Page "Alans" Paragraph 98

The descendants of the Alans, who live in the autonomous republics of Russia and Georgia, speak the Ossetic language which belongs to the Northeastern Iranian language group and is the only remnant of the Scytho-Sarmatian dialect continuum, which once stretched over much of the Pontic steppe and Central Asia.

Modern Ossetic has two major dialects: Digor, spoken in the western part of North Ossetia ; and Iron, spoken in the rest of Ossetia.

A third branch of Ossetic, Jassic ( Jász ), was formerly spoken in Hungary.

The literary language, based on the Iron dialect, was fixed by the national poet, Kosta Xetagurov ( 1859 – 1906 ).