Ossetian language

Ossetian (, , ),AHD: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.

 Sounds 

 Vowels 
Ossetian has either 6 or 7 vowels, depending on the dialect. The Iron dialect has one more than Digoron.
FrontCentralBackClose  Close-mid Mid  Near-open Open 
The Digor dialect of Ossetic has 6 vowels:
FrontCentralBackClose  Mid  Near-open Open 

 Consonants 
According to Vasily Abaev, an Ossetian researcher, there are 26 consonants in Ossetian.
LabialDental/
alveolarPostalveolar
/palatalVelarDespite the transcription used here, Abaev refers to  and  as "postpalatal" rather than velar, and to ,  and  as velar rather than uvular.UvularplainlabializedplainlabializedStops/
Affricatesvoiced      voiceless  ~   ~     ~   ~   ejective      Fricativesvoiced   ~   voiceless   ~   Nasals  Approximants  ~   Rhotic 

 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.
А аӔ ӕБ бВ вГ гД дДж джДз дзЕ еЁ ёЖ жЗ зИ иЙ йК кКъ къЛ лМ мН нО оП пПъ пъР рС сТ тТъ тъУ уФ фХ хХъ хъЦ цЦъ цъЧ чЧъ чъШ шЩ щЪ ъЫ ыЬ ьЭ эЮ юЯ я

Notes

References

Sources


Category:Languages of Russia
Category:Iranian languages
Category:Languages of Georgia (country)