Talk:Indo-Iranian languages

Aryan Language

A new page with this title has just been created by User:172.203.147.132 . I'm not sure whether its separate existence is valuable. Contributers here may have their own thoughts. Aryan language (small L) already redirects to Indo-European languages. Perhaps that should become a disambiguation page. Paul B 09:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Is there a difference between Dardic and Nuristani?

CiteCop 23:38, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Dardic and Nuristani are different languages, I do not know about Nuristani languages but Dardic languages were firstly considered as distinct branch of indo-iranian family but now because of the new research it is believed that Dardic languages are abberant form of Indo-aryan or indic group, the speciality of Dardic languages is that dardic languages still posess the archaic vocabulary of vedic sanskrit which shows that dardic languages are descended directly from proto-vedic sanskrit thus different in this case from modern indic languages which are descended from the middle prakrit form of sanskrit. Nuristiani languages , however are still considered a distinct branch of indo-iranin though they are also more drifted towards indo-aryan rather than iranian brach.

Grammatical gender in Indo-Iranian languages

The article on Grammatical gender says that most Indo-European languages have grammatical gender, but it has just occurred to me that some Iranian languages do not. Is this a widespread trait in the Indo-Iranian branch? FilipeS 16:24, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

All indo-aryan dialects/languages have two genders masculine and feminine and the verbs,adjectives have separate declensions for singular and plural cases. In ancient times there were three genders in indo-aryan proper which were masculine,feminine and neutral. neutral case has been given up in modern indo-aryan dialects.(Usman Pakistan)

Thanks for replying, but what about Persian?... FilipeS 01:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Persian does not have grammatical gender. According to this article, the Sorani dialect of Kurdish doesn't have grammatical gender, while Kurmanji Kurdish does. –jonsafari 22:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

While both Modern English and Modern Persian do not have grammatical gender, it should be noted that both Old English and Old Persian DID have grammatical gender. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.68.148.157 (talk) 13:20, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Unnecessary Map

I think hilighting that a minority group exists in a country which speaks an Indo-Iranian language is completely unnecessary. Since that would cover nearly every country in the world. But someone just wanted to highlight United States? I suggest someone just stick with "official language". 66.171.76.138 21:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Merge

Sorry the merger is for the templates only. Enlil Ninlil 05:43, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Grouping Iranian and Indic together is based on solid grounds.

Grouping Iranian and Indic together is based on solid grounds. The affiliation between Iranian and Indic is not a solid one. It is as strong as each are with Slavic and Baltic. (All are Satem languages, and honestly Baltic shows strong resemblance with Sanskrit). The only fact which led the linguist to construct the Indo-Iranian (hypo)thesis was the fact that vestan and Sanskrit were similar, but that was not surprising because we did not have as ancient languages in either Baltic or Slavic. Moreover It is funny to speak of Indo-Aryan for Indic, when one avoids the usage of Aryan (proper) for Iranian --Babakexorramdin (talk) 14:04, 11 February 2008 (UTC)--Babakexorramdin (talk) 22:31, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

While the affiliation between Iranian and Indic is not 100% rock solid, it's not the duty of Wikipedia to conduct original research. It's the duty of WP to represent reliable sources, and there's an abundance of reliable sources indicating a stronger affiliation between Iranian and Indic, than between either of these and other IE families. Having said that, if you have reliable sources that shed light on the looseness of the affiliation between Iranian and Indic, then feel free to add such content to this article, always citing your reliable sources. –jonsafari (talk) 04:32, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

The common origin of Avestan and Sanskrit is undeniable. Post-Anquetil linguists consistently used and continue to use both Sanskrit and later Persian dialects to decipher Avestan texts (the few that exist). 76.181.237.245 (talk) 13:25, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Beckwith, though admittedly not a linguist, brings up the point in Empires of the Silk Road (2009) that Avestan seems so close to Sanskrit that one could classify Avestan as an Indo-Aryan language. He mentions that this was the opinion of several scholars in the early days of Indo-Aryan philology. Avestan doesn't appear to be the direct ancestor of any other attested Iranian language, so I fail to see why it is classified as Iranian. I would guess (and maybe this is fact) that comparisons between Sanskrit and Old Persian form the basis for Indo-Iranian. Bear with me, I am not a linguist either, but I was hoping the discussion section here could inform me whether or not the seemingly arbitrary classification of Avestan questions the 'solidity' of Indo-Iranian as a grouping. Do you see the problem here? Imagine if we had ancient texts of an extinct, hypothetical language that was for a fact (though we don't know this) descended from proto-Baltic. However, it is so ancient that its classification is not obvious, and we arbitrarily classify it as a Slavic language. We then note the closeness of it to proto-Baltic and, by circular reasoning, point to it as evidence for Balto-Slavic as a monophyletic group.

