Scythian languages
Encyclopedia
Scythian languages refers to all the languages spoken by all the peoples of a vast region of Eurasia
named Scythia
extending from the Vistula river in East Europe to Mongolia
during ancient times. Included also are some languages of eastern Iran
and the Central Asian subcontinent. These peoples were at some time by some ancient authors designated as "Scythians" with the form of the name customarily known to them. Languages of many different groups and families must have been spoken by the Scythians. Their modes of subsistence varied from sedentary and agricultural to nomadic and pastoral. They were both warriors and merchants.
The dominant ethnic groups among the Scythians, however, were nomadic pastoralists of Central Asia
and the Pontic-Caspian steppe
. Fragments of their speech known from inscriptions and words quoted in ancient authors as well as analysis of their names indicate that it was of the Indo-European
language family
, was Indo-Iranian
, Iranian
and most specifically Eastern Iranian
. Further classification is uncertain and elusive. Alexander Lubotsky summarizes the known linguistic landscape as follows:
— like the once widespread but now extinct Sogdian language
. This Iranian hypothesis relies principally on the fact that the Greek inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea Coast contain several hundreds of Sarmatian names showing a close affinity to the Ossetic language
.
Historians normally divide the Scytho-Sarmatian group chronologically rather than geographically:
Some scholars
detect a division of Scytho-Sarmatian into two dialects: a western, more conservative dialect, and an eastern, more innovative one. The innovative dialect may correspond to Sarmatian, whereas the conservative dialect may continue the dialect spoken by the old Scythians before the invasion of the Sarmatians.
The Scytho-Khotanese group sub-divides into:
The Scythian languages may have formed a dialect continuum
:
Early East Iranians originated in the Yaz culture
(ca. 1500-1100 BC) in Central Asia
. The Scythians migrated from Central Asia toward Eastern Europe
in the 8th and 7th century BC, occupying today's Southern Russia
and Ukraine
and the Carpathian Basin and parts of Moldova
and Dobruja
. They disappeared from history after the Hunnish
invasion of Europe in the 5th century AD, and Turkic (Avar
, Batsange, etc.) and Slavic peoples probably assimilated most people speaking Scythian. However, in the Caucasus
, Ossetic language
belonging to the Scythian-Sarmatian linguistic continuum remains in use , while in Central Asia, some languages belonging to Eastern Iranian family are still spoken, namely Pashto
, Pamir languages
and Yaghnobi
.
to the Scythians, but the interpretation of these inscriptions remains disputed (given that nobody has definitively identified the alphabet or translated the content).
An inscription from Saqqez written in the Hieroglyphic Hittite
script may represent Scythian:
King Partitava equates to the Scythian king called Prototyēs in Herodotus (1.103) and known as Par-ta-tu-a
in the Assyrian sources. ("Partatua of Sakasene" married the daughter of Esarhaddon
c. 675 BC)
The Issyk inscription, found in a Scythian kurgan
dating approximately to the 4th century BC, remains undeciphered, but some authorities assume that it represents Scythian.
Coast. These names suggest that the Scythian-Sarmatian language had close similarities to modern Ossetian.
Some scholars believe that many toponyms and hydronyms of the Russian and Ukrainian steppe have Scythian links. For example, Vasmer
associates the name of the river Don with an assumed/reconstructed unattested Scythian word *dānu "water, river", and with Avestan dānu-, Pashto dand and Ossetic don.
The river names Don
, Donets, Dnieper, Danube
, Dniester
and lake Donuzlav (the deepest one in Crimea, Ukraine) may also belong with the same word-group.
provides another source of Scythian; he reports that the Scythians called the Amazons
Oiorpata, and explains the name as a compound of oior, meaning "man", and pata, meaning "to kill" (Hist. 4,110).
Elsewhere Herodotus explains the name of the mythical one-eyed tribe Arimaspoi
as a compound of the Scythian words arima, meaning "one", and spu, meaning "eye" (Hist. 4,27).
from about the 5th to the 11th centuries AD formed a dialect
directly descended from the earlier Scytho-Sarmatian languages, and forming in its turn the ancestor of the Ossetic language
. Byzantine Greek authors recorded only a few fragments of this language.
or Proto-Slavic
languages. Another proposal by Boris Rybakov
suggests a Proto-Slavic substrate
.
