non-Iranian languages, from Latin to Chinese. Manichaean texts were written in a script closely akin to the Syriac script.

qas: question: The proliferation of which religion had a profound effect on the development of Iranian languages?
answers: text: Islam

question: What language displaced Middle Iranian as the court's official tongue?
answers: text: Dari

question: What was the first dynasty to use Dari?
answers: text: Saffarid

question: When did the Saffarid dynasty begin using Dari?
answers: text: 875 CE

question: What area was the name Dari connected to by medieval Iranian thinkers?
answers: text: Khorasan

question: What religion slowed the spread of the Iranian language?

question: What language do middle Iranian displace is the court's official language?

question: What was the last Dynasty to use Dari

question: Who stopped using Dari in 875 CE?

question: What was the official dialect of the royalty itself?
context: Following the Islamic Conquest of Persia (Iran), there were important changes in the role of the different dialects within the Persian Empire. The old prestige form of Middle Iranian, also known as Pahlavi, was replaced by a new standard dialect called Dari as the official language of the court. The name Dari comes from the word darbâr (دربار), which refers to the royal court, where many of the poets, protagonists, and patrons of the literature flourished. The Saffarid dynasty in particular was the first in a line of many dynasties to officially adopt the new language in 875 CE. Dari may have been heavily influenced by regional dialects of eastern Iran, whereas the earlier Pahlavi standard was based more on western dialects. This new prestige dialect became the basis of Standard New Persian. Medieval Iranian scholars such as Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa (8th century) and Ibn al-Nadim (10th century) associated the term "Dari" with the eastern province of Khorasan, while they used the term "Pahlavi" to describe the dialects of the northwestern areas between Isfahan and Azerbaijan, and "Pârsi" ("Persian" proper) to describe the Dialects of Fars. They also noted that the unofficial language of the royalty itself was yet another dialect, "Khuzi", associated with the western province of Khuzestan.

qas: question: What was the new form of writing introduced by the spread of Islam?
answers: text: Arabic script

question: When did usage of Middle Persian script fall off?
answers: text: second half of the 8th century

question: What script was converted to Latin in the 1920s?
answers: text: Tajik script

question: When was Tajik script converted to Cyrillic?
answers: text: the 1930s

question: Who catalyzed the conversion of Tajik script into Cyrillic?
answers: text: the Soviet government

question: The spread of what religion introduce the Persian script?

question: When did the use of middle Persian script begin?

question: When was Arabic script converted to Latin?

question: What's began the conversion of Arabic script to Cyrillic?
context: The Islamic conquest also brought with it the adoption of Arabic script for writing Persian and much later, Kurdish, Pashto and Balochi. All three were adapted to the writing by the addition of a few letters. This development probably occurred some time during the second half of the 8th century, when the old middle Persian script began dwindling in usage. The Arabic script remains in use in contemporary modern Persian. Tajik script was first Latinised in the 1920s under the then Soviet nationality policy. The script was however subsequently Cyrillicized in the 1930s by the Soviet government.

qas: question: What is another term for Western Iran?
answers: text: Khuzestan

question: What are two languages that were forced out by the spread of Arabic?
answers: text: Sogdian and Bactrian

question: By what century had the area inhabited by Sarmatians been absorbed by pre-Slavic people?
answers: text: 6th century AD

question: Where can the remnants of Yaghnobi be found?
answers: text: Zarafshan valley

question: Ossetic is a version of which Scythian language?
answers: text: Saka

question: What language writing to some parts of eastern Iran?

question: What two languages grew alongside Arabic?

question: By what century had the area inhabited by pre-Slavic people been absorbed by the Sarmations?

question: What small area still speaks Sogdian?
context: The geographical regions in which Iranian languages were spoken were pushed back in several areas by newly neighbouring languages. Arabic spread into some parts of Western Iran (Khuzestan), and Turkic languages spread through much of Central Asia, displacing various Iranian languages such as Sogdian and Bactrian in parts of what is today Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In Eastern Europe, mostly comprising the territory of modern-day Ukraine, southern European Russia, and parts of the Balkans, the core region of the native Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans had been decisively been taken over as a result of absorption and assimilation (e.g. Slavicisation) by the various Proto-Slavic population of the region, by the 6th century AD. This resulted in the displacement and extinction of the once predominant Scythian languages of the region. Sogdian's close relative Yaghnobi barely survives in a small area of the Zarafshan valley east of Samarkand, and Saka as Ossetic in the Caucasus, which is the sole remnant of the once predominant Scythian languages in Eastern Europe proper and large parts of the North Caucasus. Various small Iranian languages in the Pamirs survive that are derived from Eastern Iranian.