Indo-Iranian languages explained

Indo-Iranian
Also Known As:Indo-Iranic (Aryan)
Region:South, Central, West Asia and the Caucasus
Familycolor:Indo-European
Protoname:Proto-Indo-Iranian
Child1:Indo-Aryan
Child2:Iranian
Child3:Nuristani
Child4:Badeshi (unclassified)
Iso5:iir
Glotto:indo1320
Glottorefname:Indo-Iranian
Map:Lenguas indoiranias.PNG
Mapcaption:Distribution of the Indo-Iranian languages
Mapsize:300px

The Indo-Iranian languages (also known as Indo-Iranic languages[1] [2] or collectively the 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, West Asia and parts of Central Asia.

The areas with Indo-Iranian languages stretch from Europe (Romani) and the Caucasus (Ossetian, Tat and Talysh), down to Mesopotamia and eastern Anatolia (Kurdish languages, Gorani, Kurmanji Dialect continuum,[4] Zaza[5] [6]), the Levant (Domari) and Iran (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,[7] while those recognised in Glottolog are 320.[8] The Indo-Iranian language with the largest number of native speakers is the Hindustani language (Hindi-Urdu).[9]

Etymology

The term Indo-Iranian languages refers to the spectrum of Indo-European languages spoken in the Southern Asian region of Eurasia, spanning from the Indian subcontinent (where the Indic branch is spoken, also called Indo-Aryan) up to the Iranian Plateau (where the Iranic branch is spoken).

This branch is also known as Aryan languages, referring to the languages spoken by Aryan peoples, where the term Aryan is the ethnocultural self-designation of ancient Indo-Iranians. But in modern-day, Western scholars avoid the term Aryan since World War II, owing to the perceived negative connotation associated with Aryanism.

Origin

Historically, the Indo-Iranian speakers, both Iranians and Indo-Aryans, originally referred to themselves as the Aryans. The Proto-Indo-Iranian-speakers are generally associated with the Sintashta culture, which is thought to represent an eastward migration of peoples from the Corded Ware culture, which, in turn, is believed to represent the westward migration of Yamnaya-related people from the Pontic–Caspian steppe zone into the territory of late Neolithic European cultures.[10] [11] However, the exact genetic relationship between the Yamnaya culture, Corded Ware culture and Sinthasta culture remains unclear.[12] [13]

The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of the technology, which spread throughout the Old World and played an important role in ancient warfare.[14] [15] [16] There is almost a general consensus among scholars that the Andronovo culture, the successor of Sintasha culture, was an Indo-Iranian culture. Currently, only two sub-cultures are considered as part of Andronovo culture: Alakul and Fëdorovo cultures.[17] The Andronovo culture is considered as an "Indo-Iranic dialect continuum", with a later split between Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages.[18] However, according to Hiebert, an expansion of the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) into Iran and the margin of the Indus Valley is "the best candidate for an archaeological correlate of the introduction of Indo-Iranian speakers to Iran and South Asia", despite the absence of the characteristic timber graves of the steppe in the Near East, or south of the region between Kopet Dag and Pamir-Karakorum.[19] J. P. Mallory acknowledges the difficulties of making a case for expansions from Andronovo to northern India, and that attempts to link the Indo-Aryans to such sites as the Beshkent and Vakhsh cultures "only gets the Indo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of the Medes, Persians or Indo-Aryans". He has developed the Kulturkugel model that has the Indo-Iranians taking over cultural traits of BMAC, but preserving their language and religion while moving into Iran and India.

