The Old Persian language is one of the two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan). Old Persian appears primarily in the inscriptions, clay tablets, and seals of the Achaemenid era (c. 600 BCE to 300 BCE). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now present-day Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt^[1] the most important attestation by far being the contents of the Behistun Inscription (dated to 525 BCE). Recent research into the vast Persepolis Fortification Archive at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago have unearthed Old Persian tablets (2007).^[2] This new text shows that the Old Persian language was a written language in use for practical recording and not only for royal display.^[2]

Origin and overview[link]

As a written language, Old Persian is attested in royal Achaemenid inscriptions. It is an Iranian language and as such a member of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscriptions.^[3] Old Persian is one of the oldest Indo-European languages which is attested in original texts.^[4]

The oldest date of use of Old Persian as a spoken language is not precisely known. According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians in south-western Iran (where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe called Parsuwash who arrived in the Iranian Plateau early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present day Fārs province and their language, i.e. Old Persian, became the official language of the Achaemenid kings.^[4] Assyrian records, which in fact provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranians (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE, Parsuwash (along with Matai of Median) are first mentioned in the area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III.^[5] The exact identity of the Parsuwash is yet to be determined but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian pārsa itself coming directly from the older word *pārćwa.^[5] Also as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language, Median, according to P. O. Skjærvø it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before formation of the Achaemenid Empire and during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE.^[4]

Classification[link]

Old Persian belongs to the Iranian language family which is a branch of the Indo-Iranian language family, and is sibling to another branch called Indic languages. Indo-Iranian languages is itself within the large family of Indo-European languages. The common ancestors of Indo-Iranians came from Central Asia sometime in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. The extinct and unattested Median language is another Old Iranian language related to Old Persian (e.g. both are classified as Western Iranian languages and many Median names appeared in Old Persian texts)^[6] The group of Old Iranian languages was presumably a large group; however our knowledge of it is restricted mainly to Old Persian, Avestan and Median. The former are the only languages in that group which have left written original texts while Median is known mostly from loanwords in Old Persian.^[7]

Language evolution[link]

By the 4th century, the late Achaemenid period, the inscriptions of Artaxerxes II and Artaxerxes III differ enough from the language of Darius' inscriptions to be called a "pre-Middle Persian," or "post-Old Persian."^[8] Old Persian subsequently evolved into Middle Persian, which is in turn the genetic ancestor of New Persian. Professor Gilbert Lazard, a famous Iranologist and the author of the book Persian Grammar states:^[9]

The language known as New Persian, which usually is called at this period (early Islamic times) by the name of Parsi-Dari, can be classified linguistically as a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of Sassanian Iran, itself a continuation of Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenids. Unlike the other languages and dialects, ancient and modern, of the Iranian group such as Avestan, Parthian, Soghdian, Kurdish, Pashto, etc., Old, Middle and New Persian represent one and the same language at three states of its history. It had its origin in Fars and is differentiated by dialectical features, still easily recognizable from the dialect prevailing in north-western and eastern Iran.

Middle Persian, also sometimes called Pahlavi is a direct continuation of old Persian, and was used as the written official language of the country.^[10][11] Comparison of the evolution at each stage of the language shows great simplification in grammar and syntax. However, New Persian is a direct descendent of Middle and Old Persian.^[12]

Substrates[link]

Old Persian "presumably"^[8] has a Median language substrate. The Median element is readily identifiable because it did not share in the developments that were peculiar to Old Persian. Median forms "are found only in personal or geographical names [...] and some are typically from religious vocabulary and so could in principle also be influenced by Avestan." "Sometimes, both Median and Old Persian forms are found, which gave Old Persian a somewhat confusing and inconsistent look: 'horse,' for instance, is [attested in Old Persian as] both asa (OPers.) and aspa (Med.)."^[8]

Script[link]

Old Persian texts were written from left to right in the syllabic Old Persian cuneiform script and had 36 phonetic characters and 8 logograms. The usage of such characters are not obligatory.^[13] The script was surprisingly^[14] not a result of evolution of the script used in the nearby civilisation of Mesopotamia.^[15] Despite the fact that Old Persian was written in cuneiform script, the script was not a direct continuation of Mesopotamian tradition and in fact, according to Schmitt, was a "deliberate creation of the sixth century BCE".^[15]

