Talk:Avestan

message: I'm deleting the following sentence: "Christopher I. Beckwith claims, in Empires of the Silk Road, that Avestan is an Indo-Aryan language, with the Iranian linguistic traits found in the Avesta having been introduced by oral transmission among Iranian language speakers." The idea is, frankly, nuts, and I don't think anyone takes it seriously. Mrrhum (talk) 18:36, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. I came across that book and skimmed through it - he also says 'it is unclear whether Chinese is Indo-European language' or under heavy influence of IE from the beginning, which is also very kooky. His theory about Avestan is basically that it's Sanskrit with Iranian phonological substitution, and that 'actual' Iranian languages and IA languages are on either side of his own division of IE - despite the fact that this is all very easily and thoroughly demonstrably false. He also, like most kooks, seems to think that anyone who contradicts him is swayed by a massive misunderstanding and simply too dumb to think of what he has going back to the mid-1800s.Harsimaja (talk) 14:53, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Removed this kooky theory, Beckwith is undoubtedly WP:FRINGE, I've had to remove some of his other "theories" about Buddhism in the past.  - car chasm (talk) 04:48, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleting reference to Beckwith's kooky theory 

message: Is this original work? -- Zoe
'''
Both Rigvedic Sanskrit and Avestan Persian are too similar to be a concidence and both certainly have a common Aryan origin. Thus there is no latitude to create a fake controversy to push an agenda pertaining to this.
The following is an example of the closeness of the Avestan and Sanskrit languages:
Old Iranian/Avestan: aevo pantao yo ashahe, vispe anyaesham apantam (Yasna 72.11)
Old Indian/Sanskrit: abade pantha he ashae, visha anyaesham apantham
Translation: the one path is that of Asha, all others are not-paths.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.88.88.203 (talk) 22:35, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: This isn't the way we'd normally use 'Aryan', but if you mean Indo-Iranian, then certainly they are both II languages. They are not both Indo-Aryan, however, despite Beckwith's claims.Harsimaja (talk) 14:53, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: original work?

message: The article needs serious editing. The text is not called Zend Avesta, rather just the Avesta (Middle Persian Abestag). Zand is the commentary on the Avesta.  I am going to edit it and add to the contents.
: I know where your coming from. I wouldn't mind using the Zand, except that the Zand was written in Pahlavi and thus irrelevant to this article! Also "Vidaevdat" should be Vidēdāt acc. to Boyce and corresponds to the transliteration system given down the page. The more common name "Vendidād" might be mentioned in parenthesis just to avoid confusion. Khirad 10:51, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs serious editing! 

message: Is there any Dravidian loan in Avestan? Meursault2004 16:10, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think so, though there may be in its descendant: Pashto, since the Dravidian peoples once extended all the way into the areas Pashto is now spoken, and there remain pockets to this day. Could an odd loan word have made its way into Avestan? Anything's possible! But was there considerable influence? No. Even the Indo-Aryan language Hindi hasn't absorbed much of its neighboring Dravidian langs. Come to think of it, why hasn't anyone mentioned Pashto?  Khirad 10:51, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We can't assume that Pashto is a direct descendant of Avestan, though Pashto certainly had a very similar ancestor. But we also can't claim that Dravidian languages once extended continuously throughout to the same region. The Brahui, who are not quite in the same range (they are surrounded by Balochi speakers), seem to have arrived in the medieval period, since Brahui itself has no Iranian loans from before then.Harsimaja (talk) 14:56, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

text: Do not engage in necromancy, i.e. "raise the dead": you just replied to a ten year old comment. Ogress smash! 23:32, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dravidian loanwords in Avestan 

message: I changed Devanagri to Devanāgarī not just because it's correct, but because the other spelling is a pet peeve of mine! Also added omniglot link for goodness sake! Khirad 10:51, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Links

message: Avestan, an extinct Indo-Iranian language related to Old Persian and Sanskrit. Heja Helweda 01:54, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Avestan is an extict language 

message: What is the nonesense about the classification of Avestan as an Eastern Iranian language being unclear? Where did you get the idea that the seperation of the Eastern and Western Iranian are "poorly understood"? If you have read anything written since 1950's on (it is a problem, people often go back to the 19th century works on Avestan), you will see that it is always marked as an Eastern Iranian Language. The differences are clear and very well understood, so I beg to differ with the statement here. Avestan has classical East Iranian phonological tendencies (z for WIr. d, for example) and has been confidently put as a Northeastern Iranian language. no doubt about it.--71.106.119.109 08:59, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is not about western Iranian and eastern Iranian. The fact is that in old Iranian times, the distinction was rather one between southwestern Iranian and the rest of Iranian languages. Also the phonological tendency of z for d is present in all western Iranian languages who are not southwestern. Ellipi (talk) 19:54, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Classification not certain??? 

