What is the difference between Indo-Iranian and Indo-Aryan?

The terms ‘Indo-Iranian’ and ‘Indo-Aryan’ refer essentially to the same people, although with a division which was related to language dialect and geographical placement. The older term of ‘Aryan’ which was originally used to describe these peoples has rather distasteful connotations due to its use by the Nazis.

Why do some languages not have gender?

Basically, gender in languages is just one way of breaking up nouns into classes. In fact, according to some linguists, “grammatical gender” and “noun class” are the same thing. It’s an inheritance from our distant past. Researchers believe that Proto-Indo-European had two genders: animate and inanimate.

Which languages have no grammatical gender?

Genderless languages: Chinese, Estonian, Finnish, and other languages don’t categorize any nouns as feminine or masculine, and use the same word for he or she in regards to humans. For people who don’t identify along the gender binary, these grammatical differences can be significant.

Is Indo-Aryan the same as Aryan?

In the 19th century “Aryan” was used as a synonym for “Indo-European” and also, more restrictively, to refer to the Indo-Iranian languages. It is now used in linguistics only in the sense of the term Indo-Aryan languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family.

Is Persian an Aryan language?

The term Aryan language occurs in works published in the 19th century and 20th century to mean very old Indo-European languages: The Vedic Sanskrit language. The Old Persian language. The Avestan language.

Why do languages have grammatical gender?

Languages have gender (which isn’t just about sex) because it has (had) been useful to say things about the nature of objects. The most common and natural division is animate / inanimate (not masculine / feminine).

What is the point of grammatical gender?

In many languages, the grammatical gender of a word affects how other words can be used with it in a sentence. The three most commonly used grammatical gender categories are masculine, feminine, and neuter, but each language differs.

Is Indo-Iranian an Indo-Aryan language?

A few words from another Indo-Aryan language (see Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni) are attested in documents from the ancient Mitanni and Hittite kingdoms in the Near East. Within the Indo-European family, Indo-Iranian belongs to the Satem group.

What is the common ancestor of all the Indo-Iranian languages?

The common ancestor of all of the languages in this family is called Proto-Indo-Iranian—also known as Common Aryan—which was spoken in approximately the late 3rd millennium BC. The three branches of the modern Indo-Iranian languages are Indo-Aryan, Iranian, and Nuristani.

Is there a lexicostatistical study of the new Indo-Aryan languages?

Anton I. Kogan, in 2016, conducted a lexicostatistical study of the New Indo-Aryan languages based on a 100-word Swadesh list, using techniques developed by the glottochronologist and comparative linguist Sergei Starostin.

Is Proto-Indo-Aryan the same as Old Indo Aryan?

Proto-Indo-Aryan is meant to be the predecessor of Old Indo-Aryan (1500–300 BCE) which is directly attested as Vedic and Mitanni-Aryan. Despite the great archaicity of Vedic, however, the other Indo-Aryan languages preserve a small number of archaic features lost in Vedic .