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It has been suggested that this article be split into a new article titled Pontic Scythian language. (discuss) (November 2024)

Scythian
Geographic distribution	Central Asia, West Asia, Eastern Europe
Ethnicity	Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans
Linguistic classification	Indo-European Indo-Iranic Iranic Eastern Iranic Scythian
Subdivisions	(Western) Cimmerian † (Western) Pontic Scythian † (Western) Alanian (Eastern) Scytho-Khotanese †
Language codes
Glottolog	sogd1247  (Sogdic-Ossetic) saka1303  (Saka-Wakhi)
The approximate distribution of Eastern Iranic languages and peoples in 100 BC appears in green.
Notes	ISO 639-3 codes xsc: Scythian xln: Alanian oos: Old Ossetian

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v t e

Pontic Scythian
Native to	Sarmatia, Scythia, Sistan, Scythia Minor, Alania
Region	Central Asia, West Asia, Eastern Europe
Ethnicity	Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans
Era	Classical antiquity, late antiquity
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranic Iranic Eastern Iranic Pontic Scythian
Dialects	(Western) Cimmerian † (Western) Pontic Scythian † (Western) Alanian (Eastern) Scytho-Khotanese †
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xsc – Scythian
Linguist List	xsc Scythian
Glottolog	sogd1247  Sogdic-Ossetic saka1303  Saka-Wakhi
The approximate distribution of Eastern Iranic languages and peoples in 100 BC appears in green.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

The Scythian languages (/ˈsɪθiən/ or /ˈsɪðiən/ or /ˈskɪθiən/) are a group of Eastern Iranic languages of the classical and late antique period (the Middle Iranic period), spoken in a vast region of Eurasia by the populations belonging to the Scythian cultures and their descendants. The dominant ethnic groups among the Scythian-speakers 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 an Indo-European language, more specifically from the Iranic group of Indo-Iranic languages.

Most of the Scythian languages eventually became extinct, except for modern Ossetian (which descends from the Alanian dialect of Scytho-Sarmatian), Wakhi (which descends from the Khotanese and Tumshuqese forms of Scytho-Khotanese), and Yaghnobi (which descends from Sogdian). Alexander Lubotsky summarizes the known linguistic landscape as follows:

Unfortunately, we know next to nothing about the Scythian of that period – we have only a couple of personal and tribal names in Greek and Persian sources at our disposal – and cannot even determine with any degree of certainty whether it was a single language.

Classification

Ossetian is an Eastern Iranic language. The vast majority of Scythological scholars agree in considering the Scythian languages a part of the Eastern Iranic languages too. This 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 Ossetian language.

Some scholars detect a division of Scythian into two dialects: a western, more conservative dialect, and an eastern, more innovative one. The Scythian languages may have formed a dialect continuum:

• Alanian languages or Scytho-Sarmatian in the west: were spoken by people originally of Iranic stock from the 8th and 7th century BC onwards in the area of Ukraine, Southern Russia and Kazakhstan.
  • Modern Ossetian 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 language" at an earlier date.

• Saka languages or Scytho-Khotanese in the east: spoken in the first century in the Kingdom of Khotan (located in present-day Xinjiang, China), and including the Khotanese of Khotan and Tumshuqese of Tumshuq.

It is highly probable that already in the Old Iranic period, there were some eastern Scythian dialects which gave rise to the ancestor(s) of the Sogdian and Yaghnobi languages, although data required to test this hypothesis is presently lacking.

The Scythian languages shared some features with other Eastern Iranic languages, such as the use of the suffix -ta to denote the plural form, which is also present in Sogdian, Chorasmian, Ossetian, and Yaghnobi.

Phonology

The Pontic Scythian language possessed the following phonemes:

This article uses cursive theta ⟨ϑ⟩ to denote the Scythian voiceless dental fricative (IPA /θ/), and regular theta ⟨θ⟩ to denote the Greek aspirated, voiceless dental plosive (IPA /tʰ/).

