Median language
Encyclopedia
The Median language was the language of the Medes
Medes
The MedesThe Medes...

. It is an Old Iranian language and classified as belonging to the northwestern Iranian subfamily which includes many other languages such as Azari, Zazaki, Gilaki, Mazandarani
Mazandarani
Mazandarani may refer to :* Mazandarani people, Mazandaranis, Tabarian people* Mazandarani language, A language spoken mainly in South Caspian region* Morteza Sadouqi Mazandarani, Iranian grand ayatollah...

, Kurdish
Kurdish language
Kurdish is a dialect continuum spoken by the Kurds in western Asia. It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of Indo-European languages....

 and Baluchi
Balochi language
Balochi is a Northwestern Iranian language. It is the principal language of the Baloch of Balochistan, Pakistan, eastern Iran and southern Afghanistan. It is also spoken as a second language by some Brahui. It is designated as one of nine official languages of Pakistan.-Vowels:The Balochi vowel...

.

Attestation

Median is only attested by numerous loanwords in Old Persian. Nothing is known of its grammar, "but it shares important phonological
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

 isogloss
Isogloss
An isogloss—also called a heterogloss —is the geographical boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or use of some syntactic feature...

es with Avestan, rather than Old Persian." "Under the Median rule [...] Median must to some extent have been the official Iranian language in western Iran.

No documents dating to Median times have been preserved, and it is not known what script these texts might have been in. "So far only one inscription of pre-Achaemenid times (a bronze plaque) has been found on the territory of Media. This is a cuneiform
Cuneiform
Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot*Cuneiform Records, a music record label...

 inscription composed in Akkadian
Akkadian language
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...

, perhaps in the 8th century BCE, but no Median names are mentioned in it.

Some modern research suggest that the so-called Linear Elamite
Linear Elamite
Linear Elamite is a Bronze Age writing system used in Elam, known from a few monumental inscriptions only. It was used contemporarily with Elamite Cuneiform and likely records the Elamite language....

—which still has not been deciphered—may have been written in the language of Medes, assuming Kutik-Inshushinak
Kutik-Inshushinak
Kutik-Inshushinak was king of Elam from about 2240 to 2220 BC , and the last from the Awan dynasty....

 being original Iranian name of Cyaxares
Cyaxares
Cyaxares, Cyaxares the Great or Hvakhshathra , the son of King Phraortes, was the first king of Media. According to Herodotus, Cyaxares, grandson of Deioces, had a far greater military reputation than his father or grandfather, therefore he is often being described as the first official Median...

, not a much earlier Elamite king.

Identity

A distinction from other ethno-linguistic groups (such as the Persians) is evident primarily in foreign sources, for instance from mid-9th century BCE Assyrian
Akkadian language
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...

 cuneiform sources and from Herodotus'
Herodotus
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...

 mid-5th century BCE second-hand account of the Perso-Median conflict. It is not known what the native name of the Median language was (this is also true for all other Old Iranian languages), or whether the Medes themselves nominally distinguished it from the languages of other Iranian peoples
Iranian peoples
The Iranian peoples are an Indo-European ethnic-linguistic group, consisting of the speakers of Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, as such forming a branch of Indo-European-speaking peoples...

.

Median is "presumably" a substrate of Old Persian. The Median element is readily identifiable because it did not share in the developments that were particular to Old Persian. Median forms "are found only in personal or geographical names [...] and some are typically from religious vocabulary and so could in principle also be influenced by Avestan
Avestan language
Avestan is an East Iranian language known only from its use as the language of Zoroastrian scripture, i.e. the Avesta, from which it derives its name...

." "Sometimes, both Median and Old Persian forms are found, which gave Old Persian a somewhat confusing and inconsistent look: 'horse,' for instance, is [attested in Old Persian as] both asa (OPers.) and aspa (Med.)."

