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Sogdian language

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	Topics Sogdian language Topic Home The Sogdian language is a Middle Iranian language that was spoken in SogdianaSogdiana Sogdiana was an ancient civilization of Persian peoples, then was a province of the Achaemenian Empire, the eighteenth in th... , located in modern day UzbekistanUzbekistan Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan , is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia.... and TajikistanTajikistan The Republic of Tajikistan is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia.... (chief cities: SamarkandSamarkand Samarkand is the third-largest city in Uzbekistan and the capital of Samarqand Province.... , PanjakentPanjakent Panjakent is a city in the Sughd province of Tajikistan on the Zeravshan river - population 33,000.... , FerganaFergana Fergana is a city, the capital of Fergana Province in eastern Uzbekistan, at the southern edge of the Fergana Valley in sout... ). Sogdian is one of the most important Middle Iranian languages, along with Middle PersianMiddle Persian Middle Persian or Pahlavi is the Iranian language spoken during Sassanian times.... and ParthiaParthia Parthia was a civilization situated in the northeast of modern Iran, but at its height covering all of Iran proper, as well... n. It possesses a large literary corpus. The language is usually assigned to the Northeastern branch of the Iranian languagesFacts About Iranian languages The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family with an estimated number of 150-200 million native s... . No direct evidence of an earlier version of the language ("Old Sogdian") has been found, although mention of the area in the Old Persian inscriptions means that a separate and recognisable Sogdiana existed at least since the Achaemenid era (559-323 BCE). Sogdian possesses a more conservative grammarGrammar Grammar is the study of rules governing the use of language.... and morphologyMorphology (linguistics) In linguistics, morphology is the study of word structure.... than Middle Persian. The economic and political importance of the language guaranteed its survival in the first few centuries after the Islamic conquest of Sogdiana in the early eighth century CE. The earliest Modern Persian texts were written in Sogdiana under the patronage of SamanidFacts About Samanid The Samanids were a Persian dynasty in Central Asia and eastern Iran, named after its founder Saman Khoda.... kings, with the result that many Sogdian words entered Modern Persian. Various Sogdian pieces have been found in the TurfanTurfan Turfan is an oasis city in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.... text corpus. They consist almost entirely of religious works by Manichaean and ChristianChristian A Christian is a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, referred to as Christ.... writers. A dialect of Sogdian, called YaghnobiYaghnobi language The Yaghnobi language Also transcribed as: Yaghnabi, Yagnobi or Yagnabi.... , has survived into the 21st century. It is spoken by mountain dwellers in the Yaghnob valleyYaghnobi people Yaghnobi people is the name of a people who live in mountainous Tajikistan.... . Writing system Like all the writing systems employed for Middle Iranian languages, the Sogdian script ultimately derives from the Aramaic script. Like its close relative the Pahlavi writing system, written Sogdian contains many logograms or ideograms, which were Aramaic words written to represent native spoken ones. The Sogdian script is the direct ancestor of the UyghurUyghur language Uyghur in Chinese and ????????? in Russianis a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, formerly also Si... script, itself the forerunner of the Mongolian scriptMongolian script The classic vertical Mongolian script was the first of many writing systems created for the Mongolian language, and the most... . As in other writing systems descended from the Semitic scriptHistory of the alphabet The history of the alphabet starts in ancient Egypt.... , there are no signs for short vowels. The consonantal signs ’ y w can stand for the long vowels [a: i: u:] respectively. In transcribing Sogdian script into Roman letters, Aramaic ideograms are often noted by means of capitals. Sample Sogdian text (transliteration): MN s?wdy-k MLK’ dy-w’šty-c ’t x’xsrc xwßw ’pšwnw drwth ?-rß nm’cyw Word-by-word translation: From Sogdiana's King Dewashtic to Khakhsar's Khuv Afshun, (good) health (and) many salutation... External links by P. Oktor Skjærvø