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Indo-Iranian Branch

Indo-Iranian Branch

Iranian languages constitute a branch of the Indo-European language family. They are spoken over a wide area of the Middle East. The languages are called Iranian because the largest members of the branch have been spoken on the Iranian plateau since ancient times. Iranian languages, together with Indo-Aryan languages are thought to have evolved from a common ancestral language called *Proto-Indo-Iranian.

Most scholars subscribe to the hypothesis that the original homeland of Indo-Iranian was an area located northwest of the Indian subcontinent bordered by the Caspian sea in the east and Afghanistan in the north. It is hypothesized that sometime in the 2nd
millennium BC, people who spoke the ancestral Indo-Iranian language migrated to the south and west, settling over a wide area of the Middle East where modern Indo-Iranian languages are presently spoken.

According to Ethnologue, there are 87 Iranian languages, a few of of them now extinct, and many with a very small number of speakers. They are spoken today by 60-80 million people. The table below lists languages with at least half-a-million speakers.

Language
Number of speakers (in millions)
Where spoken primarily
*Persian Western (Farsi) 24.5 Iran
Persian Eastern (Dari) 7.6 Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan
Tajik 4.5 Tajikistan, Uzbekistan
Pashto 18.5 Afghanistan, Pakistan
Kurdish 11.5 IIraq,Turkey, Iran, Syria, Armenia
Balochi 7 Pakistan
Gilaki 3.2 Iran
Mazanderani 3.3 Iran
Laki 1 Iran
Talysh 1.2 Azerbaijan, Iran
Dimli 1.5 – 2.5 Turkey
Bakhtiari 1 Iran
Luri Northern & Southern 2.4 Iran
Hazaragi 2.2 Afghanistan
Osetin 0.5 or more Republic of Georgia

 

Status

Five Iranian languages have official status in their respective countries.

 

Dialects

Modern Iranian languages may have descended from Middle Iranian languages that were spoken between 300 BC and 950 AD. They are usually divided into four groups that reflect the differences in their sound systems, grammar, vocabulary, and sometimes writing.

 

Structure

Sound system

The sound systems of Indo-Iranian languages share many common features.

 

Vowels

Most Iranian languages typically have 6-7 vowels which may be short or long. Vowel length makes a difference in word meaning. The vowel system typical of Persian (Farsi) is typical of Iranian languages.

Close
i
u
Close-mid
e
o
Near-open
æ
Open
a

 

Consonants

Most Indo-Iranian languages have 23-24 consonants. The consonant system of Persian (Farsi) is fairly typical of Indo-Iranian languages.

..
Stops voiceless
p
t
k
q
?
voiced
b
d
g
Fricatives voiceless
f
s
ʃ
x
h
voiced
v
z
ʒ
Affricate voiceless
voiced
Nasal
m
……
n.
…..
.
Lateral
……
…..s
l
…..
…..
Trill
……
…..
r
….
….
….
Glide
j

Some Iranian languages, such as Pashto and Balochi, have retroflex consonants typical of languages of the Indian sub-continent, such as Urdu and Hindi.

 

Stress

Stress typically falls on the last syllable of the root.

 

Grammar

All Iranian languages are inflected, with some elements of agglutination. They add suffixes to roots to express grammatical categories and to form words.

 

Nouns

 

Verbs

 

Word order

The normal word order in Iranian languages is Subject-Object-Verb. Modifiers follow the nouns they modify.

 

Vocabulary

Iranian languages share most of their basic vocabulary. At the same time, their lexicons reflect the different linguistic and cultural influences of the areas in which they are spoken. Kurdish, for instance, has incorporated a large number of Arabic words; Tajik has borrowed from Russian and Uzbek; Dari has many Pashto loanwords; and Balochi includes many Urdu words in its vocabulary. Most recently, English has become a source of borrowing in all Iranian languages, mainly in the areas of science, technology, politics, and the military.

Below are the numerals 1-10 in several Iranian languages, given in romanization.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Persian
yek
do
se
chahār
panj
shesh
haft
hasht
noh
dah
Pashto
yaw
dwa
dre
chalor
pinja
shpazh
oova
ata
nah
das
Balochi
yek
do
seh
car
penj
shesh
help
hesht
nw
deh
Kurdish
yak
cwár
pénj
shash
hawt
hasht
da

 

Writing

Of all the Old Iranian languages only Avestan and Old Persian have left written records dating from the 6th century BC. Avestan is mainly attested through the Avesta, a collection of sacred Zoroastrian texts. Old Persian is attested through numerous inscriptions in the cuneiform script. Today, nearly all the Modern Iranian languages are written in the Perso-Arabic script, an adaptation of the Arabic alphabet. Some of them are written:

Language
Writing system
Western Persian (Farsi) Modified Perso-Arabic
Eastern Persian (Dari) Modified Perso-Arabic
Tajik Modified Perso-Arabic, Latin, Cyrillic
Kurdish ModifiedPerso-Arabic, Latin, Cyrillic
Pashto Modified Perso-Arabic
Balochi Arabic, modified Perso-Arabic

 

Difficulty

Language Difficulty
How difficult is it to learn Indo-Iranian languages?
Indo Iranian languages are considered to be Category II languages in terms of difficulty for native speakers of English.