Talk:Old Persian

What is meant by "Persid"?

Old Persian is the oldest attested Persid language.

It's not clear since the target of the wikilink doesn't give a definition.--Imz 19:59, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

"Persid" is an archaic term. Iranian is the prefer term in contemporary historical linguistics. The use of "Persid" is similar to the use of "Indic" as a linguistic designation for Indo-Aryan, eg. "Vedic is the oldest attested Indic language". Although "Indic" now refers to things "Indian" as well. I suppose "Persianate" would be the closest in terms of descriptors for Iranian. Sarayuparin 10:02, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

"Persid" is an alternate term for Southwestern Iranian. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:42, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Wrong dates?

the chart says 300BC but old Persian was first written by 550BC, not? Cpom 20:55, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

See discussion at Talk:History of the Persian language. –jonsafari 21:31, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Consonants mixed up @ Phonology section

Three consonants (c [c], ç [ç] and j [ɟ]) seem to be mixed up by the creator of the WikiTable @ the Phonology section. While it is true that standard IPA "[ç]" is a voiceless consonant, it is a spirant (fricative) unlike all other consonants in this column and the other two are even more suspicious as c [c] [in the voiced column] is a voiceless palatal plosive and j [ɟ] is a voiced plosive, not a spirant.

I didn't correct it, as I'm not a phonetician nor an expert of the Old Persian language but I'd be very happy if someone could fix this or could explain why it doesn't need to be fixed. --Adolar von Csobánka (Talk) 19:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

All right, I improved the table and contacted the author to ensure that I am representing the phonemes accurately. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 09:20, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

" A Comparison Table of Old-Persian with other Iranian Languages"

this section is unreferenced, and a pain to maintain or verify. It also doesn't make much sense, Wikipedia articles on languages aren't for mass lexical comparison. It may have a place in a Wiktionary appendix. (wikt:Appendix:Iranian languages vocabulary comparison or something). It would be more valuable to have a prose paragraph on the sound changes involved. dab (𒁳) 07:17, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean the transition between Old Persian, Middle Persian (Pahlavi) and Modern Persian table? I think it kind of shows a slight transition of some words and it is informative. The material seems to be taken from kent. Someone replaced Kaam (desire) with Kam (few). --alidoostzadeh 03:41, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Old Persian Numerals

From reading the Gvozdanovic's book on Indo-European Numerals and looking at the various article in the Encyclopedia Iranica, it seems one could reconstruct forms *çayah (*çaiiah) for three, *čaθwārah for four, and *xšaš for six.

Check this table of sound correspondences:

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kurdish-language-i

Statement on the origins of Persian se found here:

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/dimli

• çaiiah which one can also transcribe as *çayah.

This goes with what we already know indirectly (from Elamite texts) or directly of the other forms: aiva-, duva, panča, hafta, ašta, nava, daθa. I wonder if the full form of aiva- would be aivaka. Any experts or people with sources want to chime in? So based on attested forms and reconstuction: aivaka, duva, çayah, čaθwārah, panča, xšaš, hafta, ašta, nava, daθa. Azalea pomp (talk) 18:10, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Witzel (2001) says (p. 66, footnote 162) that the -ka only shows up from Middle Iranian onwards and is absent in "Old Iranian", presumably both Old Persian (a West Iranian language) and Avestan (an East Iranian language).

Michael Witzel (2001): Autochthonous Aryans? The evidence from Old Indian and Iranian texts. Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 7(3): 1–115.

David Marjanović (talk) 00:00, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Pronunciation of ç

There was a long comment hidden in the table. It cites several sources. I took it out of hiding. Why was it ever hidden? David Marjanović (talk) 00:01, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Relatedly, what is the evidence in favour of ç as [ç]? 4pq1injbok (talk) 04:42, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

I hid it because it was more of a personal comment originally. The frequent modern assumption that ç denotes [ç] is influenced by IPA, I think; the reason ç was chosen was not because of IPA, which was not used much among philologists – or, prior to 1886, not even a thing yet, after all –, but probably with a look to ç in Romance, which stands variously for [ts] and [s] – with a welcome ambiguity, because 19th-century philologists were not completely sure what ç was pronounced like, either, they only knew it later became [s]. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:51, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Relatedly: the palatal "stops" also seem to be probably wrong. They reflect Proto-Iranian *č [tʃ], *ǰ [dʒ], and they yield Modern Persian /tʃ/, /dʒ/. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 15:27, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Good point, I missed that one! Also, as mentioned in the notes, that word-initial OP v turns to MP g (mainly) before u, and b otherwise, suggests that OP v was really [w]. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:24, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