However, Iranian and specifically Scythian(-Sarmatian) influence, most palpably in the form of various loanword
s, is generally accepted by linguists, historians and ethnologists for the Ugric
and Slavic languages
. To the Scytho-Sarmatian loanwords belongs the Ukrainian and Russian word "khoroshyi" (good) which has Iranian root "khur" (good) and is not found in the other Slavic languages but in Ossetian
(northeastern Iranian) instead.
Eurasia
Eurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...
named Scythia
Scythia
In antiquity, Scythian or Scyths were terms used by the Greeks to refer to certain Iranian groups of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who dwelt on the Pontic-Caspian steppe...
extending from the Vistula river in East Europe to Mongolia
Mongolia
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...
during ancient times. Included also are some languages of eastern Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
and the Central Asian subcontinent. These peoples were at some time by some ancient authors designated as "Scythians" with the form of the name customarily known to them. Languages of many different groups and families must have been spoken by the Scythians. Their modes of subsistence varied from sedentary and agricultural to nomadic and pastoral. They were both warriors and merchants.
The dominant ethnic groups among the Scythians, however, were nomadic pastoralists of Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
and the Pontic-Caspian steppe
Pontic-Caspian steppe
The Pontic-Caspian steppe is the vast steppeland stretching from the north of the Black Sea as far as the east of the Caspian Sea, from western Ukraine across the Southern Federal District and the Volga Federal District of Russia to western Kazakhstan,...
. Fragments of their speech known from inscriptions and words quoted in ancient authors as well as analysis of their names indicate that it was of the Indo-European
Indo-European
Indo-European may refer to:* Indo-European languages** Aryan race, a 19th century and early 20th century term for those peoples who are the native speakers of Indo-European languages...
language family
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
, was Indo-Iranian
Indo-Iranian languages
The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It consists of three language groups: the Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani...
, Iranian
Iranian languages
The Iranian languages form a subfamily of the Indo-Iranian languages which in turn is a subgroup of Indo-European language family. They have been and are spoken by Iranian peoples....
and most specifically Eastern Iranian
Eastern Iranian languages
The Eastern Iranian languages are a subgroup of the Iranian languages emerging in Middle Iranian times .The Avestan language is often classified as early Eastern Iranian. The largest living Eastern Iranian language is Pashto, with some 50 million speakers between the Hindu Kush mountains in...
. Further classification is uncertain and elusive. Alexander Lubotsky summarizes the known linguistic landscape as follows:
Classification
The vast majority of Scythological scholars agree that the Scythian-Sarmatian languages (and Ossetic) belong to the Eastern Iranian language familyEastern Iranian languages
The Eastern Iranian languages are a subgroup of the Iranian languages emerging in Middle Iranian times .The Avestan language is often classified as early Eastern Iranian. The largest living Eastern Iranian language is Pashto, with some 50 million speakers between the Hindu Kush mountains in...
— like the once widespread but now extinct Sogdian language
Sogdian language
The Sogdian language is a Middle Iranian language that was spoken in Sogdiana , located in modern day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan ....
. This Iranian hypothesis relies principally on the fact that the Greek inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea Coast contain several hundreds of Sarmatian names showing a close affinity to the Ossetic language
Ossetic language
Ossetian , also sometimes called Ossete, is an East Iranian language spoken in Ossetia, a region on the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains....
.
Historians normally divide the Scytho-Sarmatian group chronologically rather than geographically:
- Scythian (ca. 800 - 300 BC), mainly evidenced in Classical Greek authors
- Sarmatian (ca. 300 BC - AD 400), mainly evidenced in Hellenistic and Roman inscriptions
- Alanic (ca. AD 400 - 1000), mainly evidenced in Byzantine Greek authors
Some scholars
detect a division of Scytho-Sarmatian into two dialects: a western, more conservative dialect, and an eastern, more innovative one. The innovative dialect may correspond to Sarmatian, whereas the conservative dialect may continue the dialect spoken by the old Scythians before the invasion of the Sarmatians.
