Ossetian language

**Ossetian** (, , ), commonly referred to as **Ossetic** and rarely as **Ossete** (), is an Eastern Iranian language that is spoken mostly in Ossetia.

## Dialects

There are two main dialects of Ossetian, Iron and Digoron.

### Vowels

Ossetian has either 6 or 7 vowels, depending on the dialect. The Iron dialect has one more than Digoron.
||Front|Central|Back|
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
|****||****||
||****|||
|****||****||
||****|||
||****|||
The Digor dialect of Ossetic has 6 vowels:
||Front|Central|Back|
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
|****||****||
|****||****||
||****|||
||****|||

### Consonants

According to Vasily Abaev, an Ossetian researcher, there are 26 consonants in Ossetian.
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"||rowspan="2"|Labial|colspan="2"|Dental/ alveolar|rowspan="2"|Postalveolar /palatal|colspan="2"|Velar|colspan="2"|Uvular|
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|****|****|****|****|****|****|||||||
|****  ~|****  ~|****|****|****  ~|****  ~|****|****|||||
|****|****|****|****|****|****|||||||
|****|align="center"||colspan="2"|****  ~|||****|****||||
|****|align="center"||colspan="2"|****  ~|||****|****||||
|****|****|||||||||||
||****  ~||****||****|||||||
||****|||||||||||

## Alphabet

Ossetian has been written down since the 10th century, but not always since then. The first text in Ossetian was in the Greek alphabet and in the Digoron dialect. After this, Ossetian was not written down for some time. However, in 1753, Heraclius II of Georgia decided to make missionaries write down Ossetian, this time using the Georgian alphabet.

In more modern times, Ossetian uses the Cyrillic script. The current alphabet is in the table below.
|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|А а|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Ӕ ӕ|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Б б|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|В в|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Г г|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Д д|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Дж дж|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Дз дз|
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Е е|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Ё ё|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Ж ж|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|З з|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|И и|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Й й|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|К к|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Къ къ|
|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Л л|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|М м|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Н н|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|О о|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|П п|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Пъ пъ|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Р р|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|С с|
|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Т т|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Тъ тъ|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|У у|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Ф ф|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Х х|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Хъ хъ|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Ц ц|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 2px;"|Цъ цъ|
|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Ч ч|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 2px;"|Чъ чъ|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Ш ш|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Щ щ|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Ъ ъ|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Ы ы|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Ь ь|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Э э|
|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Ю ю|style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;"|Я я|||||||||||||

## Infobox (language)

- **name**: Ossetian
- **pronunciation**:

- **states**: Ossetia
- **region**: Caucasus
- **ethnicity**: Ossetians
- **speakers**: 597,450
- **date**: 2010
- **ref**: e23
- **familycolor**: Indo-European
- **fam2**: Indo-Iranian languages, Indo-Iranian
- **fam3**: Iranian languages, Iranian
- **fam4**: Eastern Iranian languages, Eastern
- **nativename**:

- **script**: Cyrillic script, Cyrillic (Ossetian alphabet)
- **nation**: ----
_Partially recognised country_:

- **iso1**: os
- **iso2**: oss
- **iso3**: oss
- **lingua**: 58-ABB-a
- **image**: Oseta latina skribo.jpg
- **imagecaption**: Latin-script Ossetian text from a book published in 1935; part of an alphabetic list of proverbs.
- **notice**: IPA
- **glotto**: osse1243
- **glottorefname**: Modern Ossetic