The origin of the Old Persian cuneiform script and the identification of the date and process of introduction is a matter of discussion among Iranian scholars without general agreement being reached. The factors making the decision difficult are, among others, the difficult passage DB (IV lines 88–92) from Darius the Great who speaks of a new “form of writing” being made by himself which is said to be “in Aryan”, and analysis of certain Old Persian inscriptions that are "supposed or claimed" to predate Darius the Great. Although it is true that the oldest attested OP inscriptions are from Behistun monument from Darius, the creation of this "new type of writing" is seemingly, according to Schmitt, "to have begun already under Cyrus the Great".^[3]

The script shows a few changes in the shape of characters during the period it was used. This can be seen as a standardization of the heights of wedges which in the beginning (i.e. in DB) took only half the height of a line.^[16]

Phonology[link]

The following phonemes are expressed in the Old Persian script:

Vowels

• Long: /aː/ /iː/ /uː/
• Short: /a/ /i/ /u/

Consonants

Grammar[link]

Nouns[link]

Old Persian stems:

• a-stems (-a, -am, -ā)
• i-stems (-iš, iy)
• u- (and au-) stems (-uš, -uv)
• consonantal stems (n, r, h)

Adjectives are declinable in similar way.

Verbs[link]

Voices
Active, Middle (them. pres. -aiy-, -ataiy-), Passive (-ya-).

Mostly the forms of first and third persons are attested. The only preserved Dual form is ajīvatam 'both lived'.

Lexicon[link]

See also[link]

Ancient Near East portal

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

Further reading[link]

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Iranian language family tree

The Iranian languages (also called Iranic languages) form a subfamily of the Indo-Iranian languages which in turn are a subgroup of the Indo-European language family. The speakers of Iranian languages are known as Iranian peoples.

The Iranian languages are considered in three stages of Old (until 400 BCE), Middle (400 BCE – 900 CE), and New (since 900 CE). From the Old Iranian languages the better understood and recorded ones are Old Persian (a language of Achaemenid Iran) and Avestan (the language of Zarathushtra). Middle Iranian languages included Middle Persian (a language of Sassanid Iran) and Parthian (a language of Arsacid Iran). There are many Iranian languages, the largest amongst them are Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, and Balochi.

Today, there are an estimated 150–200 million native speakers of Iranian languages.^[1] The Ethnologue lists 87 Iranian languages.^[2] Persian has about 65 million native speakers, Pashto about 50 million, Kurdish about 18 million, Balochi about 7 million, and Lurish about 2.3 million.

The term[link]

The term Iranian language is applied to any language which is descended from the Proto-Iranian parent language.^[3] While unattested, Proto-Iranian was first spoken by presumably people/tribes in Central Asia sometime in the late 3rd to early 2nd millennium BCE. The area in which Iranian languages, i.e. descendants of Proto-Iranian, have been spoken stretches from western China to western Europe. Proto-Iranian was related to, also unattested, Proto-Indic. Proto-Indic gave birth to the various northern Indian languages over time.^[3] Taken together all Iranian, Indo-Aryan, and Nuristani^[4] languages form the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family.^[3]

The term Iranian was introduced in 1836 by Christian Lassen,^[5] followed by Wilhelm Geiger and his Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie (1895) whereas Friedrich von Spiegel in 1859 preferred the term Eranian.^[6] Robert Needham Cust, however, used the term Irano-Aryan as early as 1878.^[7] Orientalists such as George Abraham Grierson and Max Müller also differentiated between Irano-Aryan and Indo-Aryan. Grierson also uses the term Eranian.^[8] Some recent scholarship - primarily in German - has revived of the term Irano-Aryan in analogy to Indo-Aryan.^[9][10] The linguist Ahmad Hasan Dani uses the term and asserts Iranian is short for Irano-Aryan.^[11] The linguist Gilbert Lazard, specialist for Persian, has been using the term consequently in his publications,^[12] whereas Mohammad Djafar^[13] suggests to establish Aryan for the branch.^[14] Still, Iranian remains the standard term used by the vast majority of English-language linguists.

Classification[link]

Indo-European language family tree.