The Scytho-Khotanese group sub-divides into:
- Khotanese, spoken in KhotanKhotanHotan , or Hetian , also spelled Khotan, is the seat of the Hotan Prefecture in Xinjiang, China. It was previously known in Chinese as 于窴/於窴 and to 19th-century European explorers as Ilchi....
- Tumshuqese, spoken in Tumshuq
The Scythian languages may have formed a dialect continuum
Dialect continuum
A dialect continuum, or dialect area, was defined by Leonard Bloomfield as a range of dialects spoken across some geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring areas, but as one travels in any direction, these differences accumulate such that speakers from opposite ends of the...
:
- Scytho-Sarmatian languages were spoken by people originally of Iranian stock from the 8th and 7th century BC onwards in the area of UkraineUkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, Southern Russia and KazakhstanKazakhstanKazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
. Modern OsseticOssetic languageOssetian , also sometimes called Ossete, is an East Iranian language spoken in Ossetia, a region on the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains....
survives as a continuation of the language family possibly represented by Scytho-Sarmatian inscriptions, although the Scytho-Sarmatian language family "does not simply represent the same [Ossetic] language" at an earlier date. - Saka languageSaka languageSaka or Sakan is a Middle Iranian language attested from the medieval Buddhist kingdoms of Khotan and Tumxuk in what in now Xinjiang, China. Both dialects share features with modern Wakhi and Pashto. Many Prakrit terms were borrowed from Khotanese into the Tocharian languages.Khotanese is attested...
or Scytho-Khotanese in the east: spoken in the Kingdom of KhotanKingdom of KhotanThe Kingdom of Khotan was an ancient Buddhist kingdom that was located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim basin. -Early names:-Capital:...
(located in present-day XinjiangXinjiangXinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
, China), and including the Khotanese of KhotanKhotanHotan , or Hetian , also spelled Khotan, is the seat of the Hotan Prefecture in Xinjiang, China. It was previously known in Chinese as 于窴/於窴 and to 19th-century European explorers as Ilchi....
and Tumshuqese of Tumshuq. Scholars classify these languages as North-Eastern Iranian.
History
Yaz culture
The Yaz culture is an early Iron Age culture of Bactria and Margiana . It has been regarded as a likely archaeological reflection of early East Iranian culture as described in the Avesta. So far, no burials related to the culture have been found, and this was taken as evidence of the Zoroastrian...
(ca. 1500-1100 BC) in Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
. The Scythians migrated from Central Asia toward Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
in the 8th and 7th century BC, occupying today's Southern Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
and the Carpathian Basin and parts of Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
and Dobruja
Dobruja
Dobruja is a historical region shared by Bulgaria and Romania, located between the lower Danube river and the Black Sea, including the Danube Delta, Romanian coast and the northernmost part of the Bulgarian coast...
. They disappeared from history after the Hunnish
Huns
The Huns were a group of nomadic people who, appearing from east of the Volga River, migrated into Europe c. AD 370 and established the vast Hunnic Empire there. Since de Guignes linked them with the Xiongnu, who had been northern neighbours of China 300 years prior to the emergence of the Huns,...
invasion of Europe in the 5th century AD, and Turkic (Avar
Eurasian Avars
The Eurasian Avars or Ancient Avars were a highly organized nomadic confederacy of mixed origins. They were ruled by a khagan, who was surrounded by a tight-knit entourage of nomad warriors, an organization characteristic of Turko-Mongol groups...
, Batsange, etc.) and Slavic peoples probably assimilated most people speaking Scythian. However, in the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
, Ossetic language
Ossetic language
Ossetian , also sometimes called Ossete, is an East Iranian language spoken in Ossetia, a region on the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains....
belonging to the Scythian-Sarmatian linguistic continuum remains in use , while in Central Asia, some languages belonging to Eastern Iranian family are still spoken, namely Pashto
Pashto language
Pashto , known as Afghani in Persian and Pathani in Punjabi , is the native language of the indigenous Pashtun people or Afghan people who are found primarily between an area south of the Amu Darya in Afghanistan and...
