Ossetian ( , , ),AHD:Ossetian commonly referred to as Ossetic and rarely as Ossete, is an Eastern Iranic language that is spoken predominantly in Ossetia, a region situated on both sides of the Greater Caucasus, on the Russia-Georgia border. It is the native language of the Ossetian people, and a relative and possibly a descendant of the extinct Scythian, Sarmatian, and Alanic languages.
The northern half of the Ossetian region is part of Russia and is known as North Ossetia–Alania, while the southern half is part of the de facto country of South Ossetia (recognized by the United Nations as Russian-occupied territory that is de jure part of Georgia). Ossetian-speakers number about 614,350, with 451,000 recorded in Russia per the 2010 Russian census.
Despite Ossetian being the official languages of both North and South Ossetia, since 2009 UNESCO has listed Ossetian as "vulnerable".
History and classification
Ossetian is the spoken and literary language of the Ossetians, an Iranian ethnic group living in the central part of the Caucasus and constituting the basic population of North Ossetia–Alania, which is part of the Russian Federation, and of the de facto country of South Ossetia (recognized by the United Nations as de jure part of the Republic of Georgia). The Ossetian language belongs to the Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages (as hinted by its endonym: ). Within Iranian, it is placed in the Eastern subgroup and further to a Northeastern sub-subgroup, but these are areal rather than genetic groups. The other Eastern Iranian languages, such as Pashto (spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan) and Yaghnobi (spoken in Tajikistan), show certain commonalities, but also deep-reaching divergences from Ossetian.
From the 7th–8th centuries BCE, the languages of the Iranian group were distributed across a vast territory spanning present-day Iran (Persia), Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus. Ossetian is the sole survivor of the branch of Iranian languages known as Scythian. The Scythian group included numerous tribes, known in ancient sources as the Scythians, the Massagetae, the Saka, the Sarmatians, the Alans, and the Roxolani. The more easterly Khwarazm and Sogdians were also closely affiliated linguistically.
Ossetian, together with Kurdish, Tat, and Talysh, is one of the main Iranian languages with a sizable community of speakers in the Caucasus. As it is descended from Alanic, spoken by the medieval Alans, who emerged from the earlier Sarmatians, it is believed to be the only surviving descendant of a Sarmatian language. The closest genetically related language may be the Yaghnobi language of Tajikistan, the only other living Northeastern Iranian language.Abaev, V. I. A Grammatical Sketch of Ossetic. Composite translation of a 1952 supplement to A. M. Kasaev's Ossetic-Russian Dictionary and a 1959 version. Translated by Gabor Horvath and Stephen P. Hill. Edited by Herbert H. Paper. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1964. Thordarson, Fridrik. 1989. Ossetic. Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, ed. by Rudiger Schmitt, 456-479. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Ossetian 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 names of ancient Iranian tribes (as transmitted through Ancient Greek) in fact reflect this pluralization, e.g. Saromatae () and Masagetae ().
Evidence for Medieval Ossetian
The earliest known written sample of Ossetian is an inscription (the Zelenchuk Inscription) which dates back to the 10th–12th centuries and is named after the river near which it was found: the Bolshoy Zelenchuk River in Arkhyz, Russia. The text is written in the Greek alphabet, with special digraphs.
(The original, following Zgusta, translates only initials; presumably this is because although the uninflected forms may be inferred, no written records of them have been found to date.)
The only other extant record of Proto-Ossetic are the two lines of "Alanic" phrases appearing in the Theogony of John Tzetzes, a 12th century Byzantine poet and grammarian:
The portions in bold face above are Ossetian. 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: "dӕ ban xʷӕrz, mӕ sfili, (ӕ)xsinjӕ kurθi kӕndӕ" and "du farnitz, kintzӕ mӕ sfili, kajci fӕ wa sawgin?"; equivalents in modern Ossetian would be "Dӕ bon xwarz, me'fšini 'xšinӕ, kurdigӕj dӕ?" and "(De') f(s)arm neč(ij), kinźi ӕfšini xӕcc(ӕ) (ku) fӕwwa sawgin". The passage translates as:
Marginalia of Greek religious books, with some parts (such as headlines) of the book translated into Old Ossetic, have recently been found.
It is theorized that during the Proto-Ossetic phase, Ossetian underwent a process of phonological change conditioned by a Rhythmusgesetz or "Rhythm-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 Ossetian presented above. This situation also obtains in Modern Ossetian, although the emphasis in Digor is also affected by the "openness" of the vowel. The trend is also found in a glossary of the Jassic dialect dating from 1422.
Usage
The first printed book in Ossetian was a short catechism published in Moscow in 1798. The first newspaper, , appeared on July 23, 1906, in Vladikavkaz.
While Ossetian is the official language in both South and North Ossetia (along with Russian), its official use is limited to publishing new laws in Ossetian newspapers. There are two daily newspapers in Ossetian: Ræstdzinad (Рӕстдзинад / Рӕстꚉінад, "Truth") in the North and Xurzærin (Хурзӕрин, "The Sun") in the South. Some smaller newspapers, such as district newspapers, use Ossetian for some articles. There is a monthly magazine Max dug (Мах дуг, "Our era"), mostly devoted to contemporary Ossetian fiction and poetry.
