| Group | Iranian (with Persian, Kurdish etc.) |
| History & Geography | Avestan was also called Zend language; this Old Iranian tongue is not dead, just extinct from the popular communication, but still in use in sacral purposes in Zoroastrian communities in India and Iran. The language is known by the only basic resource: the ancient Iranian epic poem "Avesta", which became known in Europe in the 18th century. It could be written in about 4-6th centuries AD, but the language of it seems much older, and the written epic was preceded by many centuries of the oral tradition. The Avestan tongue combined features of both Eastern and Western Iranian languages, that is why linguists believe it was spoken before the Iranian language split into two subgroups. |
| Phonetics | The Avestan languages is traditionally divided into two dialects different in phonetics: in the language of the Gata (a part of the Avesta) groups of consonants tend to sound voiced, while in Late Avestan they become unvoiced. This difference is sometimes considered as the reflection of the laryngeal phoneme. In general, the Avestan phonetic system was rather complicated: a great number of long and short vowels (including a nasal vowel a and the "labialized a" in certain positions in the word), a set of diphthongs and up to 33 consonant sounds including labiovelar, fricative, sibilant and maybe even sounds we do not yet know how to pronounce at all. Avestan was a satem language turning Indo-European palatals into s, z, and the very word satem means 'hundred' in Avestan. |
| Nominal Morphology | Avestan is a language of the classical Indo-European declension. It uses 8 noun cases, nouns have 3 genders and 3 numbers, each with its inflections. All the final elements of the word were preserved rather well in the language. Personal pronouns could serve as enclitics; demonstrative ones were divided into "close" and "distant". Numerals from 1 to 4 were also declined. |
| Verbal Morphology | There are 2 voices (active, medium) and 4 moods of which only the indicative mood had tenses. Four series of verbal inflection were used: primary, secondary, imperative and perfect. The tenses were present, aorist, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, various future constructions. There were also about 6 types of participles. |
| Lexicon | The vocabulary of Avesta was obviously influenced by the colloquial language of those who recorded and re-recorded it through ages. But it contains practically no alien borrowings, and a great lot of words are easily compared with the other Indo-European languages, especially Indo-Aryan. |
| Writing | The Avestan alphabet derived from the Aramaic script |
| Sample | Nivaêdhayemi hañkârayemi vanghave mananghe ashâi vahishtâi
xshathrâi vairyâi speñtayâi ârmatêe haurvatbya ameretatbya gêush
tashne gêush urune âthre ahurahe mazdå ýaêtushtemâi ameshanãm speñtanãm!
I announce (and) carry out (this Yasna) to Vohu Mano, and to the Highest Asha, and to Khshathra Vairya, and to Spenta Armaiti, and to the two, the Haurvatat and Ameretat, to the body of the Kine, and to the Kine's Soul, and to the Fire of Ahura Mazda, that one who more than (all) the Amesha Spentas has made most effort (for our succor)! (Yasna I.) |
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