, Pamir languages
Pamir languages
The Pamir languages are a group of the Eastern Iranian languages, spoken by numerous people in the Pamir Mountains, primarily along the Panj River and its tributaries. This includes the Badakhshan Province of northeastern Afghanistan and the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province of eastern Tajikistan...
and Yaghnobi
Yaghnobi language
The Yaghnobi language is a living East Iranian language . Yaghnobi is spoken in the upper valley of the Yaghnob River in the Zarafshan area of Tajikistan by the Yaghnobi people...
.
Inscriptions
Some scholars ascribe certain inscribed objects found in the Carpathian Basin and in Central AsiaCentral Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
to the Scythians, but the interpretation of these inscriptions remains disputed (given that nobody has definitively identified the alphabet or translated the content).
An inscription from Saqqez written in the Hieroglyphic Hittite
Anatolian hieroglyphs
Anatolian hieroglyphs are an indigenous logographic script native to central Anatolia, consisting of some 500 signs. They were once commonly known as Hittite hieroglyphs, but the language they encode proved to be Luwian, not Hittite, and the term Luwian hieroglyphs is used in English publications...
script may represent Scythian:
| Transliteration: | pa-tì-na-sa-nà tà-pá wa-s₆-na-m₅ XL was-was-ki XXX ár-s-tí-m₅ ś₃-kar-kar (HA) har-s₆-ta₅ LUGAL | par-tì-ta₅-wa₅ ki-ś₃-a₄-á KUR-u-pa-ti QU-wa-a₅ | i₅-pa-ś₂-a-m₂ |
| Transcription: | patinasana tapa. vasnam: 40 vasaka 30 arzatam šikar. UTA harsta XŠAYAL. | Partitava xšaya DAHYUupati xva|ipašyam |
| Translation: | "Delivered dish. Value: 40 calves 30 silver šiqlu. And it was presented to the king. | King Partitavas, the masters of the land property." |
King Partitava equates to the Scythian king called Prototyēs in Herodotus (1.103) and known as Par-ta-tu-a
Bartatua
Bartatua or Partitava , was a Scythian king, who established friendly relations with Assyria. He married a daughter of Assyrian king Essarhaddon....
in the Assyrian sources. ("Partatua of Sakasene" married the daughter of Esarhaddon
Esarhaddon
Esarhaddon , was a king of Assyria who reigned 681 – 669 BC. He was the youngest son of Sennacherib and the Aramean queen Naqi'a , Sennacherib's second wife....
c. 675 BC)
The Issyk inscription, found in a Scythian kurgan
Kurgan
Kurgan is the Turkic term for a tumulus; mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves, originating with its use in Soviet archaeology, now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology....
dating approximately to the 4th century BC, remains undeciphered, but some authorities assume that it represents Scythian.
Personal names
The primary sources for Scythian words remain the Scythian toponyms, tribal names, and numerous personal names in the ancient Greek texts and in the Greek inscriptions found in the Greek colonies on the Northern Black SeaBlack Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
Coast. These names suggest that the Scythian-Sarmatian language had close similarities to modern Ossetian.
Some scholars believe that many toponyms and hydronyms of the Russian and Ukrainian steppe have Scythian links. For example, Vasmer
Max Vasmer
Max Vasmer was a Russian-born German linguist who studied problems of etymology of Indo-European, Finno-Ugric and Turkic languages and worked on history of Slavic, Baltic, Iranian, and Finno-Ugric peoples....
associates the name of the river Don with an assumed/reconstructed unattested Scythian word *dānu "water, river", and with Avestan dānu-, Pashto dand and Ossetic don.
The river names Don
Don River (Russia)
The Don River is one of the major rivers of Russia. It rises in the town of Novomoskovsk 60 kilometres southeast from Tula, southeast of Moscow, and flows for a distance of about 1,950 kilometres to the Sea of Azov....
, Donets, Dnieper, Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
, Dniester
Dniester
The Dniester is a river in Eastern Europe. It runs through Ukraine and Moldova and separates most of Moldova's territory from the breakaway de facto state of Transnistria.-Names:...
and lake Donuzlav (the deepest one in Crimea, Ukraine) may also belong with the same word-group.