message: It seems as though the table doesn't address what consonants are represented by ϑ, t̰, ṇ, ṣ̌,.  I'm assuming the last two are simply retroflex, but I really have no idea about the first two.   Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 01:06, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This issue still has yet to be resolved for the dotted consonants. The table on the Avestan alphabet page suggests the retroflex explanation but both apparently require citations. Seeing as these consonants are used in the example text, this really needs to be clarified.100.34.253.176 (talk) 06:15, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Table incomplete

message: This sie is gift from Qurdian separatist and read terrorists. The Avestan language is EASTERN iranian (as Pashto, Ossetian and others) and NON Kurdian language. Stop with propaganda of Greater Kurdistan!
:FYI The Avestan sacred texts may have been composed [geographically] in eastern Iran, but Avestan language shows few if any of the distinctive characteristics of the later Eastern Iranian languages. (source: Iranica). Ellipi (talk) 16:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: about Iraqian Kurdish

message: The passage that contains
"The Artificial Young Avestan however is a corrupt form of the language..."
seems like a sentence constructed to express an opinion.
All human languages are "artificial". i.e. they are all humanly created.
All languages go through "corruption" as they mutate or evolve.
Based on such an opinion therefore, today's English would be a corruption of Chaucer's definition of the language. Or, perhaps, Chaucer's definition is "artificial"?
I hope someone knowledgeable about this subject would remove the words "corrupt" and "artificial" and rephrase them in less subjective fashion.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hence Jewish Anderstein (talk • contribs) 19:25, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I see where you are coming from, but thats not whats meant. See, at some point the priests themselves could not write Avestan. But the language was considered sacred, so additions had to be made in that language to give them doctrinal legitimacy. So, the priests tried anyway, and the result is "artificial Younger Avestan." Its a copy-and-paste job of existing phrases with a lot of guesswork in between. It would as if I had tried to write this comment in Middle English (worse though, since Avestan is highly inflected). -- Fullstop (talk) 12:40, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Why not say that through oral transmission, some corruption possibly occured.  I believe the Young Avesta was used to decipher Old Persian.  What I am understand from your statement is the priests arbitrarly wrote in young Avesta without understanding it.  Where-as Young Avesta seems to be just an evolution from Old Avesta and if there are corruptions, is due to the fact that it became a dead language and oral transmission is not perfect, hence some corruption might have occured.  --alidoostzadeh (talk) 15:40, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Reading the article, it seems the Artifical language is applied to Vendidad.  Any sources for this statement?  --alidoostzadeh (talk) 15:42, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Artificial Young Avestan - What is "artificial"? 

message: There are many historical reference to pashto that links it as the modern successor of avestan which is a fact considering that pashto has a vast avestan vocabulary preserved both living and extinct as opposed to many other indo-iranian languages in the region. 71.139.17.191 (talk) 18:49, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pashto is the closest language to Avestan 

message: There is a section in the etymology of the Zarathushtra article in which the claim is made that because "zarat-/zarant-" "do not appear in Avestan," there is reason for other alternative etymologies. But a simple look at the two main Avestan dictionaries online shows "zairi-" "zaranim-" etc. do translate to "golden," or "yellow." Is this a case where the Orientalist etymologies are based on a rather plain error? -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 20:30, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  zairi- / zarat- 

message: While the notion of Avestan being part of he Eastern Iranian group has been around for some time, today's scholarship agrees that Avestan in its original, Old Avestan form was what is best named the "central dialect" in Iran, together with e.g. Median and what was probably Old Parthian. The common features with Eastern Iranian languages are basically the influence of the Eastern Iranian transmitters of the Avestan corpus. See Sims-Williams in Ramat and Ramat (1998) and R. Schmitt in CLI (1989)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.194.91.172 (talk) 18:27, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Avestan is NOT an Eastern Iranian language 

message: Because most academic sources including LINGUIST List classifies Avestan as Eastern Iranian and the same was its classification in the original version of this article prior to recent changes that go against any consensus, it is good I think to restore that classification in the article. Massagetae(talk) 07:52, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: LinguistList is not a reliable source.  Neither is Ethnologue.  The Iranian articles have been unsourced or poorly sourced for years, so I finally decided to do something about it.  According to The Iranian Languages (Routledge 2009), Avestan is "Central Iranian".  Now, if you find a better source and want to redo the classification of our Iranian articles, knock yourself out, but that means you need to actually get a better source.  — kwami (talk) 09:23, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eastern Iranian classification 

message: please have a look at this edit, which canged "Indo-Iranian" into "Indo-Aryan," witht he brilliant edit-summary "Facts. Iran didn't exist when these languages emerged!"
 the existence or non-existence of Iran at the time of the Avestan language is completely irrelevant; this is about naming-conventions. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:55, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Both the labels "Indo-Aryan" and "Indo-Iranian" are in use about the same grouping. We should definitely note that. Yes, the existence of the Iranian state is entirely irrelevant for the argument. Europe also wasnt called Europe during the time when proto-Indo-European was spoken that is still what the family is called.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:59, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: So, "Indo-Aryan/Indo-Iranian"? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:01, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: No in the infobox it needs to say whatever title the article on Indo-Iranian languages is located at. As long as the article is not moved to "Indo-Aryan languages" then it needs to remain as is.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:25, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

