Median language

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The expression Median language (also 'Medean-' or 'Medic language') refers to the language of the tribes of the Iranian Medes.^[1] Together with Kurdish, Parthian, Zazaki, and Baluchi, the language of the Medes is classified as a northwestern Iranian language. ^[2]

Median is only attested by numerous loanwords in Old Persian. Nothing is known of its grammar, "but it shares important phonological isoglosses with Avestan, rather than Old Persian." "Under the Median rule [...] Median must to some extent have been the official Iranian language in western Iran."^[3]

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 cuneiform sources^[4] and from Herodotus' 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.

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 inscription composed in Akkadian, perhaps in the 8th century BCE, but no Median names are mentioned in it." "Some scholars are inclined to assume that the so-called Old Persian cuneiform was in fact Median cuneiform, which later was borrowed by the Persians."^[5]

Median is "presumably"^[3] a substrate for Old Persian. The Median element is readily identifyable because it did not share in the developments that were peculiar 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." "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.)." ^[3]

Using comparative phonology of proper names attested in Old Persian, Roland Kent^[6] notes several other Old Persian words that appear to be borrowings from Median, for example, taxma, 'brave', as in the proper name Taxmaspada. Diakonoff^[7] includes farnah, 'glory' (also attested in Avestan as khvarɘnah); paridaiza, 'paradise'; vazraka, 'great' and xshayathiya, 'royal'. In the mid-5th century BCE, Herodotus (Histories 1.110^[8]) 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 (c. 64 BCE – 24 CE) would note a relationship between the various Iranian peoples and their languages: "[From] beyond the Indus [...] Ariana is extended so as to include some part of Persia, Media, and the north of Bactria and Sogdiana; for these nations speak nearly the same language." (Geography, 15.2.1-15.2.8^[9])

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