Table of Contents

• IRAN vi. IRANIAN LANGUAGES AND SCRIPTS (3) Writing Systems

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  Writing systems for Iranian languages include cuneiform (Old Persian); scripts descended from “imperial” Aramaic, two Syriac scripts, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic, Georgian, and Latin.

• IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (1) Overview

  Gernot Windfuhr

  This entry will discuss the non-Iranian languages spoken in Iran in the course of its history as the result of various peoples settling in parts of Iran and interacting with Iranian-speaking peoples who began to migrate to Iranian territories at the beginning of second millennium BCE. The entry includes linguistic sketches of languages or dialects.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (2) In Pre-Islamic Iran

  Gernot Windfuhr

  Of the three known pre-Islamic languages (Urartian, Kassite, and Elamite), only Urartian and Elamite are fairly well known.

• IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (3) Elamite

  Gernot Windfuhr

  Elamite was spoken in the southern Zagros regions, which correspond to the ancient cultural-political entities of Elam and Anshan, and expanded into Akkadian-speaking Susiana.

• IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (4) Urartian

  Gernot Windfuhr

  Urartian was most likely the dominant vernacular around Lake Van and the upper Zab valley. It was written from the late ninth to seventh century BCE in the empire of Urartu.

• IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (5) Kassite

  Gernot Windfuhr

  The Kassites, Akkadian Kaššu, were mountain tribes probably somewhere in the central Zagros who ruled Babylon from the sixteenth to the middle of the twelfth century BCE.

• IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (6) in Islamic Iran

  Gernot Windfuhr

  The non-Iranian languages spoken today in Iran include members of the following language families: (1) Altaic, (2) Afro-Asiatic Semitic, (3) Indo-European, (4) Caucasian (5) Dravidian.

• IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (7) Turkic Languages

  Gernot Windfuhr

  In Iran, there are two distinct branches of Turkic: Oghuz Turkic languages and dialects that represent the southwestern branch of Turkic, and Khalaj, which presents a tiny branch of its own.

• IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (8) Semitic Languages

  Gernot Windfuhr

   First Aramaic and then Arabic had considerable contact with Iranian languages. Their impact differs.

• IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (9) Arabic

  Gernot Windfuhr

  Most extensive was the Arab settlement in eastern Iran and Greater Khorasan (including northwestern Afghanistan, and Central Asia, including Marv and Bukhara).