Herodotus' Scythian etymologies
The Greek historian HerodotusHerodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
provides another source of Scythian; he reports that the Scythians called the Amazons
Amazons
The Amazons are a nation of all-female warriors in Greek mythology and Classical antiquity. Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatia...
Oiorpata, and explains the name as a compound of oior, meaning "man", and pata, meaning "to kill" (Hist. 4,110).
- Most scholars associate oior "man" with Avestan vīra- "man, hero", Sanskrit vīra-, PIE . Various explanations account for pata "kill":
- Avestan paiti- "lord", Sanskrit pati-, PIE (i.e. "man-ruler");
- Ossetic maryn "kill", Pashto mrəl, Sanskrit mārayati, PIE "die" (confusion of Greek ΜMu (letter)Carlos Alberto Vives Restrepo is a Grammy Award and three-time Latin Grammy Award winning-Colombian singer, composer and actor.-Biography:...
and ΠPi (letter)Pi is the sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, representing . In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 80. Letters that arose from pi include Cyrillic Pe , Coptic pi , and Gothic pairthra .The upper-case letter Π is used as a symbol for:...
); - Ossetic fædyn "cleave", Sanskrit pātayati "fell", PIE "fall".
- Alternatively, one scholar suggests Iranian aiwa- "one" + warah- "breast", the Amazons believed to have removed a breast to aid drawing a bow, according to some ancient folklorists, and as reflected in Greek folk-etymology: a-Privative aIn Ancient Greek grammar, privative a is the prefix a- that expresses negation or absence . It is derived from a Proto-Indo-European syllabic nasal *, the zero ablaut grade of the negation *ne, i.e. /n/ used as a vowel...
(privative) + mazos, "without breastBreastThe breast is the upper ventral region of the torso of a primate, in left and right sides, which in a female contains the mammary gland that secretes milk used to feed infants.Both men and women develop breasts from the same embryological tissues...
".
Elsewhere Herodotus explains the name of the mythical one-eyed tribe Arimaspoi
Arimaspi
The Arimaspi were a legendary people of northern Scythia who lived in the foothills of the Riphean Mountains, variously identified with the Ural Mountains or the Carpathians...
as a compound of the Scythian words arima, meaning "one", and spu, meaning "eye" (Hist. 4,27).
- Some scholars connect arima "one" with Ossetic ærmæst "only", Avestic airime "quiet", Greek erēmos "empty", PIE ?, and spu "eye" with Avestic spas- "foretell", Sanskrit spaś-, PIE "see".
- However, Iranian usually expresses "one" and "eye" with words like aiwa- and čašman- (Ossetic īw and cæst).
- Other scholars reject Herodotus' etymology and derive the ethnonym ArimaspoiArimaspiThe Arimaspi were a legendary people of northern Scythia who lived in the foothills of the Riphean Mountains, variously identified with the Ural Mountains or the Carpathians...
from Iranian aspa- "horse" instead. - Or the first part of the name may reflect something like Iranian raiwant- "rich", cf. Ossetic riwæ "rich".
Herodotus' Scythian theonyms
Herodotus also gives a list of Scythian theonyms (Hist. 4.59):- Tabiti =Interpretatio graecaInterpretatio graeca is a Latin term for the common tendency of ancient Greek writers to equate foreign divinities to members of their own pantheon. Herodotus, for example, refers to the ancient Egyptian gods Amon, Osiris and Ptah as "Zeus", "Dionysus" and "Hephaestus", respectively.-Roman...
HestiaHestiaIn Greek mythology Hestia , first daughter of Cronus and Rhea , is the virgin goddess of the hearth, architecture, and of the right ordering of domesticity and the family. She received the first offering at every sacrifice in the household. In the public domain, the hearth of the prytaneum...
. Perhaps related to Sanskrit Tapatī, a heroine in the MahābhārataMahabharataThe Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....