The western dialects of the Scythian languages had experienced an evolution of the Proto-Iranic sound /d/ into the Proto-Scythian sound /ð/, which in the Cimmerian and Pontic dialects of Scythian became the sound /l/. Scythian shares the evolution of Proto-Iranic sound /d/ into /ð/ with all Eastern Iranic languages with the exception of Ossetian, Yaghnobi, and Ishkashimi; and the later evolution of /ð/ into /l/ is also present in several Eastern Iranic languages such as Bactrian, Pashto, Munjani, and Yidgha.

History

Early Eastern Iranic peoples 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, the Ossetian language belonging to the Scythian linguistic continuum remains in use today, while in Central Asia, some languages belonging to Eastern Iranic group are still spoken, namely Pashto, the Pamir languages and Yaghnobi.

Corpus

Inscriptions

Some scholars ascribe certain inscribed objects found in the Carpathian Basin and in Central Asia to the Scythians, but the interpretation of these inscriptions remains disputed (given that nobody has definitively identified the alphabet or translated the content).

Issyk inscription

The Issyk inscription is not yet certainly deciphered, and is probably in a Scythian dialect, constituting one of very few autochthonous epigraphic traces of that language. János Harmatta, using the Kharoṣṭhī script, identified the language as a Khotanese Saka dialect spoken by the Kushans, tentatively translating:

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 Sea Coast. These names suggest that the Sarmatian language had close similarities to modern Ossetian.

Recorded Scythian personal names include:

Tribal names

Recorded Scythian tribal names include:

Place names

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 Ossetian don. The river names Don, Donets, Dnieper, Danube, and Dniester, and lake Donuzlav (the deepest one in Crimea) may also belong with the same word-group.

Recorded Scythian place names include:

Herodotus' Scythian etymologies

The Greek historian Herodotus 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).

• Most scholars associate oior "man" with Avestan vīra- "man, hero", Sanskrit vīra-, Latin vir (gen. virī) "man, hero, husband", PIE *wiHrós. Various explanations account for pata "kill":
  1. Persian pat- "(to) kill", patxuste "killed";
  2. Sogdian pt- "(to) kill", ptgawsty "killed";
  3. Ossetian fædyn "cleave", Sanskrit pātayati "fell", PIE *peth₂- "fall".
  4. Avestan paiti- "lord", Sanskrit páti, PIE *pótis, cf. Lat. potestate (i.e. "man-ruler");
  5. Ossetian maryn "kill", Pashto mrəl, Sanskrit mārayati, PIE *mer- "die" (confusion of Greek Μ and Π);
• Alternatively, one scholar suggests Iranic 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) + mazos, "without breast".

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).

• Some scholars connect arima "one" with Ossetian ærmæst "only", Avestic airime "quiet", Greek erēmos "empty", PIE *h₁(e)rh₁mo-?, and spu "eye" with Avestic spas- "foretell", Sanskrit spaś-, PIE *speḱ- "see".
• However, Iranic usually expresses "one" and "eye" with words like aiwa- and čašman- (Ossetian īw and cæst).
• Other scholars reject Herodotus' etymology and derive the ethnonym Arimaspoi from Iranic aspa- "horse" instead.
• Or the first part of the name may reflect something like Iranic raiwant- "rich", cf. Ossetian riwæ "rich".

Scythian theonyms

Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder's Natural History (AD 77–79) derives the name of the Caucasus from the Scythian kroy-khasis = ice-shining, white with snow (cf. Greek cryos = ice-cold).

Aristophanes

In the comedy works of Aristophanes, the dialects of various Greek people are accurately imitated. In his Thesmophoriazusae, a Scythian archer (a member of a police force in Athens) speaks broken Greek, consistently omitting the final -s (-ς) and -n (ν), using the lenis in place of the aspirate, and once using ks (ξ) in place of s (sigma); these may be used to elucidate the Scythian languages.

Alanian

The Alanian language, as spoken by the Alans 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 Ossetian language. Byzantine Greek authors recorded only a few fragments of this language. The Alans, which were a part of the Migration Period, they brought their language to Iberia in 409 AD before being displaced by the invading Visigoths.

Unlike the Pontic Scythian language, Ossetian did not experience the evolution of the Proto-Scythian sound /d/ to /δ/ and then /l/, although the sound /d/ did evolve into /δ/ at the beginning of Ossetian words.

