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Ossetic Ирон ӕвзаг, Iron ævzag
Spoken in:	Russia, Georgia, Turkey
Region:	North Ossetia, South Ossetia
Total speakers:	c. 700,000
Language family:	Indo-European  Indo-Iranian   Iranian    Eastern     Northeastern      Ossetic
Official status
Official language of:	North Ossetia, South Ossetia
Regulated by:	no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	os
ISO 639-2:	oss
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	oss
Image:Oseta latina skribo.jpg
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

Ossetic or Ossetian (in Ossetic: Ирон ӕвзаг, Iron ævzag or Иронау, Ironau) is a language spoken in Ossetia, a region on the slopes of the Caucasus mountains on the borders of Russia and Georgia.

The area in Russia is known as North Ossetia-Alania, while the area in Georgia is called South Ossetia or Samachablo . Ossetian speakers number about 700,000, sixty percent of whom live in Alania, and twenty percent in South Ossetia. <ref name="Joshua Project"> Joshua Project Statistics on Ossetians retrieved Aug 2006 [1]</ref>

Contents 1 History and classification 1.1 The evidence for Medieval Ossetic 2 Dialects 3 Grammar 4 Writing system 5 Language usage 6 Notes 7 See also 8 External links 9 Bibliography

[edit] History and classification

Ossetic is the spoken and literary language of the Ossetes, a people living in the central part of the Caucasus and constituting the basic population of the North-Ossetic ASSR, which belongs to the Russian Federation, and of the South-Ossetic Autonomous Oblast which belongs to the Georgian Republic. Ossetic belongs to the Northern subgroup of the Eastern-Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages. Thus, it is genetically related to the other Eastern-Iranian languages, e. g. Pashto and Yagnobi.

From deep antiquity (since the 7th-8th centuries B. C), the languages of the Iranian group were distributed in a vast territory including present-day Iran (Persia), Central Asia, and Southern Russia. Ossetic is the sole survivor of the northeastern branch of Iranian languages known as Scythian. The Scythian group included numerous tribes in Central Asia and Southern Russia, known in ancient sources as the Scythians, Massagetae, Saka, Sarmatians, Alans and Roksolans. The more easterly Khorezmians and the Sogdians were also closely affiliated, in linguistic terms.

Ossetian, together with Kurdish, Tati and Talyshi, is one of the main Iranian languages with a sizeable community of speakers in the Caucasus. It is descended from Alanic, the language of the Alans, medieval tribes emerging from the earlier Sarmatians. It is believed to be the only surviving descendant of a Sarmatian language. The closest genetically related language is the Yaghnobi language of Tajikistan, the only other living member of the Northeastern Iranian branch. <ref name="AbaevEnglish">Abaev, V. I. A Grammatical Sketch of Ossetic translated by Stephen P. Hill and edited by Herbert H. Paper, 1964 [2]</ref><ref name="thordarson"> Thordarson, Fridrik. 1989. Ossetic. Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, ed. by Rudiger Schmitt, 456-79. Wiesbaden: Reichert. [3] </ref> Ossetic has a plural formed by the suffix -ta, a feature it shares with Yaghnobi, Sarmatian and the now-extinct Sogdian; this is taken as evidence of a formerly wide-ranging Iranian-language dialect continuum on the Central Asian steppe. The Greek-derived names of ancient Iranian tribes in fact reflect this pluralization, e.g. Saromatae (Σαρομάται) and Masagetae (Μασαγέται). <ref>Ronald Kim, "On the Historical Phonology of Ossetic: Origins of the Oblique Case Suffix,"Journal of the American Oriental Society, Jan-Mar2003, Vol. 123 Issue 1, p. 69</ref>

[edit] The evidence for Medieval Ossetic

The earliest known written sample of Ossetic is an inscription which dates from the 10th to 12th centuries CE and was found near the River Zelenčuk in the northern Caucasus. The text is written in the Greek alphabet with special digraphs.