, literally "the burning (one)". - Papaios = ZeusZeusIn the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
. Either "father" (Herodotus) or "protector", Avestan, Sanskrit pā- "protect", PIE . - Api = GaiaGaia (mythology)Gaia was the primordial Earth-goddess in ancient Greek religion. Gaia was the great mother of all: the heavenly gods and Titans were descended from her union with Uranus , the sea-gods from her union with Pontus , the Giants from her mating with Tartarus and mortal creatures were sprung or born...
. Either "mother" or "water", Avestan, Sanskrit āp-, PIE - Goitosyros or Oitosyros = ApolloApolloApollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
. Perhaps Avestan gaēθa- "animal" + sūra- "rich". - Argimpasa or Artimpasa = Aphrodite UraniaAphrodite UraniaUrania was an epithet of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, signifying "heavenly" or "spiritual", to distinguish her from her more earthly aspect of "Aphrodite Pandemos", "Aphrodite for all the people". The two were used to differentiate the more "celestial" love of body and soul from purely physical...
. To Ossetic art and Pashto or, "fire", Avestan āθra-. - Thagimasadas = PoseidonPoseidonPoseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...
.
Alanic
The Alanic language as spoken by the AlansAlans
The Alans, or the Alani, occasionally termed Alauni or Halani, were a group of Sarmatian tribes, nomadic pastoralists of the 1st millennium AD who spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian.-Name:The various forms of Alan —...
from about the 5th to the 11th centuries AD formed a dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
directly descended from the earlier Scytho-Sarmatian languages, and forming in its turn the ancestor of the Ossetic language
Ossetic language
Ossetian , also sometimes called Ossete, is an East Iranian language spoken in Ossetia, a region on the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains....
. Byzantine Greek authors recorded only a few fragments of this language.
Substratum theories
Divergent views, have proposed that the Scythian languages may have become a substratum to the HungarianHungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
or Proto-Slavic
Proto-Slavic language
Proto-Slavic is the proto-language from which Slavic languages later emerged. It was spoken before the seventh century AD. As with most other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; the language has been reconstructed by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic...
languages. Another proposal by Boris Rybakov
Boris Rybakov
Boris Alexandrovich Rybakov was a Soviet and Russian historian who personified the anti-Normanist vision of Russian history....
suggests a Proto-Slavic substrate
Substratum
In linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum is the language that has higher power or prestige. Both substratum and superstratum...
.
However, Iranian and specifically Scythian(-Sarmatian) influence, most palpably in the form of various loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s, is generally accepted by linguists, historians and ethnologists for the Ugric
Ugric languages
Ugric or Ugrian languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. The term derives from Yugra, a region in north-central Asia.They include three languages: Hungarian , Khanty , and Mansi language...
and Slavic languages
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
. To the Scytho-Sarmatian loanwords belongs the Ukrainian and Russian word "khoroshyi" (good) which has Iranian root "khur" (good) and is not found in the other Slavic languages but in Ossetian
Ossetian
Ossetian may refer to:* The Ossetian language* A member of the Ossetian people* A person from the region of Ossetia...
(northeastern Iranian) instead.
Additional literature
- Harmatta, J.: Studies in the History and Language of the Sarmatians, Szeged 1970.
- Mayrhofer, M.Manfred MayrhoferManfred Mayrhofer is an Indo-Europeanist specialized on Indo-Iranian languages. Mayrhofer is professor emeritus at the University of Vienna. He is noted for his etymological dictionary of Sanskrit....
: Einiges zu den Skythen, ihrer Sprache, ihrem Nachleben. Vienna 2006. - Zgusta, L.Ladislav ZgustaLadislav Zgusta was a Czech–American historical linguist and lexicographer, who wrote one of the first textbooks on lexicography. He was a professor of linguistics and classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dutch lexicographer Piet van Sterkenburg referred to Zgusta as...
: Die griechischen Personennamen griechischer Städte der nördlichen Schwarzmeerküste. Die ethnischen Verhältnisse, namentlich das Verhältnis der Skythen und Sarmaten, im Lichte der Namenforschung, Prague 1955.
External links
- Scythian language A brief overview of the Scythian and Ossetian languages