See also

• Getae
• Dacian language

Notes

1. Lubotsky 2002, p. 190.
2. Compare L. Zgusta, Die griechischen Personennamen griechischer Städte der nördlichen Schwarzmeerküste , 1955.
3. Witzel, Michael (2001). "Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts". Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies. 7 (3): 1–115. doi:10.11588/ejvs.2001.3.830.
4. E.g. Harmatta 1970.
5. Schmitt, Rüdiger (ed.), Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, Reichert, 1989.
6. Novák 2013, p. 11.
7. ^ Ivantchik 1999a, p. 156-158.
8. ^ Novák 2013, p. 10.
9. J.P.Mallory (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London: Dearborn. p. 310. ISBN 9781884964985.
10. Harmatta 1992, p. 412.
11. Lincoln, Bruce (2014). "Once again 'the Scythian' myth of origins (Herodotus 4.5–10)". Nordlit. 33: 19–34. doi:10.7557/13.3188.
12. Hinz 1975, p. 40.
13. ^ Schmitt 2003.
14. ^ Schmitt 2018a.
15. ^ Schmitt 2011.
16. ^ Schwartz & Manaster Ramer 2019, p. 359-360.
17. ^ Kullanda & Raevskiy 2004, p. 93.
18. Tokhtasyev 2005a, p. 88.
19. Ivantchik 1999b, pp. 508–509: "Though Madyes himself is not mentioned in Akkadian texts, his father, the Scythian king Par-ta-tu-a, whose identification with Προτοθύης of Herodotus is certain."
20. Bukharin 2011, p. 63.
21. Kullanda & Raevskiy 2004, p. 94.
22. Melikov 2016, p. 78-80.
23. Schmitt, Rüdiger (2000). "PROTOTHYES". Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 12 November 2021.
24. Bukharin 2011.
25. ^ Kullanda 2014, p. 81.
26. Bukharin 2013, p. 273-274.
27. ^ Bukharin 2013, p. 270-271.
28. Alemany 2006, p. 33.
29. Ivantchik 2005, p. 183.
30. Ivantchik 2018.
31. "Išpakaia [CHIEFTAIN OF THE SCYTHIANS] (RN)". Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus. University of Pennsylvania. Archived from the original on 2023-04-30. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
32. Ivantchik 2005, p. 188.
33. Schmitt 2009, p. 93–94.
34. ^ Schmitt 2018b.
35. ^ Hinz 1975, p. 226.
36. Mayor, Adrienne (2014). The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World. Princeton, United States: Princeton University Press. pp. 370–371. ISBN 978-0-691-14720-8.
37. ^ Tokhtasyev 2005a, p. 68-84.
38. ^ Tokhtasyev 2005b, p. 296.
39. Szemerényi 1980, p. 20-21.
40. ^ Witczak 1999, p. 52-53.
41. M. Vasmer, Untersuchungen über die ältesten Wohnsitze der Slaven. Die Iranier in Südrußland, Leipzig 1923, 74.
42. Kretschmer, Paul (1935). "Zum Balkan-Skythischen". Glotta. 24 (1–2): 1–56 . JSTOR 40265408.
43. Kullanda 2013, p. 39-41.
44. Diakonoff, I. M. (1985). "Media". In Gershevitch, Ilya (ed.). The Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 93. ISBN 978-0-521-20091-2.
45. Brunner, C. J. (1986). "ARANG". Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 13 August 2022. Middle Persian Arang/Arag renders Avestan Raŋhā, which is cognate with the Scythian name Rhâ (*Rahā) transmitted by Ptolemy
46. Harmatta 1999, p. 129.
47. "Vir – the Latin Dictionary".
48. Gharib, B. (1995). Sogdian Dictionary, Sogdian-Persian-English. Tehran, Iran: Farhangan Publications. p. 376. ISBN 964-5558-06-9.
49. Gharib, B. (1995). Sogdian Dictionary, Sogdian-Persian-English. Tehran, Iran: Farhangan Publications. p. 376. ISBN 964-5558-06-9.
50. L. Zgusta, "Skythisch οἰόρπατα «ἀνδροκτόνοι»", Annali dell’Istituto Universario Orientale di Napoli 1 (1959) pp. 151–156.
51. Vasmer, Die Iranier in Südrußland, 1923, 15.
52. V.I. Abaev, Osetinskij jazyk i fol’klor, Moscow / Leningrad 1949, vol. 1, 172, 176, 188.
53. Hinge 2005, pp. 94–98
54. J. Marquart, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte von Eran, Göttingen 1905, 90–92; Vasmer, Die Iranier in Südrußland, 1923, 12; H.H. Schaeder, Iranica. I: Das Auge des Königs, Berlin 1934, 16–19.
55. W. Tomaschek, "Kritik der ältesten Nachrichten über den skythischen Norden", Sitzungsberichte der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 116 (1888), 715–780, here: 761; K. Müllenhoff, Deutsche Altertumskunde, Berlin 1893, vol. 3, 305–306; R. Grousset, L’empire des steppes, Paris 1941, 37 n. 3; I. Lebedensky, Les Scythes. La civilisation des steppes (VII-III siècles av. J.-C.), Paris 2001, 93.
56. Hinge 2005, pp. 89–94
57. West, Martin Litchfield (2007). Indo-European Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 267. ISBN 978-0-199-28075-9.
58. Jones, Lindsay (2005). Encyclopedia of Religion. Vol. 12. Macmillan Reference USA. pp. 8205–8208.
59. Cheung, Johnny (2007). Etymological Dictionary of the Iranian Verb. Leiden: Brill Publishers. pp. 378–379. ISBN 978-9-004-15496-4.
60. ^ Ustinova 1999, p. 67-128.
61. Raevskiy 1993, p. 17-18.
62. Tokhtasyev 2013.
63. Ustinova 1999, p. 29-66.
64. Herzfeld, Ernst (1947). Zoroaster and His World. Vol. 2. Princeton University Press. p. 516.
65. Bukharin 2013, p. 29-31.
66. Bukharin 2013, p. 31-32.
67. Bukharin 2013, p. 48-52.
68. Donaldson, John William (1844). Varronianus: A Critical and Historical Introduction to the Philological Study of the Latin Language. J. and J. J. Deighton. p. 32.
69. Ladislav Zgusta, "The old Ossetian Inscription from the River Zelenčuk" (Veröffentlichungen der Iranischen Kommission = Sitzungsberichte der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse 486) Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1987. ISBN 3-7001-0994-6Cited in Kim, Ronald (2003). "On the Historical Phonology of Ossetic: The Origin of the Oblique Case Suffix". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 123 (1): 43–72 . doi:10.2307/3217844. JSTOR 3217844.
70. "Alanic". LINGUIST List. Archived from the original on 3 May 2021. Retrieved 9 December 2024. The extinct unknown language of the Alans, who came from Asia and overran the Iberian Peninsula around AD 409, before being displaced by the Visigoths.
71. Ivantchik 1999a, pp. 156–158.