—ΣΑΧΗΡΗ ΦΟΥΡΤ ΧΟΒΣ
ΗΣΤΟΡΗ ΦΟΥΡΤ ΠΑΚΑΘΑΡ
ΠΑΚΑΘΑΡΗ ΦΟΥΡΤ ΑΝΠΑΛΑΝ
ΑΝΠΑΛΑΝΗ ΦΟΥΡΤ ΛΑΚ
ΑΝΗ ΤΖΗΡΘΕ

This transliterates as

—Saxir Furt Xovs
Istori Furt Bæqætar
Bæqætari Furt Æmbalan
Æmbalani Furt Lakani čirtī

This translates to English as "K., son of S., son of I., son of B., son of A.; [this is] their monument."<ref>op. cit., pp. 55-6. The original, following Zagusta, translates only initials; presumably this is because although the uninflected forms may be inferred, no written records of them have been found to date.</ref>

The only other extant record of Proto-Ossetic are the two lines of “Alanic” phrases appearing in the Theogony of John Tzetzes, a Byzantine poet and grammarian:

—Τοῖς ἀλανοῖς προσφθέγγομαι κατά τήν τούτων γλῶσσαν
Καλή ημέρα σου αὐθεντα μου αρχόντισσα πόθεν εἶσαι

Ταπαγχὰς μέσφιλι χσινὰ κορθὶ κάντα καὶ τ’άλλα
ἂν ὃ ἒχη ἀλάνισσα παπὰν φίλον ἀκούσαις ταῦτα
οὐκ αἰσχύνεσσι αὐθέντρια μου νὰ μου γαμὴ τὸ μουνί σου παπᾶς

τὸ φάρνετζ κίντζι μέσφιλι καίτζ φουὰ σαοῦγγε

<ref>Ladislav Zgusta, "The old Ossetic Inscription from the River Zelenčuk" (Veröffentlichungen der Iranischen Kommission = Sitzungsberichte der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse 486) Wien:Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1987. ISBN 3-7001-0994-6 in Kim, op.cit., 54.</ref>

The italicized portions above are Ossetic. Going beyond a direct transliteration of the Greek text, scholars have attempted a phonological reconstruction using the Greek as clues, thus, while τ (tau) would usually be given the value "t," it instead is "d," which is thought to be the way the early Ossetes would have pronounced it. The scholarly transliteration of the Alanic phrases is: "dæ ban x^wærz,mæ sfili, (æ)xsinjæ kurθi kændæ" and " The passage translates as:

—The Alans I greet in their language:"Good day to you my lord, lady, where are you from?"
"Good day to you my lord, lady, where are you from?" and other things:
When an Alan woman takes a priest as a lover, you might hear this:
"Aren't you ashamed, lordly lady, that a priest is sleeping with you?"
"Are you ashamed, bride of my lord, who will have a priest?"

<ref>ibid.</ref>

It is theorized that during the Proto-Ossetic phase, Ossetic underwent a process of phonological change conditioned by a Rhythmusgesetz or "Rhythym-law" whereby nouns were divided into two classes, those heavily or lightly stressed. "Heavy-stem" nouns possessed a "heavy" long vowel or diphthong, and were stressed on the first-occurring syllable of this type; "light-stem" nouns were stressed on their final syllable. This is precisely the situation observed in the earliest (though admittedly scanty) records of Ossetic presented above.<ref>op. cit., 47</ref> This situation also obtains in Modern Ossetic, although the emphasis in Digor is also affected by the "openness" of the vowel. <ref>op. cit., 51</ref> The trend is also found in a Jassic glossary dating from 1422.<ref>op. cit., 55</ref>

[edit] Dialects

There are two important dialects: Iron and Digor—the former being the more widely spoken. Written Ossetian may be immediately recognized by its use of the æ, a letter to be found in no other language using the Cyrillic alphabet. A third dialect of Ossetic, Jassic, was formerly spoken in Hungary. The overwhelming majority of Ossetes speak the Iron dialect, and the literary language is based on it. The creator of the Ossetic literary language is the national poet Kosta Xetagurov (1859-1906).<ref name="AbaevEnglish"/>

[edit] Grammar

Main article: Ossetic grammar

According to Ossetic researcher V.I. Abaev,

{{{1}}}

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica 2006 <ref name="Britannica 2006"> Ossetic language. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 26, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9057571 </ref> Ossetic preserves many archaic features of Old Iranian, such as eight cases and verbal prefixes. The eight cases are not,however, the original Indo-Iranian cases, which were eroded due to pronunciation changes. The modern cases, except the nominative, are derived from a single surviving oblique case that was reanalyzed into seven new cases by Ossetic speakers.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Writing system

Image:1agRastdzinad.jpg Prior to the Russian conquest, Ossetic was reportedly an unwritten language. After the Russian conquest Ossetians used Cyrillic script: the first Ossetic book being published in Cyrillic letters in 1798. At the same time Georgian script was used in some regions to the south of Caucasian mountains: in 1820 I.Yalguzidze published an alphabetic primer, modifying Georgian alphabet with 3 special characters. That Georgian-based script has been in use in the territory of South Ossetia (Georgian autonomy) in 1937–1954.