Ossetian is taught in secondary schools for all pupils. Native Ossetian speakers also take courses in Ossetian literature.
The first modern translation of the Qur'an into Ossetian took place in 2007, initiated by an Ossetian, Robert Bolloev. The Jehovah's Witnesses and the Bible Society in Russia have each created translations of the Bible into Ossetian.
Dialects There are two important dialects: Digoron (distributed in the west of North Ossetia–Alania and Kabardino-Balkaria) which is considered more archaic and Iron (in the rest of the North Ossetia-Alania and in South Ossetia and Karachay-Cherkessia), spoken by one-sixth and five-sixths of the population, respectively. A third dialect of Ossetian, Jassic, was formerly spoken in Hungary.
Phonology Vowels The Iron dialect of Ossetic has 7 vowels: Front Central Back Close Close-mid Mid Near-open Open The Digor dialect of Ossetic has 6 vowels: Front Central Back Close Mid Near-open Open
+Vowel correspondence Old Iranian Iron dialect Digor dialect *a ɐ, a *ā a, ɐ, o *i ɘ i *ī *u u *ū *ai i e *au u o *ṛ ɐr, ar
Consonants The Ossetian researcher V. I. Abayev postulates 26 plain consonants for Ossetian, to which six labialized consonants and two semivowels may be added. Unusually for an Indo-European language, there is a series of glottalized (ejective) stops and affricates. This may constitute an areal feature of languages of the Caucasus.
Labial Dental/alveolar Postalveolar/palatal Velar Uvular plain labialized plain labialized Stops/Affricates voiced voiceless ~ ~ ~ ~ ejective Fricatives voiced ~ voiceless ~ Nasals Approximants ~ Rhotic
Voiceless consonants become voiced word-medially (this is reflected in the orthography as well). , , and were originally allophones of , , and when followed by , and ; this alternation is still retained to a large extent.
Unlike all of its neighbouring languages, Ossetian largely lacks the original distinction of postalveolar and from the respective alveolar sibilants and (due to the early merger of Old Iranian *s/*š and *z/*ž). However, the northern variants use postalveolars, while the southern variants use the alveolars. In exchange, and in the north correspond into and ( and after nasals or when geminated) in the south. Another pronunciation of дз and ц is said as and .
Phrasal stress Stress normally falls on the first syllable, unless it contains a central vowel ( or ), in which case stress falls on the second syllable. Thus, су́дзаг/súdzag /ˈsud͡zag/ 'burning', but cӕнӕ́фсир/sænǽfsir /sɐˈnɐfsir/ 'grapes'. In addition, proper names are usually stressed on the second syllable regardless of their vowels, and recent Russian loanwords retain the stress they have in the source language.Thordarson, p. 466
In the Iron dialect, definiteness is expressed in words with stress on second syllable by shifting the stress to the initial syllable. This reflects the fact that historically they received a syllabic definite article (as they still do in the Digor dialect), and the addition of the syllable caused the stress to shift. The above patterns apply not just within the content word, rather to prosodic words, units that result from content words being joined into a single prosodic group with only one stress. Not only compound verbs, but also every noun phrase constitutes such a group containing only one stressed syllable, regardless of its length, for instance мӕ чи́ныг/mӕ čínyg /mɐˈt͡ʃinɘg/ 'my book', мӕгуы́р зӕро́нд лӕг/mægwýr zærónd læg /mɐˈgwɘr zɐˈrond lɐg/ 'a poor old man'. Since an initial particle and a conjunction are also included in the prosodic group, the single stress of the group may fall on them, too: фӕлӕ́ уый/fælǽ wyj 'but he'.
Morphophonemic alternations In derivation or compounding, stems containing vowels /a o / <а o> change to the central vowel /ɐ/ <ӕ>, whereas those containing /i u/ < и/I у/u> may be replaced with /ɘ/: авд/avd /avd/ 'seven' — ӕвдӕм/ævdæm /ɐvˈdɐm/ 'seventh'. Sequences /ɐ/ + /i/ (ӕ + и/i), /ɐ/ + /ə/ (ӕ + ы/y), and /ɐ/ + /ɐ/ (ӕ + ӕ) assimilate, yielding the vowel /е/ <e>.Abaev, p. 5 the palatalisation of the velars к (k) to ч (č), г (g) to дж (dž) and къ (kh) to чъ (čh) before the (currently or historically) front vowels, namely е (e), и (i) and ы (y), for instance карк (kark) 'hen' — карчы (karčy) 'hen (genitive)'. the voicing of voiceless consonants in voiced environments: тых (tyx) 'strength' — ӕмдых (æmdyx) 'of equal strength'. consonant gemination in certain grammatical forms, such as after the prefix ны (ny-) and before the suffixes -ag and -on.Abaev, p. 8–10
Writing system
In 1888, an inscription in the Alanian language was found in Abkhazia, which dates back to the 4th century.
An Old Ossetic Greek script inscription of the 10th–12th centuries was found in Arkhyz, the oldest known attestation of the Ossetian language.
Written Ossetian may be immediately recognized by its use of the Cyrillic letter Æ (Ӕ ӕ), a letter to be found in no other language using Cyrillic script. The father of the modern Ossetian literary language is the national poet Kosta Khetagurov (1859–1906).