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v t e Scythia
Peoples	Achaei Agathyrsi Amardi Amazons Androphagi Arimaspi Budini Cercetae Cimmerians Cyrtians Dahae Parni Gelonians Melanchlaeni Saka Amyrgians Massagetae Indo-Scythians Sarmatians/Sauromatians Agaragantes Alans Aorsi Cissianti Limigantes Phoristae Rimphaces Roxolani Serboi Siraces Spondolici Yancai Iazyges Scythians Abii Cadusii Dareitai Gelae Hamaxobii Legae Sindi Spali Pazyryk culture Tagar culture Tapurei Tapuri Tauri Thyssagetae Uxii Zygii
Culture	Art Jewellery Culture Horizon Languages Religion
Regions	Kazakh Steppe Sistan Sakasene Parama Kamboja Kingdom Alania Scythia Minor Crimea Lower Danube Bosporan Kingdom Sarmatia Sarmatia Asiatica and Sarmatia Europea Pontic–Caspian steppe
Related	Iranian peoples History of the western steppe Bosporan Kingdom Sarmatism Iranian origin hypotheses of Croats and Serbs Scythian archers
Category:Scythia, Category:Populated places in ancient Scythia

• Eastern Iranian languages
• Extinct languages of Asia
• Extinct languages of Europe
• Languages attested from the 1st millennium BC
• Scythians
• Sarmatians
• History of Ural