The modern Cyrillic alphabet was created by a Russian scientist of Finnish origin Andreas Sjögren in 1844: there were separate letters for each sound in that alphabet (much like in the modern Abkhaz alphabet). After a brief experiment with the Latin alphabet, Soviet authorities returned to the Cyrillic alphabet, with digraphs introduced to replace most diacritics.

The modern Cyrillic alphabet (used since 1937):

А

Ӕ

Б

В

Г

Гъ

Д

Дж

Дз

Е

Ё

Ж

З

И

Й

К

Къ

Л

М

Н

О

П

Пъ

Р

С

Т

Тъ

У

Ф

Х

Хъ

Ц

Цъ

Ч

Чъ

Ш

Щ

Ъ

Ы

Ь

Э

Ю

Я

a

ӕ

б

в

г

гъ

д

дж

дз

е

ё

ж

з

и

й

к

къ

л

м

н

о

п

пъ

р

с

т

тъ

у

ф

х

хъ

ц

цъ

ч

чъ

ш

щ

ъ

ы

ь

э

ю

я

The Latin alphabet (used 1923-1937):

A

Æ

B

C

Č

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

Š

T

U

V

X

Y

Z

Ž

a

æ

b

c

č

d

e

f

g

h

i

j

k

l

m

n

o

p

q

r

s

š

t

u

v

x

y

z

ž

Digraphs for representing one sound were used in the Roman alphabet too (ch, čh, th, dž and some others). The æ sound (IPA: [æ]) is extremely common in the language, a feature it shares with Persian.

[edit] Language usage

The first printed book in Ossetic appeared in 1798. The first newspaper, Iron Gazet, appeared on July 23 1906 in Vladikavkaz.

While Ossetic is the official language in both South and North Ossetia (along with the Russian), its official use is limited to publishing new laws in Ossetic newspapers.

There are two daily newspapers in Ossetic: Ræstdzinad (Рæстдзинад, "Truth") in the North and Xurzærin (Хурзæрин, "The Sun") in the South. Some smaller newspapers, such as district newspapers, use Ossetic for part of articles. There is a monthly magazine Max dug (Мах дуг, "Our era"), mostly devoted to contemporary Ossetic fiction and poetry.

Ossetic is taught in secondary schools for all pupils. Native Ossetic speakers also take courses in Ossetic literature.

[edit] Notes

[edit] See also

• Ossetia
• Alans
• North Ossetia-Alania

[edit] External links

• Abaev, V.I. http://www.azargoshnasp.net/languages/ossetian/ossetian.htm A grammatical sketch of Ossetic Russian version)
• Abaev, V.I. Ossetian Language and Folklore, USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow-Leningrad, 1949
• Nasidze et al., Genetic Evidence Concerning the Origins of South and North Ossetians. Annals of Human Genetics 68 (6), 588-599(2004) [4].
• Ossetic language page (in Russian) at the Minority languages of Russia on the Net project
• History of the Ossetian writing system (in Russian) and a comprehensive table of characters
• Some materials in English and partly French
• Ossetic section of the Rosetta Project
• Omniglot - Ossetian (Ирон æвзаг / Дигорон æвзаг)

[edit] Bibliography

• Lora Arys-Djanaieva. Parlons Ossète. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2004, ISBN 2-7475-6235-2.

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br:Oseteg

ca:Osset da:Ossetisk de:Ossetische Sprache es:Idioma osético eo:Oseta lingvo fa:آسی fo:Ossetiskt fr:Ossète ko:오세트어 id:Bahasa Ossetia os:Ирон æвзаг it:Lingua osseta nl:Ossetisch ja:オセット語 no:Ossetisk språk pl:Język osetyjski pt:Osseto ru:Осетинский язык sk:Osetčina fi:Osseetti sv:Ossetiska tr:Osetçe zh:奧塞梯語