Indo-Iranian languages

The Indo-Iranian languages (also Indo-Iranic languages^[1][2] or Aryan languages^[3]) constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of the Indo-European language family. They include over 300 languages, spoken by around 1.5 billion speakers, predominantly in South Asia and Greater Iran.

Indo-Iranian
Indo-Iranic (Aryan)
Geographic distribution	South, Central, Western Asia and the Caucasus
Linguistic classification	Indo-European Indo-Iranian
Proto-language	Proto-Indo-Iranian
Subdivisions	Indo-Aryan Iranian Nuristani
ISO 639-5	iir
Glottolog	indo1320
Distribution of the Indo-Iranian languages

Chart classifying Indo-Iranian languages within the Indo-European language family

Former distribution of hypothetical and attested Indo-Iranian dialects:^{[citation needed]}

  Iranian

  Indo-Aryan

  Unattested/Para-Indo-Iranian

  Nuristani

*Possibly Avestan

The common ancestor of all of the languages in this family is called Proto-Indo-Iranian—also known as Common Aryan—which was spoken in approximately the late 3rd millennium BC. The three branches of the modern Indo-Iranian languages are Indo-Aryan, Iranian, and Nuristani. A fourth independent branch, Dardic, was previously posited, but recent scholarship in general places Dardic languages as archaic members of the Indo-Aryan branch.^[4]

The areas with Indo-Iranian languages stretch from Europe (Romani) and the Caucasus (Ossetian, Tat and Talysh), down to Mesopotamia (Kurdish languages, Zaza–Gorani and Kurmanji Dialect continuum^[5]) and Persia (Persian), eastward to Xinjiang (Sarikoli) and Assam (Assamese), and south to Sri Lanka (Sinhala) and the Maldives (Maldivian), with branches stretching as far out as Oceania and the Caribbean for Fiji Hindi and Caribbean Hindustani respectively. Furthermore, there are large diaspora communities of Indo-Iranian speakers in northwestern Europe (the United Kingdom), North America (United States, Canada), Australia, South Africa, and the Persian Gulf Region (United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia).

The number of distinct languages listed in Ethnologue are 312,^[6] while those recognised in Glottolog are 320.^[7]

References

1. D. D. Mahulkar (1990). Pre-Pāṇinian Linguistic Studies. Northern Book Centre. ISBN 978-81-85119-88-5.
2. Annarita Puglielli; Mara Frascarelli (2011). Linguistic Analysis: From Data to Theory. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-022250-0.
3. Jadranka Gvozdanović (1999). Numeral Types and Changes Worldwide. Walter de Gruyter. p. 221. ISBN 978-3-11-016113-7.: "The usage of 'Aryan languages' is not to be equated with Indo-Aryan languages, rather Indo-Iranic languages of which Indo-Aryan is a subgrouping."
4. Bashir, Elena (2007). Jain, Danesh; Cardona, George (eds.). The Indo-Aryan languages. p. 905. ISBN 978-0415772945. 'Dardic' is a geographic cover term for those Northwest Indo-Aryan languages which [..] developed new characteristics different from the IA languages of the Indo-Gangetic plain. Although the Dardic and Nuristani (previously 'Kafiri') languages were formerly grouped together, Morgenstierne (1965) has established that the Dardic languages are Indo-Aryan, and that the Nuristani languages constitute a separate subgroup of Indo-Iranian.
5. Chatoev, Vladimir; Kʻosyan, Aram (1999). Nationalities of Armenia. YEGEA Publishing House. p. 61. ISBN 978-99930-808-0-0.
6. "Indo-Iranian". Ethnologue. 2023.
7. "Glottolog 4.7 - Indo-Iranian". Glottolog. Retrieved 1 February 2023.

Further reading

• "Contact and change in the diversification of the Indo-Iranic languages" (PDF). Dr. Russell Gray.
• Baly, Joseph. Eur-Aryan roots: With their English derivatives and the corresponding words in the cognate languages compared and systematically arranged. Vol. 1. K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Company, Limited, 1897.
• Chakrabarti, Byomkes (1994). A comparative study of Santali and Bengali. Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co. ISBN 81-7074-128-9
• Kümmel, Martin Joachim. "The morphology of Indo-Iranian". In: Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Volume 3. Edited by Jared Klein, Brian Joseph and Matthias Fritz. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2018. pp. 1888-1924. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110542431-032
• Kümmel, Martin Joachim. “Indo-Iranian”. In: The Indo-European Language Family: A Phylogenetic Perspective. Edited by Thomas Olander. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. pp. 246–68. doi:10.1017/9781108758666.014.
• Lubotsky, Alexander. "The phonology of Proto-Indo-Iranian". In: Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Volume 3. Edited by Jared Klein, Brian Joseph and Matthias Fritz. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2018. pp. 1875-1888. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110542431-031
• Pinault, Georges-Jean. "Contacts religieux et culturels des Indo-Iraniens avec la civilisation de l'Oxus". In: Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 149^e année, N. 1, 2005. pp. 213–257. DOI:https://doi.org/10.3406/crai.2005.22848 ; www.persee.fr/doc/crai_0065-0536_2005_num_149_1_22848
• Pinault, Georges-Jean. "La langue des Scythes et le nom des Arimaspes". In: Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 152e année, N. 1, 2008. pp. 105–138. DOI:https://doi.org/10.3406/crai.2008.92104 ; www.persee.fr/doc/crai_0065-0536_2008_num_152_1_92104

• Nicholas Sims-Williams, ed. (2002). Indo-Iranian Languages and Peoples. Oxford University Press.

External links

 

Look up Indo-Iranian Swadesh lists in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Indo-Iranian languages.

• Swadesh lists of Indo-Iranian basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)