That's an old idea, dating back to Oswald Spengler in the early 20th century. Nonetheless, Avestan is clearly Iranian: in addition to lacking Indic innovations, it shares innovations with the Iranian languages. Compare in particular Old Persian, a West Iranian language that is similarly archaic as the East Iranian language Avestan. Iranian and Indic really are very, very close – like Baltic and Slavic! David Marjanović (talk) 18:44, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

The term "Iranian"

Hello, in my opinion is the term "Iranian" absolutely false, it goes to Middle Iranian "Êran" and was in Old Iranian "ârîânam", so the pure and right word is "Arian" in English transcribed.

We must to call this language-group "Indo-Arianian", and the iranic language group to "Arianian languages". --Meyman (talk) 19:22, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Hey Meymann, updated the lemma. However, the termin Indo-Iranian is the one used in the field of linguistics today. No need to change that. Lazard employed the term irano-aryan in analogy to indo-aryan. The term is fine but still needs to catch on. To move back and call the indo-aryan family plain aryan doesn't solve any of the issues associated with the renaming persia to iran (which is what ultimately caused the problems today). linguist distinguished persian as a language of persia from iranian languages as in language families. -- Chartinael (talk) 21:13, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

The problem was first started when Europeans called "Iranshahr" Persia. You know, I hate Europeans, they think they are the center of universe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.183.124.223 (talk) 19:44, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

It's been two years and this racist comment is still here. Why? If someone had said something like "I hate Asians" it would have been removed pretty quickly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.166.150.53 (talk) 09:18, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Unclear section

What does this section refer to?

The oldest attested Indo-Iranian languages are Vedic Sanskrit (ancient Indian), Avestan and Old Persian (two ancient Iranian 
languages). But there are written instances of a fourth language in Northern Mesopotamia which is considered to be Indo-Aryan. 
They are attested in documents from the ancient empire of Mitanni and the Hittites of Anatolia.

Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:23, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, we still don't know exactly what it means ... We are certain Mitanni has Indo-Aryan vocabulary attested. As there are insufficient sources it stays at that until new evidence arises. We are certain that the vocabulary is indo-aryan and not irano-aryan because of the horse-vocabulary. So, yes possibly is superstratum. Chartinael (talk) 19:44, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I mostly figured that it wasn't clear enough. It would probably need clarifying. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:14, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Map of spread of Indo-Iranian languages in the region

Could someone please make a map of Indo-Iranian language spread in the region? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anooshahpour (talk • contribs) 20:04, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Pashto is North-Eastern?

http://www.iranica.com/articles/eastern-iranian-languages In Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, 2010. "The Modern Eastern Iranian languages are even more numerous and varied. Most of them are classified as North-Eastern: Ossetic; Yaghnobi (which derives from a dialect closely related to Sogdian); the Shughni group (Shughni, Roshani, Khufi, Bartangi, Roshorvi, Sarikoli), with which Yaz-1ghulami (Sokolova 1967) and the now extinct Wanji (J. Payne in Schmitt, p. 420) are closely linked; Ishkashmi, Sanglichi, and Zebaki; Wakhi; Munji and Yidgha; and Pashto." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scythian Saka (talk • contribs) 17:49, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

number of speakers should be update

bengali about 215 mil - persian about 70 - pashtu about 55 mil and so on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Callofworld (talk • contribs) 18:26, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

aryan = aryan people, aryanic = aryan languages

see it :https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aryanic_languages&redirect=no

• Total speakers = more than 1.5 billion in 15 country = exist in text of article and map .with a total number of native speakers of more than 1471 million. add all population in text. sum of all:

Indo-Iranian consists of three groups:

   Indo-Aryan (Indic)
   Iranian (Iranic)
   Nuristani

Most of the largest languages (in terms of native speakers) are a part of the Indo-Aryan group: Hindustani (Hindi–Urdu, ~590 million[5]), Bengali (205 million[6]), Punjabi (100 million), Marathi (75 million), Gujarati (50 million), Bhojpuri (40 million), Awadhi (40 million), Maithili (35 million), Odia (35 million), Marwari (30 million), Sindhi (25 million), Rajasthani (20 million), Chhattisgarhi (18 million), Assamese (15 million), Sinhalese (16 million), Nepali (17 million), and Rangpuri (rajbanshi) (15 million). Among the Iranian branch, major languages are Persian (60 million), Pashto (ca. 50 million), Kurdish (35 million),[7] and Balochi (8 million), with a total number of native speakers of more than 1471 million. Numerous smaller languages exist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Callofworld (talk • contribs) 19:46, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_peoples — Preceding unsigned comment added by Callofworld (talk • contribs) 23:05, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Total speakers

• / Total speakers = approximately about 1.5 billion in 15
• , with a total number of native speakers of more than 1471 million.