Soon after postulating an Indo-European family in the 19th century, the Iranian languages (Avestan, Old Persian, Pahlavi) together with Indic (Sanskrit, Prakrit) were recognized by works of the linguist Rasmus Rask in 1826 as the eastern branch of Indo-European languages.^[15] The Armenian language was also considered as an Iranian language but was very soon (in 1875 effectively) established as a separate language in the Indo-European group of languages.^[15]

Iranian languages are divided into Eastern and Western subfamilies, totalling about 84 languages (SIL estimate). Of the most widely-spoken Iranian languages, Kurdish, Persian, and Balochi are all Western Iranian languages, while Pashto is an Eastern Iranian language.

Proto-Iranian and Old Iranian languages[link]

Historical distribution in 100 BC: shown is Sarmatia, Scythia, Bactria and the Parthian Empire

Together with the other Indo-Iranian languages, the Iranian languages are descended from a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-Iranian. The Indo-Iranian languages are thought to have originated in Central Asia. The Andronovo culture is the suggested candidate for the common Indo-Iranian culture ca. 2000 BC.

It was situated precisely in the western part of Central Asia that borders present-day Russia (and present-day Kazakhstan). It was in relative proximity to the other satem ethno-linguistic groups of the Indo-European family, like Thracian, Balto-Slavic and others, and to common Indo-European's original homeland (more precisely, the steppes of southern Russia to the north of the Caucasus), according to the reconstructed linguistic relationships of common Indo-European.

Proto-Iranian thus dates to some time after Proto-Indo-Iranian break-up, or the early second millennium BCE, as the Old Iranian languages began to break off and evolve separately as the various Iranian tribes migrated and settled in vast areas of southeastern Europe, the Iranian plateau, and Central Asia.

Avestan, mainly attested through the Avesta, a collection of sacred texts connected to the Zoroastrian religion, is considered to belong to a central Iranian group,^[16] where only peripheral groups such as southwestern (represented by Old Persian) and northeastern Sogdian and Sakan language (Scythian) had developed. Among the less known Old Iranian languages is Median, spoken in western and central Iran, which may have had an “official” status during the Median era (ca. 700–559 BC). Apart from place and personal names, some words reported in Herodotus' Histories and some preserved forms in Achaemenid inscriptions, there are numerous non-Persian words in the Old Persian texts that are commonly considered Median. Some of the modern Western and Central Iranian dialects are also likely to be descended from Median.^[17]

Other such languages are Carduchi (the predecessor to Kurdish) and Parthian (which evolved into the language of the later empire).^[18]

Middle Iranian languages[link]

What is known in Iranian linguistic history as the "Middle Iranian" era is thought to begin around the 4th century BCE lasting through the 9th century. Linguistically the Middle Iranian languages can be classified into two main families, Western and Eastern.

The Western family includes Parthian (Arsacid Pahlavi) and Middle Persian, while Bactrian, Sogdian, Khwarezmian, Saka, and Old Ossetic (Scytho-Sarmatian) fall under the Eastern category. The two languages of the Western group were linguistically very close to each other, but quite distinct from their eastern counterparts. On the other hand, the Eastern group retained some similarity to Avestan. They were inscribed in various Aramaic-derived alphabets which had ultimately evolved from the Achaemenid Imperial Aramaic script, though Bactrian was written using an adapted Greek script.

Middle Persian (Pahlavi) was the official language under the Sasanian dynasty in Iran. It was in use from the 3rd century CE until the beginning of the 10th century. The script used for Middle Persian in this era underwent significant maturity. Middle Persian, Parthian and Sogdian were also used as literary languages by the Manichaeans, whose texts also survive in various non-Iranian languages, from Latin to Chinese. Manichaean texts were written in a script closely akin to the Syriac script.^[19]

New Iranian languages[link]

Dark green: countries where Iranian languages are official.
Teal: regional co-official/de facto status.

