Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as ariya (Iranian). [1][2] Old Persian is close to both Avestan and the language of the Rig Veda, the ...
The two directly-attested Old Iranian languages are Old Persian (from the Achaemenid Empire) and Old Avestan (the language of the Avesta). Of the Middle Iranian languages, the better understood and recorded ones are Middle Persian (from the Sasanian Empire), Parthian (from the Parthian Empire), and Bactrian (from the Kushan and Hephthalite ...
Persian is a member of the Western Iranian group of the Iranian languages, which make up a branch of the Indo-European languages in their Indo-Iranian subdivision.The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of which Kurdish and Balochi are the most widely ...
[61] [57] [60] Old Persian is one of the oldest Indo-European languages attested in original text. [60] Samples of Old Persian have been discovered in present-day Iran, Armenia, Egypt, Iraq, Romania , [84] [85] and Turkey. [86] The oldest attested text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscription, [87] a multilingual inscription from ...
The current language policy of Iran is addressed in Chapter Two of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Articles 15 & 16). [2] It asserts that the Persian language is the lingua franca of the Iranian nation and as such, required for the school system and for all official government communications. In addition, the constitution ...
Although Darius the Great called his language arya-("Iranian"), [26] modern scholars refer to it as Old Persian [26] because it is the ancestor of the modern Persian language. [27] The trilingual inscription erected by the command of Shapur I gives a more clear description. The languages used are Parthian, Middle Persian, and Greek.
Avestan (/ əˈvɛstən / ə-VESS-tən) [ 1 ] is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages, Old Avestan (spoken in the mid-2nd to 1st millennium BC) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BC). [ f 1 ] They are known only from their conjoined use as the scriptural language of Zoroastrianism.
The Indo-Iranian languages (also known as Indo-Iranic languages[2][3] or collectively the Aryan languages[4]) 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.