ABSTRACT
Iranian Languages form a branch of the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-European family, which are probably spoken by more than 80 million people in a wide area from Turkey (with Zaza, as the westernmost) to China (with Sarikoli, as the easternmost Iranian language), and mainly cover the whole of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. The development of the Iranian languages may be studied within three major historical periods: Old Iranian (up to the fourth/third centuries BC), Middle Iranian (from the fourth/third centuries BC to the eighth/ninth centuries AD), and New Iranian. Among the Old Iranian languages, two are known and attested, Avestan and Old Persian.
However, the Middle Iranian languages (c. 300 BC-AD 950) are much more numerous; they are divided into two major groups, western and eastern. Modern Iranian languages fall into two major ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ groups, with ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ subgroups for each. Within the Indo-European family, the Iranian languages are satem languages, e.g.
Proto-Indo-European *k
