Dead Languages of Ancient Persia: Scythian Languages

  April 11, 2021   Read time 1 min
Dead Languages of Ancient Persia: Scythian Languages
Modern Persian has not emerged from nowhere rather it is preceded by a long history of evolution. Many languages have become archaic before the prevalence the current Persian spoken by Modern Iranians and also in other parts of the world specifically in the neighboring countries. Scythian is also one of these archaic languages.

Period: mid-1st mil. BC.

Region: areas north of the Black Sea, Kazakhstan, Xinjiang (PRC)

Writing system: None.

Sources (secondary): Greek, Old Persian, Aramaic, Assyrian loanwords.

Grammars: Abaev, V. I., Skifo-sarmatskiye narečiya, in Rastorgueva, V. S. (ed.), Osnovi Iranskogo Yazikaznania I, Moscow, 1979, pp. 272-364.

Word list: See Abaev 1979: 276-311

Speakers and area. Scythian or Saka was the language or rather the cluster of interrelated dialects of the Scythian tribes that inhabited the vast areas of South Russia and modern Kazakhstan in the 1st millennium B.C.

Script. Like Median, these languages have not been preserved in any written form. The only evidence for the existence of these languages, besides the existence of its descendants (like Ossetic), are a number of loanwords, toponyms, and personal names (around 200) that have been preserved in various textual sources from that time, especially in the writings of Greek authors. These words serve as a basis for the phonetic reconstruction of this dialect group.

Grammar. No means are available for the reconstruction of the grammar of these languages.

Some Middle and New Iranian languages, like Khotan Saka and Tumšukese (Middle Iranian period) and Ossetic (New Iranian period), are considered to be descendants of this language.


  Comments
Write your comment