@LouisAragon

@Kautilya3

why delete ? why ridiculous ?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Callofworld (talk • contribs) 08:18, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

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Template:Indo-Iranian languages

I'm proposing to split Template:Indo-Iranian languages into Template:Iranian languages and Template:Indo-Aryan languages. If anyone has any thoughts, you're welcome to share them at Template Talk:Indo-Iranian languages#Split template. Thanks! – Uanfala 23:23, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Terminology

I want to reinforce renaming this article.

The terminology used is simply racist (as can be seen by the complaints of several natives for this article and others). "Iranian" is a denonym of the country "Iran"; not a language family nor an ethno-linguistical group. "Iranian" was used because the country was called Persia, making it impossible for misconception to arise. But now the country is called "Iran" not Persia. It's literally the same as saying "calling a black "Negro" in 2017 is ok because it was ok 50 ago years", and yes that was specifically targeted towards most non-German scientific literature nowdays, mostly (but not only) relating to this topic seeing the arguments used.

There literally is no reason to use "Indo-Iranian", if the article itself states that "Aryan" is a correct terminology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Farraf123 (talk • contribs) 04:21, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

@Farraf123: Right or wrong, we use academic and common terms. Indo-Iranian and its subgroup Iranian are the terms we see in academic and scholary sources. So you can't change the terms just because you think they are wrong. As a new user, you should read Wikipedia rules and guides before opening sections like this and this one Talk:Iranian_peoples#.22Iranian.22_is_wrong_terminology. On Wikipedia, we don't invent our own terms or don't add our own researches/opinions. --Wario-Man (talk) 06:47, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Number of Persian speakers

Does this 60 million also include Dari and Tajik? It's highly unlikely. Seems to only include Farsi, but not the other two dialects.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 20:46, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Should the term "Aryan languages" redirect to this page?

"Aryan" is the endonym of the Indo-Iranians for describing their own ethnolinguistic group; given this information, would it be suitable to redirect "Aryan languages" to this page? Praxeria (talk) 21:28, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Given that the term is not the primary one in the Anglosphere, I do not believe that the article should be renamed; a redirect, however, would be extremely beneficial for many readers. Praxeria (talk) 21:30, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

It's good you have noticed that it's kind of an etymological fallacy: while several modern Iranian-speaking peoples still use an ethnonym that is related to the Sanskrit आर्य (ā́rya) which is the source of English "Aryan", the term "Aryan languages" has had various meaning since the 19th century, often restricted to the Indo-Aryan languages (thus ironically to a sphere where the term had fallen out of use before British scholars reintroduced it). So there is no primary target for a redirect. I think the current disambiguation page Aryan languages does a good job. –Austronesier (talk) 22:28, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Indic & Iranic languages

Hi I understand the point about how people may inflate the number of native speakers of each language however i think it's more beneficial to have it rather than not have it. And then we can focus on making sure the numbers are correct afterwards or just simply remove the numbers altogether? Anyhow the main focus of the text is to highlight the indo-iranian language list, the numbers are irrelevant here Academic10 (talk) 16:57, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Population figures for languages are a pain. For some languages it's impossible to come up with consensual figures as different reliable sources would have different understandings of the extent of each language (does language variety X count under language Y?). In other cases, we need to integrate figures from different countries that have been arrived at using different means. In an article about a language, there's room to present those nuances. In a list there isn't. Add to that the fact that these figures attract all sorts of disruptive editing: speakers of the languages inflating the numbers, editors using unreliable sources, people who approach it in good faith but who can't tell their nose from their ears, etc. Again, on a language article we can afford to keep an eye on this activity and rein things in because there's no alternative: the speaker numbers are an essential piece of information there. However, they are not essential elsewhere. I'd be happy to maintain this information in e.g. Punjabi language, but I really don't want to see that effort duplicated across all the nodes in the family tree. You know, Indo-Iranian languages isn't particularly special, it's only one subgroup among many (there's Indo-European languages and Satem languages higher up, and then Indo-Aryan languages and Punjabic languages lower down).

I don't think a big list of languages (with or without population figures) belongs here either: there are several hundred of them, that's not manageable. A select few? Sure, why not. If you want to, you can enumerate the dozen or so languages with the highest number of speakers, but I think that would make more sense as a prose paragraph rather than a list.

As for the particular edit [1]: the problems with the list is that it mixes up major and minor languages (with no apparent logic for inclusion), and some of the population figures (e.g. Punjabi) are completely bonkers. Also, this edit changed the account of the geographic distribution of the languages in a way that includes both large areas with substantial established populations (e.g. Iran) and relatively recent or scattered diaspora communities (e.g. Fiji). Without distinguishing between the two, the article leaves the impression that Indo-Iranian languages are spoken in pretty much the entire world, which sort of defeats the purpose of describing the geographic distribution in the first place. – Uanfala (talk) 17:29, 15 March 2023 (UTC)