Following the Islamic Conquest of Persia (Iran), there were important changes in the role of the different dialects within the Persian Empire. The old prestige form of Middle Iranian, also known as Pahlavi, was replaced by a new standard dialect called Dari as the official language of the court. The name Dari comes from the word darbâr (دربار), which refers to the royal court, where many of the poets, protagonists, and patrons of the literature flourished. The Saffarid dynasty in particular was the first in a line of many dynasties to officially adopt the new language in 875 CE. Dari may have been heavily influenced by regional dialects of eastern Iran, whereas the earlier Pahlavi standard was based more on western dialects. This new prestige dialect became the basis of Standard New Persian. Medieval Iranian scholars such as Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa (8th century) and Ibn al-Nadim (10th century) associated the term "Dari" with the eastern province of Khorasan, while they used the term "Pahlavi" to describe the dialects of the northwestern areas between Isfahan and Azerbaijan, and "Pârsi" ("Persian" proper) to describe the Dialects of Fars. They also noted that the unofficial language of the royalty itself was yet another dialect, "Khuzi", associated with the western province of Khuzestan.

Geographic distribution of modern Iranian languages.

The Islamic conquest also brought with it the adoption of Arabic script for writing Persian, Pashto and Balochi. All three were adapted to the writing by the addition of a few letters. This development probably occurred some time during the second half of the 8th century, when the old middle Persian script began dwindling in usage. The Arabic script remains in use in contemporary modern Persian. Tajik script was first Latinised in the 1920s under the then Soviet nationality policy. The script was however subsequently Cyrillicized in the 1930s by the Soviet government.

The geographical areas in which Iranian languages were spoken was pushed back in several areas by newly neighbouring languages. Arabic spread into some parts of Western Iran (Khuzestan), and Turkic languages spread through much of Central Asia, displacing various Iranian languages such as Sogdian and Bactrian in parts of what is today Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Sogdian barely survives in a small area of the Zarafshan valley east of Samarkand, and Saka (as Sariqoli) in parts of southern Xinjiang as well as Ossetic in the Caucasus. Various small Iranian languages in the Pamirs survive that are derived from Eastern Iranian.

Comparison table[link]

See also[link]

• Indo-Iranian languages
• List of Iranian languages
• Iranian peoples

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Bailey, H. W. (1979). Dictionary of Khotan Saka. Cambridge University Press. 1979. 1st Paperback edition 2010. ISBN 978-0-521-14250-2.
• Schmitt, Rüdiger (ed.) (1989) (in German). Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: Reichert. ISBN 3-88226-413-6. 
• Sims-Williams, Nicholas (1996). "Iranian languages". Encyclopedia Iranica. 7. Costa Mesa: Mazda. pp. 238–245. 
• Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.) (1996). "Iran". Encyclopedia Iranica. 7. Costa Mesa: Mazda. http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v13f2/v13f2024.html. 
• Frye, Richard N. (1996). "Peoples of Iran". Encyclopedia Iranica. 7. Costa Mesa: Mazda. http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v13f3/v13f3004a.html. 
• Windfuhr, Gernot L. (1995). "Cases in Iranian languages and dialects". Encyclopedia Iranica. 5. Costa Mesa: Mazda. pp. 25–37. http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v5f1/v5f1a008.html. 
• Lazard, Gilbert (1996). "Dari". Encyclopedia Iranica. 7. Costa Mesa: Mazda. http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v7f1/v7f131.html. 
• Henning, Walter B. (1954). "The Ancient language of Azarbaijan". Transactions of the Philological Society 53 (1): 157. DOI:10.1111/j.1467-968X.1954.tb00282.x. http://www.azargoshnasp.net/languages/Azari/henningazari/henningazari.htm. 
• Rezakhani, Khodadad (2001). "The Iranian Language Family". http://www.iranologie.com/history/ilf.html. 
• Skjærvø, Prods Oktor (2006). "Iran, vi. Iranian languages and scripts". Encyclopaedia Iranica. 13. 
• Skjærvø, Prods Oktor (2006). "Iran, vi. Iranian languages and scripts". Encyclopaedia Iranica. 13. http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/unicode/v13f4/v13f4001a.html 
• Cheung, Johnny (2007). Etymological Dictionary of the Iranian Verb. Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series, 2. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-15496-4. http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=24857. 
• Mallory, J. P.; Adams, Douglas Q. (2006). The Oxford introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European world. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-929668-2 

External links[link]

• Society for Iranian Linguistics
• Iranian EFL Journal
• Audio and video recordings for over 50 languages spoken in Iran
• Iranian language tree at Ethnologue
• Iranian language tree = Russian, identical with above classification.