Scythian languages

Scythian and Sarmatian are the names of the East Iranian dialects spoken by the Scythian/Sarmatian tribes of cattlebreeders in Southern Russia between 8th century BC and 5th century AD.

The two branches are divided mainly chronologically, rather than geographically:

• Scythian – archaic version; mainly during classic antiquity
• Sarmatian

Sometimes, the Scythian and Sarmatian languages are combined into one name: Scytho-Sarmatian languages.

Scythians migrated from Central Asia toward Eastern Europe, occupying today's Southern Russia and Ukraine. They disappeared from history after the Hunnish invasion of the 5th century and most people speaking Scythian were probably assimilated by the Turkish/Tatar and Slavic people. However, part of the Scythians moved toward the Caucasus and modern Ossetic may be derived from their language.

No written text in Scythian was ever found, but we know several toponyms, tribal names and many personal names from the Greek inscriptions found at the Greek colonies on the Scythian shore of the Black Sea and we can also analyze modern Ossetian for meanings of the words known from Greek texts. Herodotus, for example, reports that the Amazons are called Oiorpata by the Scythians, from oior, meaning "man", and pata, meaning "to kill"; and elsewhere he writes that arima was the Scythian word for "one" and spu for "eye". The accuracy of his account is hard to determine, but it may well be accurate, which causes problems for those who claim that Scythian was an Iranian language.

Many toponyms and hydronyms of the Russian and Ukrainian steppe are believed to be of Scythian origin. For example, the name of the river Don derives from *don, meaning water or river (a hypothetical Scythian form reconstructed from the modern Ossetic). However, such hydronyms are also found in Scotland (the river Don) and England. Older references posited a PIE root *danu, that meant 'river; flowing', from which Danuvius (the Danube river) is also said to derive.

External link

• Scythian language (in Spanish)