| Middle Persian | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Iran | |
| Language extinction: | evolved into Modern Persian by the 9th century | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Southwestern Middle Persian |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | pal (see text left) | |
| ISO 639-3: | pal | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Iran topics. According to some definitions an extinct language is a Language which no longer has any speakers, whereas a dead language is a language which is no longer spoken The 9th century is the period from 801 to 900 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian / Common Era. List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily Indo-Iranian. The Western Iranian languages are a subgroup of the Iranian languages, attested from the time of Old Persian (6th century BC The Western Iranian languages are a subgroup of the Iranian languages, attested from the time of Old Persian (6th century BC ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages ISO 639 -3 (ISO 639-32007 is an international standard for Language codes The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's | ||
Middle Persian is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times (224-654 CE) became a prestige dialect and so came to be spoken in other regions as well. The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily Indo-Iranian. The Sassanid Empire or Sassanian Dynasty or Sassanian Dynasty (ساسانیان) is the name used for the third Iranian dynasty and the second Persian empire A prestige dialect is the Dialect spoken by the most prestigious people in a Speech community which is large enough to sustain more than one dialect Middle Persian is classified as Western Iranian language. The Western Iranian languages are a subgroup of the Iranian languages, attested from the time of Old Persian (6th century BC It descends from Old Persian and is the nominal ancestor of Modern Persian. The Old Persian language is one of the two attested Old Iranian languages (besides Avestan)
The native name for Middle Persian (and perhaps for Old Persian also) was Pārsik, "(language) of Pārs", present-day Fārs Province. Fars (pronounced/fɑː(ɹs ( Persian: فارس Fârs) is one of the 30 provinces of Iran. The word is consequently (the origin of) the native name for the Modern Persian language.
Middle Persian was most frequently written in the Pahlavi writing system, which was also the preferred writing system for other Middle Iranian languages. The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily Indo-Iranian. Other forms of written Middle Persian include Pazend, a system that - unlike Pahlavi - did not have Aramaic logograms and also has a different script. The Pazend or Pazand is one of the Writing systems used for the Middle Persian language Aramaic is a Semitic language with A logogram, or logograph, is a Grapheme which represents a word or a Morpheme (a meaningful unit of language Middle Persian should also not be confused with Manichean Middle Persian, which is a geographically and historically distinct development.
The ISO 639 language code for Middle Persian is 'pal', which reflects the confusion resulting from the post-Sassanid-era use of 'Pahlavi' (a writing system) as the name for Middle Persian (a language). ISO 639 is the set of international standards that lists short codes for Language names "Most texts, which include translated versions of the Zoroastrian canon, are 14th century transcriptions of texts from the 9th to the 11th century, when it had long ceased to be a spoken language. Zoroastrianism (ˌzɔroʊˈæstriəˌnɪzəm is the religion and philosophy based on the teachings " This late form "is thus not representative of the real state of Middle Persian. "[1]
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Transition from Old Persian
In the classification of the Iranian languages, the Middle Period includes those languages which were common in Iran from the fall of the Achaemenids in the 3rd century BCE up to the fall of the Sassanids in the 7th century CE. The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenid Persian Empire ( haχɒmaneʃijɒn (558–330 BC was the first of the Persian Empires to rule over significant portions of The Sassanid Empire or Sassanian Dynasty or Sassanian Dynasty (ساسانیان) is the name used for the third Iranian dynasty and the second Persian empire
The most important and distinct development in the structure of Iranian languages of this period is the transformation from the synthetic form of the Old Period (Old Persian and Avestan) to an analytic form:
- nouns, pronouns, and adjectives lost their case inflections
- the dual was lost
- prepositions were used to indicate the different roles of words. The Old Persian language is one of the two attested Old Iranian languages (besides Avestan) Avestan is an Eastern Old Iranian language that was used to compose the sacred hymns and canon of the Zoroastrian Avesta. In morphological typology (in linguistics an isolating language (also analytic language) is any Language in which words are composed of In Linguistics and Grammar, a pronoun is a Pro-form that substitutes for a (including a noun phrase consisting of a single Noun) with or In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the In Grammar, the case of a Noun or Pronoun indicates its Grammatical function in a greater Phrase or Clause; such as the In Grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as tense, mood, voice In Grammar, a preposition is a Part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase.
