Talk:Avestan language

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Contents 1 original work? 2 Needs serious editing! 3 Dravidian loanwords in Avestan 4 Links 5 Avestan is an extict language 6 Implosives?? 7 Classification not certain??? 8 Table incomplete 9 about Iraqian Kurdish 10 Alphabet Section 11 Artificial Young Avestan - What is "artificial"?

[edit] original work?

Is this original work? -- Zoe

Probably not. Most of the other stuff entered by the same user was copyright violation. -- Zocky 03:06 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

I have rewritten this page from scratch. -- Paul Barlow

[edit] Needs serious editing!

The article needs serious editing. The text is not called Zend Avesta, rather just the Avesta (Middle Persian Abestag). Zand is the commentary on the Avesta. I am going to edit it and add to the contents.

I know where your coming from. I wouldn't mind using the Zand, except that the Zand was written in Pahlavi and thus irrelevant to this article! Also "Vidaevdat" should be Vidēdāt acc. to Boyce and corresponds to the transliteration system given down the page. The more common name "Vendidād" might be mentioned in parenthesis just to avoid confusion. Khirad 10:51, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

My problem throughout wikipedia is the usage of "Magi". It is inaccurate and suggestive. Nowhere have I seen anyone use the correct Dastur, Mobed, or Ervad. Khirad 10:52, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dravidian loanwords in Avestan

Is there any Dravidian loan in Avestan? Meursault2004 16:10, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't think so, though there may be in its descendant: Pashto, since the Dravidian peoples once extended all the way into the areas Pashto is now spoken, and there remain pockets to this day. Could an odd loan word have made its way into Avestan? Anything's possible! But was there considerable influence? No. Even the Indo-Aryan language Hindi hasn't absorbed much of its neighboring Dravidian langs. Come to think of it, why hasn't anyone mentioned Pashto? Khirad 10:51, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

So you think Pashto is a modern descendant of Avestan? Interesting, I haven't heard that before. Well now it's time for something else: the Indo-Aryan language Hindi hasn't absorbed much of its neighboring Dravidian langs, but how about Sanskrit? It has absorbed quite a few like phala (fruit) etc. Furthermore the Dravidian languages have influenced the phonology of Sanskrit. The so-called retroflex phonemes are loans from Dravidian. Meursault2004 13:56, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Links

I changed Devanagri to Devanāgarī not just because it's correct, but because the other spelling is a pet peeve of mine! Also added omniglot link for goodness sake! Khirad 10:51, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Avestan is an extict language

Avestan, an extinct Indo-Iranian language related to Old Persian and Sanskrit. Heja Helweda 01:54, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Implosives??

I never heard of Avestan or any other Iranian languages using implosives. Also, the presence of a "post-uvular" nasal is dubious. Avestan alphabet on www.avesta.org does not include those sounds.

I got rid of them. The table is now correct.--AlBargit

[edit] Classification not certain???

What is the nonesense about the classification of Avestan as an Eastern Iranian language being unclear? Where did you get the idea that the seperation of the Eastern and Western Iranian are "poorly understood"? If you have read anything written since 1950's on (it is a problem, people often go back to the 19th century works on Avestan), you will see that it is always marked as an Eastern Iranian Language. The differences are clear and very well understood, so I beg to differ with the statement here. Avestan has classical East Iranian phonological tendencies (z for WIr. d, for example) and has been confidently put as a Northeastern Iranian language. no doubt about it.--71.106.119.109 08:59, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Table incomplete

It seems as though the table doesn't address what consonants are represented by ϑ, t̰, ṇ, ṣ̌,. I'm assuming the last two are simply retroflex, but I really have no idea about the first two. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:06, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] about Iraqian Kurdish

This sie is gift from Qurdian separatist and read terrorists. The Avestan language is EASTERN iranian (as Pashto, Ossetian and others) and NON Kurdian language. Stop with propaganda of Greater Kurdistan!

[edit] Alphabet Section

Just Curious - which part of "After the >>alleged<< destruction of the Achaemenid palace library by Alexander the Great" is more of an "allegation" than the rest of History in general... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.112.25.6 (talk) 19:47, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Artificial Young Avestan - What is "artificial"?

The passage that contains "The Artificial Young Avestan however is a corrupt form of the language..." seems like a sentence constructed to express an opinion.

All human languages are "artificial". i.e. they are all humanly created. All languages go through "corruption" as they mutate or evolve. Based on such an opinion therefore, today's English would be a corruption of Chaucer's definition of the language. Or, perhaps, Chaucer's definition is "artificial"?

I hope someone knowledgeable about this subject would remove the words "corrupt" and "artificial" and rephrase them in less subjective fashion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hence Jewish Anderstein (talk • contribs) 19:25, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I see where you are coming from, but thats not whats meant. See, at some point the priests themselves could not write Avestan. But the language was considered sacred, so additions had to be made in that language to give them doctrinal legitimacy. So, the priests tried anyway, and the result is "artificial Younger Avestan." Its a copy-and-paste job of existing phrases with a lot of guesswork in between. It would as if I had tried to write this comment in Middle English (worse though, since Avestan is highly inflected). -- Fullstop (talk) 12:40, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Why not say that through oral transmission, some corruption possibly occured. I believe the Young Avesta was used to decipher Old Persian. What I am understand from your statement is the priests arbitrarly wrote in young Avesta without understanding it. Where-as Young Avesta seems to be just an evolution from Old Avesta and if there are corruptions, is due to the fact that it became a dead language and oral transmission is not perfect, hence some corruption might have occured. --alidoostzadeh (talk) 15:40, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Reading the article, it seems the Artifical language is applied to Vendidad. Any sources for this statement? --alidoostzadeh (talk) 15:42, 28 March 2008 (UTC)