text: I am a linguist and the terms you are trying to change are linguistic terms based on how linguists classify the language. Your apparent classification is not one that any linguists would agree with, and noone uses the term Indo-Aryan in the meaning you are giving it as a label for the entire indo-european family. My religion and ethnicity (or yours) is entirely irrelevant for this argument. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:32, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aryan 

message: Would anyone have any issues were I to add a section like this to this wikipedia article?
The nearest thing to a direct living descendent of the language of Zarathushtra is known as Pashto, one of the two official languages of the nation of Afghanistan, the other being Dari-Persian.     
Gathic or Old Avestan, the language of Zarathushtra, and Zend or Young Avestan, the language of Zarathushtra’s followers are classified as the Northeast variety of the Aryan language-subfamily.  Old Avestan preserves larygneal hiatus like Vedic Sanskrit but more faithfully preserves archaic features  not found in Vedic, nor Young Avestan making Vedic Sanskrit resemble Young Avestan more so than to Old Avestan.   
Because of much of the editorial work happened during the Young Avestan period, Old Avestan has a strongly Young Avestan phonetic cast that represents secondary overlayering and adaption…  For example, words beginning in Iranian with the disyllabic sequence * ĵu’a- (with hiatus from * ĵuHa-) still scan disyllabically in the Gathas; later this sequence became monosyllabic *ĵu̯a-, the ancestor of both Avestan zba- (the spelling in the transmitted text) and of Old Persian za-.  All this indicates that the text preserves (underneath the modernizations) a stage from a time before the common ancestor of Avestan and Old Persian split. (If that is true, then Young Avestan actually is a lineal descendant of Old Avestan.)  Thus the participle zbaiieṇte ‘for him invoking’ at Yasna 49.12 must be read *zuu̯aiieṇtē (probably really *zuu̯aiantai if one undoes the vowel changes.) – Benjamin Fortson,  Indo-European Language and Culture pg. 230
Pashto is a new Northeast Aryan language spoken in Afghanistan among Pashtun tribesmen and according to James Darmesteter Pashto is a lineal descendent of Zend Avestan.  Pashto /ʂ/, /ʐ/ ɳ / and  / ṛ /  are all developed from Avestan.  Pashto ʂ is a reflex of Avestan sr, rs, r, š corresponding to PIE * kś.  The Pashto liquid / ṛ / developed from Av. rt, rd, and the nasal rn.  ʈ and ɖ, and kh, however, developed from Indic languages.  The Pashtun homeland, Pouruta, is also mentioned in the Avesta. - http://people.ku.edu/~mmth/Four_varieties_of_Pashto.pdf  
  
'We sacrifice unto Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, .... sleepless, and ever awake; 13. 'Who first of the heavenly Yazads [angels] reaches over the Hara, before the undying, swift-horsed sun; who, foremost in a golden array, takes hold of the beautiful summits, and from thence looks over the abode of the Aryans with a beneficent eye. 14. 'Where the valiant chiefs draw up their many troops in array; where the high mountains, rich in pastures and waters, yield plenty to the cattle; where the deep lakes, with salt waters, stand; where wide-flowing rivers swell and hurry towards Ishkata [Hindu Kush] and Pouruta [Pashtunistan], Mouru [Merv] and Haroyu [Herat], the Gava-Sughdha [Sogdiana or Samarkand] and Hvairizem [Chorosmia]; – Mehr Yasht 4.12-14 Mojobadshah (talk) 23:27, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It does not seem very coherent and lack citations for the main claims. So yes, I would ave a problem with this.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 02:30, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: My issue is both. It is not meaningfully written. And it contains uncited information that is likely to be false. One piee of false information is this: Pashto is not the closest language to Avestan, Ossetian and several other languages are equally close. It is also wildly off topic in its long quotattions of Zoroastrian scripture. It quite simply doesnt seem that you understand how articles are written on wikipedia.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:35, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Avestan Old Northeast Iranian - Pashto New Northeast Iranian 

message: We can't be too sure that it was known as Avestan before modern studies just because it was the language of the Avesta. I think there should be an "Etymology" category.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Out-typer (talk • contribs) 21:08, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  The name of the language 

message: According to IP, Avestan is not closely related to Sanskrit. Google quickly shows otherwise. For example, Christopher I Beckwith (2009), "Empires of the Silk Road": 
Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:04, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: There is nothing odd with the two languages being almost identical. They are sister languages.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:34, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Similarity with Sanskrit