- many tenses began to be formed from a composite form
One can imagine that these developments had to do with the fact that Old Persian, as it appears in the inscriptions of Bistun and Persepolis, could have not possibly been the language of conversation, and it could not have been simplified so much in only 500 years. Grammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at during or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs The Old Persian language is one of the two attested Old Iranian languages (besides Avestan) The Behistun Inscription (also Bisitun or Bisutun, Modern Persian: بیستون; Old Persian: Bagastana, meaning "the god's Persepolis ( Old Persian: Pārsa, Modern Persian: تخت جمشید/پارسه Takht-e Jamshid or Chehel Minar) was the ceremonial Thus, one can conclude that Old Persian had been the language of literary writing, which was very different from the spoken language. The Old Persian language is one of the two attested Old Iranian languages (besides Avestan) On the other hand, written Middle Persian was greatly influenced by the spoken form of the language and it could then be said that written Middle Persian is only an indirect continuation of written Old Persian.
Transition to New Persian
The modern-day descendant of Middle Persian is New Persian. The changes between late Middle and Early New Persian were very gradual, and in the 10th-11th centuries, Middle Persian texts were still intelligible to speakers of Early New Persian. However, there are definite differences that had taken place already by the 10th century:
- Sound changes, such as
- the dropping of unstressed initial vowels
- the epenthesis of vowels in initial consonant clusters
- the loss of -g when word final
- change of initial w- to either b- or (gw- → g-)
- Changes in the verbal system, notably the loss of distinctive subjunctive and optative forms, and the increasing use of verbal prefixes to express verbal moods
- Changes in the vocabulary, especially the substitution of a large number of Arabic loanwords for words of native origin
- The substitution of Arabic script for Pahlavi script. In Phonology, epenthesis (/əˈpɛnθəsɪs/ Ancient Greek ἐπένθεσις - epenthesis from epi "on" + en "in" A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation
Pahlavi Middle Persian is the language of quite a large body of Zoroastrian literature which details the traditions and prescriptions of the Zoroastrian religion which was the state religion of Sassanid Iran (224 to ca. Zoroastrianism (ˌzɔroʊˈæstriəˌnɪzəm is the religion and philosophy based on the teachings The Sassanid Empire or Sassanian Dynasty or Sassanian Dynasty (ساسانیان) is the name used for the third Iranian dynasty and the second Persian empire 650) before Iran was invaded by the Arab armies that spread Islam. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Iran topics. The araB gene Promoter is a bacterial promoter activated by e L-arabinose binding For other meanings including people named 'Islam' see Islam (disambiguation.
Instances
Below is transliteration and translation of the first page of the facsimile known as Arda Wiraz Namag or The Book of the Righteous Wiraz, originally written in Pahlavi script. The Book of Arda Viraf is a Zoroastrian religious text that describes the dream-journey of a devout Zoroastrian (the 'Viraf' of the story through the next world [2]
| “ |
Edon guyand ke yew-bâr ahlâw (righteous) Zartosht den padiroft, andar jahân ravâ be-kard. Tâ bowandegih i sesad sâl, den andar bezagih (holiness, purity) , u mardom andar be-gumânih budand. U pas, gujasteh (sinful) , gannâ (foul, corrupt) minu druwand, gumân kardan i mardomân be in den râ, an gujasteh Aleksandar i Arumyi (Roman) i Muzrâyi-mânishn (Egyptian; resident of Egypt ) wiyâbânid (illusioned; led astray) u be grân sezd u nabard u bishe be Eran-shahr frestâd. Oy Eran-dehibud ozad (murdered) , u dar (court) u khodâih beshoft u wirân kard; u en den chon hame Avestâ u Zand [ke] bar gâv-pustihâ i wirâsteh, be âb i zarr nebeshteh, andar Stakhr i Pabagân be diž i 'nibisht' nahâdastad, oy, patiyârah i bad-bakht i ahlomog (heretic) i druwand i andar-kerdâr, Aleksandar i Arumyi Mu. . . " |
” |
| “ |
Thus they have said that once the righteous Zoroaster accepted a religion, he established it in the world. After/Within the period of 300 years (the) religion remained in holiness and the people were in peace and without any doubt. But then, the sinful, corrupt and deceitful spirit, in order to cause people doubt this religion, illusioned/led astray that Alexander the Roman, resident of Egypt, and sent him to Eran with much anger and violence. He murdered the ruler of Eran and ruined court, and the religion, as all the Avesta and Zand (which were) written on the ox-hide and decorated with water-of-gold (gold leaves) and had been placed/kept in Stakhr of Papak in the 'citadel of the writings. ' That wretched, ill-fated, heretic, evil/sinful Alexander, Roman, (resident of) Eg. . . " |
” |
See also
- Old Persian
- History of Persian language
- Pahlavi Literature
- Iranian Languages vocabulary comparison table
References and bibliography
- ^ Linguist List - Description of Pehlevi. The Old Persian language is one of the two attested Old Iranian languages (besides Avestan) Middle Persian literature is Persian literature of the 1st millennium AD, especially of the Sassanid period Eastern Michigan University (2007).
- ^ http://www.sfu.ca/~rmehri/Parsik/index.htm retrieved 28 January 2008
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