So I've been bold. How to integrate the conventional notation best into the table? I'm bad at tables, the wikitext is really inconvenient. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:48, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

sources

In English

http://www.lexilogos.com/english/persian_old.htm

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/OldPersian/

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/aveol-0-X.html

http://www.avesta.org/op/op.htm

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/opeol-BF-X.html

https://archive.org/details/cu31924026893150

https://archive.org/details/cu31924074376264

https://archive.org/details/guidetooldpersia00tolmrich

https://archive.org/details/historicalgramm00johngoog

https://archive.org/details/historicalgramm01johngoog

https://archive.org/details/historicalgramma00johnrich

https://archive.org/details/GrammarOfTheOldPersianLanguage

https://archive.org/details/OldPersian

https://archive.org/details/CuneiformSupplement

https://archive.org/details/cu31924026822431

https://archive.org/details/abridgedgrammar00bertgoog

In German

https://archive.org/details/AltiranischesWorterbuch

https://archive.org/details/HandbuchDerAltiranischenDialekte

https://archive.org/details/handbuchderalti00bartgoog

https://archive.org/details/handbuchderalti01bartgoog

https://archive.org/details/vergleichendegr00spiegoog

https://archive.org/details/diealtpersische00spiegoog

https://archive.org/details/diealtpersische01spiegoog

https://archive.org/details/diealtpersische02spiegoog

https://archive.org/details/diealtpersische03spiegoog

https://archive.org/details/einkapitelvergl00jollgoog

In Italian

https://archive.org/details/einkapitelvergl01jollgoog

https://archive.org/details/grammaticaeleme00pizzgoog

Graeco-Persian names

https://archive.org/details/cu31924026891949

https://archive.org/details/graecopersiannam00stonuoft

https://archive.org/details/graecopersiannam00stonrich

Old and Middle Persian

https://archive.org/details/AStudyOfDenominativeVerbsInMiddlePersianAndModernPersian

Codex cumanicus, Bibliothecae ad templum divi Marci Venetiarum primum ex integro editit prolegomenis notis et compluribus glossariis instruxit comes Géza Kuun (1880)

https://archive.org/details/codexcumanicusbi00kuunuoft

08:21, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Removed link to "lari language"

I have removed the link to "Lari language" stuck on the end of the introduction because the "Lari language link" insert is a awkward and poorly placed addition to the article. Also I think that there is no such thing as a "lari language" it seems to be a Modern Persian dialect. It seems to me that that article and the modification to the old Persian dialect were made by an Iranian/Persian who is motivated by "local pride" and is unaccustomed to academic writing in English. --173.9.219.250 (talk) 11:05, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

The Lari language is not merely a Modern Persian dialect; it is considered a language of its own, while closely related to Modern Persian. In contrast, Tajik is really essentially a Modern Persian dialect; per a source cited at Mutual intelligibility, it is fully mutually intelligible with Persian and Dari. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:00, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Pronunciation of /ah/

I was the one who added Tremblay's hypothesis about the Old Persian reflex of Proto-Iranian *-ah (Proto-Indo-Iranian *-as) being pronounced [e(ː)] and later [i], but frankly, I can't be bothered to dig up the cite and the phenomenon of appending a yod to Middle Persian nouns (in Pahlavi, whose spelling is fairly historical and still reflects some Old Persian features) has a better explanation, as a remnant of case endings such as the old genitive singular in -ahya, see p. 36, n. 3 (in German). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:59, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

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Old Persian?

Man, Iranian people are do NOT equal to the Persian People. Iranian peoples consist of Tat, Talish, Baloch, Mazandarani, Tajik, Kurd, Lur and Persians etc. So, please correct the ridiculous definition of "𐎠𐎼𐎹 Ariya to be equal to the Old Persian". Plus, at the Achamenid era, not only Persians were using that language. All Iranian people were using it. So, it is not Persians' proper language. It should be put as: "Achamenid Language" to represent the all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.70.245.165 (talk) 16:55, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't claim this to be an equality, just that Old Persian was natively called "Ariya". It seems plausible that the name was shared with other old Iranian dialects that the other languages known to us descend from (later on at least Bactrian, not especially closely related, still has basically the same name too), but then other varieties were generally not written at the time.

"Old Persian" seems to be the standard term used in most linguistic sources; but if you know of sources that use something like "Achamenid", sure, that probably would be worth a mention. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 03:43, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

On the alleged inscription found in Gherla, Romania

Okay, so it seems like this is a recurring theme of Harmatta at best just being deeply bad as a scientist and at worst just a liar. All three sources for the alleged Gherla inscription cite Harmatta's 1954 article "A Recently Discovered Old Persian Inscription," wherein Harmatta recounts that he had a friend whose father found an inscription in the soil behind his house which Harmatta alleges he saw but nobody else has. This is effectively just a "source:trust me, bro;" and seeing the quality of Harmatta's other work and the fact he just seems like a charlatan (like, what are the odds of his childhood friend finding an Old Persian inscription in Romania when he's a 'specialist' in the language?), this is almost certainly a blatant lie or a forgery (which Harmatta himself considers). Unfortunately, since the thing is actually in a published work, I can't just remove it, but my hope is that people will see this comment and understand that there is practically a zero-percent chance that an OP inscription was actually found in Romania.

Vindafarna (talk) 01:09, 11 July 2024 (UTC)