Sources

Further reading

External links


Notes and References

  1. Book: Mahulkar, D. D. . Pre-Pāṇinian Linguistic Studies . 1990 . Northern Book Centre . 978-81-85119-88-5.
  2. Book: Annarita . Puglielli . Mara . Frascarelli . Linguistic Analysis: From Data to Theory . 2011 . Walter de Gruyter . 978-3-11-022250-0.
  3. Book: Gvozdanović, Jadranka . Numeral Types and Changes Worldwide . 1999 . Walter de Gruyter . 978-3-11-016113-7 . 221 . 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. Book: Chatoev . Vladimir . Nationalities of Armenia . Kʻosyan . Aram . 1999 . YEGEA Publishing House . 978-99930-808-0-0 . 61 . en.
  5. Asatrian . Garnik . 1995 . DIMLĪ . live . . VI . https://web.archive.org/web/20110429180830/https://iranicaonline.org/articles/dimli . 2011-04-29 . 2021-06-11.
  6. Web site: Paul . Ludwig . 1998 . The Pozition of Zazaki the West Iranian Languages . December 4, 2023 . Iran Chamber . Open Publishing.
  7. Web site: Indo-Iranian. Ethnologue. 2023.
  8. Web site: Glottolog 4.7 – Indo-Iranian. 1 February 2023. .
  9. "Hindi" L1: 322 million (2011 Indian census), including perhaps 150 million speakers of other languages that reported their language as "Hindi" on the census. L2: 274 million (2016, source unknown). Urdu L1: 67 million (2011 & 2017 censuses), L2: 102 million (1999 Pakistan, source unknown, and 2001 Indian census): Ethnologue 21. . .
  10. Kristiansen. Kristian. Allentoft. Morten E.. Frei. Karin M.. Iversen. Rune. Johannsen. Niels N.. Kroonen. Guus. Pospieszny. Łukasz. Price. T. Douglas. Rasmussen. Simon. Sjögren. Karl-Göran. Sikora. Martin. 2017. Re-theorising mobility and the formation of culture and language among the Corded Ware Culture in Europe. Antiquity. en. 91. 356. 334–347. 10.15184/aqy.2017.17. 15536709. 0003-598X. free. 1887/70150. free.
  11. Malmström. Helena. Günther. Torsten. Svensson. Emma M.. Juras. Anna. Fraser. Magdalena. Munters. Arielle R.. Pospieszny. Łukasz. Tõrv. Mari. Lindström. Jonathan. Götherström. Anders. Storå. Jan. 2019-10-09. The genomic ancestry of the Scandinavian Battle Axe Culture people and their relation to the broader Corded Ware horizon. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 286. 1912. 20191528. 10.1098/rspb.2019.1528. 6790770. 31594508.
  12. Pamjav H, Feher T, Nemeth E, Padar Z (2012). "Brief communication: new Y-chromosome binary markers improve phylogenetic resolution within haplogroup R1a1". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 149 (4): 611–615. doi:10.1002/ajpa.22167. PMID 23115110. "However, with the discovery of the Z280 and Z93 substitutions within Phase 1 1000 Genomes Project data and subsequent genotyping of these SNPs in ∼200 samples, a schism between European and Asian R1a chromosomes has emerged"
  13. Book: Kristiansen . Kristian . Kroonen . Guus . Willerslev . Eske . The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited: Integrating Archaeology, Genetics, and Linguistics . 11 May 2023 . Cambridge University Press . 978-1-009-26174-6 . 70–71 . en. "How exactly the emergence and expansion of the Corded Ware are linked to the emergence and expansion of the Yamnaya horizon remains unclear. However, the Y chromosome record of both groups indicates that Corded Ware cannot be derived directly from the Yamnaya or late eastern farming groups sampled thus far, and is therefore likely to constitute a parallel development in the forest steppe and temperate forest zones of Eastern Europe. Even in Central Europe, the formation of the earliest regional Corded Ware identities was the result of local and regional social practices that resulted in the typical Corded Ware rite of passage."
  14. Chechushkov . I.V. . Epimakhov . A.V. . 2018 . Eurasian Steppe Chariots and Social Complexity During the Bronze Age . . 31 . 4 . 435–483 . 10.1007/s10963-018-9124-0 . 254743380.
  15. Book: Raulwing, Peter . Horses, Chariots and Indo-Europeans – Foundations and Methods of Chariotry Research from the Viewpoint of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics . 2000 . Archaeolingua Alapítvány, Budapest . 9789638046260.
  16. Holm, Hans J. J. G. (2019): The Earliest Wheel Finds, their Archeology and Indo-European Terminology in Time and Space, and Early Migrations around the Caucasus. Series Minor 43. Budapest: ARCHAEOLINGUA ALAPÍTVÁNY.
  17. Grigoriev, Stanislav, (2021). "Andronovo Problem: Studies of Cultural Genesis in the Eurasian Bronze Age", in Open Archaeology 2021 (7), p.3: "...By Andronovo cultures we may understand only Fyodorovka and Alakul cultures..."
  18. Bjørn . Rasmus G. . January 2022 . Indo-European loanwords and exchange in Bronze Age Central and East Asia: Six new perspectives on prehistoric exchange in the Eastern Steppe Zone . Evolutionary Human Sciences . en . 4 . e23 . 10.1017/ehs.2022.16 . 2513-843X . 10432883 . 37599704.
  19. Francfort, in ; Fussman, in ; Francfort (1989), Fouilles de Shortugai.

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