Scythian languages

Classification

Ossetian is an Eastern Iranic language. The vast majority of Scythological scholars agree in considering the Scythian languages a part of the Eastern Iranic languages too. This relies principally on the fact that the Greek inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea Coast contain several hundreds of Sarmatian names showing a close affinity to the Ossetian language.

Some scholars detect a division of Scythian into two dialects: a western, more conservative dialect, and an eastern, more innovative one. E.g. Harmatta 1970. The Scythian languages may have formed a dialect continuum:

• Alanic languages or Scytho-Sarmatian in the west: were spoken by people originally of Iranic stock from the 8th and 7th century BC onwards in the area of Ukraine, Southern Russia and Kazakhstan.
  • Modern Ossetian survives as a continuation of the language family possibly represented by Scytho-Sarmatian inscriptions, although the Scytho-Sarmatian language family "does not simply represent the same [Ossetian] language" at an earlier date.

• Saka languages or Scytho-Khotanese in the east: spoken in the first century in the Kingdom of Khotan (located in present-day Xinjiang, China), and including the Khotanese of Khotan and Tumshuqese of Tumshuq.
  • Modern Wakhi likely descends from this branch.

It is highly probable that already in the Old Iranic period, there were some eastern Scythian dialects which gave rise to the ancestor(s) of the Sogdian and Yaghnobi languages, although data required to test this hypothesis is presently lacking. More recent scholarship suggests that this is due to the Scythian languages and the Sogdo-Bactrian languages descending from a larger shared genetic phylum coined as Northeastern Iranian.

The Scythian languages shared some features with other Eastern Iranic languages, such as the use of the suffix xsc to denote the plural form, which is also present in Sogdian, Chorasmian, Ossetian, and Yaghnobi. This again hints towards the idea that these languages share more recent common ancestry through the existence of a possible Northeastern Iranian dialect cluster.

History

Early Eastern Iranic peoples originated in the Yaz culture (ca. 1500–1100 BC) in Central Asia. The Scythians migrated from Central Asia toward Eastern Europe in the 8th and 7th century BC, occupying today's Southern Russia and Ukraine and the Carpathian Basin and parts of Moldova and Dobruja. They disappeared from history after the Hunnish invasion of Europe in the 5th century AD, and Turkic (Avar, Batsange, etc.) and Slavic peoples probably assimilated most people speaking Scythian. However, in the Caucasus, the Ossetian language belonging to the Scythian linguistic continuum remains in use , while in Central Asia, the Wakhi language is spoken by around 58,000 people across Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and China.

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

References

1. {{harvnb. Lubotsky. 2002
2. Compare L. Zgusta, ''Die griechischen Personennamen griechischer Städte der nördlichen Schwarzmeerküste'' [The Greek personal names of the Greek cities of the northern Black Sea coast], 1955.
3. Witzel, Michael. (2001). "Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts". Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies.
4. Schmitt, Rüdiger (ed.), Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, Reichert, 1989.{{page needed. (October 2010)
5. (1997). "[[Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture]]". Dearborn.