Soghdian
| Sogdian | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Sogdia |
| Region | Central Asia, China |
| Era | 100 BCE – 1000 CE developed into modern Yaghnobi |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | sog |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | sogd1245 |
The Sogdian language was an Eastern Iranian language spoken in the Central Asian region of Sogdia, located in modern-day Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan (capital: Samarkand; other chief cities: Panjakent, Fergana, Khujand, and Bukhara), as well as some Sogdian immigrant communities in ancient China. Sogdian is one of the most important Middle Iranian languages, along with Bactrian, Khotanese Saka, Middle Persian, and Parthian. It possesses a large literary corpus.
The Sogdian language is usually assigned to a Northeastern group of the Iranian languages, although this is a Sprachbund rather than a genetic group. No direct evidence of an earlier version of the language ("Old Sogdian") has been found, although mention of the area in the Old Persian inscriptions means that a separate and recognisable Sogdia existed at least since the Achaemenid Empire (559–323 BCE).
Like Khotanese, Sogdian possesses a more conservative grammar and morphology than Middle Persian. The modern Eastern Iranian language Yaghnobi is the descendant of a dialect of Sogdian spoken around the 8th century in Osrushana, a region to the south of Sogdia.
During Tang China (ca. 7th century CE), the Silk Road's lingua franca in Central Asia was Sogdian. along which it amassed a rich vocabulary by loanwords such as tym ("hotel") from the Middle Chinese /tem/ (Chinese: ).
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