Using comparative phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

 of proper names attested in Old Persian, Roland Kent notes several other Old Persian words that appear to be borrowings from Median, for example, taxma, 'brave', as in the proper name Taxmaspada. Diakonoff includes paridaiza, 'paradise'; vazraka, 'great' and xshayathiya, 'royal'. In the mid-5th century BCE, Herodotus (Histories
Histories (Herodotus)
The Histories of Herodotus is considered one of the seminal works of history in Western literature. Written from the 450s to the 420s BC in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, The Histories serves as a record of the ancient traditions, politics, geography, and clashes of various cultures that...

1.110) noted that spaka is the Median word for a female dog. This term and meaning are preserved in living Iranic languages such as Talyshi.

In the 1st century BCE, Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...

 (c. 64 BCE–24 CE) would note a relationship between the various Iranian peoples and their languages: "[From] beyond the Indus [...] Ariana
Greater Iran
Greater Iran refers to the regions that have significant Iranian cultural influence. It roughly corresponds to the territory on the Iranian plateau and its bordering plains, stretching from Iraq, the Caucasus, and Turkey in the west to the Indus River in the east...

 is extended so as to include some part of Persia
Pars
Pars may refer to:* Fārs Province, modern Persian language name for Pars Province, central Iranian kingdom of the ancient Persian empire* Pars News Agency and Pars Agency, names of the national Iranian news agency prior to the Iranian Revolution in 1979...

, Media
Medes
The MedesThe Medes...

, and the north of Bactria
Bactria
Bactria and also appears in the Zend Avesta as Bukhdi. It is the ancient name of a historical region located between south of the Amu Darya and west of the Indus River...

 and Sogdiana
Sogdiana
Sogdiana or Sogdia was the ancient civilization of an Iranian people and a province of the Achaemenid Empire, eighteenth in the list on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great . Sogdiana is "listed" as the second of the "good lands and countries" that Ahura Mazda created...

; for these nations speak nearly the same language." (Geography
Geographica (Strabo)
The Geographica , or Geography, is a 17-volume encyclopedia of geographical knowledge written in Greek by Strabo, an educated citizen of the Roman empire of Greek descent. Work can have begun on it no earlier than 20 BC...

, 15.2.1-15.2.8)

Traces of the (later) dialects of Media (not to be confused with the Median language) are preserved in the compositions of the fahlaviyat genre, that is, verse composed in the old dialects of the Pahla/Fahla regions of Iran's northwest. Consequently, these compositions have "certain linguistic affinities" with Parthian
Parthian language
The Parthian language, also known as Arsacid Pahlavi and Pahlavanik, is a now-extinct ancient Northwestern Iranian language spoken in Parthia, a region of northeastern ancient Persia during the rule of the Parthian empire....

, but the surviving specimens (which are from the 9th–18th centuries CE) are much influenced by Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

. For an enumeration of linguistic characteristics and vocabulary "deserving mention", see . The use of fahla (from Middle Persian
Middle Persian
Middle Persian , indigenously known as "Pârsig" sometimes referred to as Pahlavi or Pehlevi, is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times became a prestige dialect and so came to be spoken in other regions as well. Middle Persian is classified as a...

 pahlaw) to denote Media is attested from late Arsacid times; that is, it reflects the pre-Sassanid use of the word to denote "Parthia", which during Arsacid times included most of Media.

As Predecessor of Modern Iranian languages

A number of modern Iranian languages
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....

 spoken today have had medieval stages
Evolutionary linguistics
Evolutionary linguistics is the scientific study of the origins and development of language. The main challenge in this research is the lack of empirical data: spoken language leaves practically no traces. This led to an abandonment of the field for more than a century...

 with evidences found from citations in Classical and Early Modern Persian sources. According to G. Windfuhr, "[t]he modern [Iranian] languages of Azarbaijan and Central Iran, located in ancient Media Atropatene and
Media proper, are "Median" dialects" and those languages "continue lost local and regional language" of Old Median which is mainly known as "Medisms in Old Persian". The term coming from the regional name Pahlav/Fahlav (see fahlaviyat) in traditional medieval Persian sources and used to call "dialect poetry and other samples of locales in western Iran reflects the Parthian
Parthian Empire
The Parthian Empire , also known as the Arsacid Empire , was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Persia...

period" of those regions and their languages, "being survivals of the Median dialects have certain linguistic affinities with Parthian".
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