Some Indo-Europeanists claim that Greek seems to be most closely related to Armenian ( see also Graeco-Armenian ) and the Indo-Iranian languages ( see Graeco-Aryan ) among the living Indo-European languages.

# REDIRECT Indo-Iranian languages

The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages.

The contemporary Indo-Iranian languages form the largest sub-branch of Indo-European, with more than one billion speakers in total, stretching from Europe ( Romani ) and the Caucasus ( Ossetian ) eastward to Xinjiang ( Sarikoli ) and Assam ( Assamese ) and south to Sri Lanka ( Sinhalese ).

Indo-Iranian languages were once spoken across a still wider area.

The so-called Migration Period saw Indo-Iranian languages disappear from Eastern Europe, apart from the ancestors of Ossetian in the Caucasus, with the arrival of the Turkic-speaking Pechenegs and others by the eighth century AD.

The oldest attested Indo-Iranian languages are Vedic Sanskrit ( ancient Indo-Aryan ), Older and Younger Avestan and Old Persian ( ancient Iranian languages ).

simple: Indo-Iranian languages

Another recent interpretation, based on the frequencies of the syllabic signs and on complete palaeographic comparative studies, suggests that the Minoan Linear A language belongs to the Indo-Iranian family of Indo-European languages.

This qualifies Rigvedic Sanskrit as one of the oldest attestations of any Indo-Iranian language, and one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family, the family which includes English and most European languages.

Sanskrit is a member of the Indo-Iranian sub-family of the Indo-European family of languages.

Evidence for such a theory includes the close relationship of the Indo-Iranian tongues with the Baltic and Slavic languages, vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Uralic languages, and the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna.

Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages.

It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of Indo-European languages.

The Gorani language ( which includes Horami ) is often classified as part of the Zaza – Gorani branch of Indo-Iranian languages.

The Sarmatians ( including the Alans and finally the Ossetians ) counted as Scythians in the broadest sense of the word – as speakers of Northeast Iranian languages, and are considered mostly of Indo-Iranian descent.

The Indo-Aryan or Indic languages constitute a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family.

They form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, which consists of two other language groups: the Iranian and Nuristani.

Some scholars think that the problem can be resolved by identifying the Ecbatana / Hagmatana mentioned in later Greek and Achaemenid sources with the city Sagbita / Sagbat frequently mentioned in Assyrian texts, since the Indo-Iranian sound / s / turned into / h / in many Iranian languages.

While there are ancient relations between the Indian Vedas and the Iranian Avesta, the two main families of the Indo-Iranian philosophical traditions were characterized by fundamental differences in their implications for the human being's position in society and their view on the role of man in the universe.

* The original tricolor Flag of Iran, the source for the Pan-Iranian colors green, white and red adopted by many Indo-Iranian or Aryan states and peoples as their symbols.

* Indo-Iranian Languages and Peoples, edited by Nicholas Sims-Williams.

Norse mythology also holds that the entire world of men was once created from the flesh of Ymir, a giant of cosmic proportions, which name is considered by some to share a root with the name Yama of Indo-Iranian mythology.

The supposition, regarding the existence of the dichotomy between Ahuras / Asuras and Daevas / Devas in Indo-Iranian times, was discussed at length by F. B. J.

The word is derived from an Indo-Iranian root * sav-( Sanskrit sav -/ su ) " to press ", i. e. * sau-ma-is the drink prepared by pressing the stalks of a plant.

The Indo-Iranian reconstruction is attributed to Christian Bartholomae, and was subsequently refined by A. Meillet ( 1907 ), who suggested derivation from the Proto-Indo-European root * mei " to exchange.

" Attempts have been made to connect the term with Avestan atar-" fire " ( not attested in Vedic ); but these have been prompted by what is probably a mistaken assumption of the importance of fire in the ancient Indo-Iranian religion.

Georges Roux has speculated that the many later Indo-Iranian ( Persian, Median and Urartian / Armenian ) flavoured myths surrounding Semiramis stem from successful campaigns waged by her against these peoples, and the novelty of a woman ruling such an empire.

The 3pl ( third person plural ) of the perfect would have been * se-sd-ṛ whence Indo-Iranian * sazdṛ, which gives ( by regular developments ) Sanskrit sedur / sēdur /.

As suggested by the similarity to the Old Norse æsir, Indo-Iranian * asura may have an even earlier Indo-European root.

In 1959, Kazuo Enoki proposed that they were probably East Indo-Iranians as some sources indicated that they were originally from Tokharestan, which is known to have been inhabited by Indo-Iranian people in antiquity.

The other major term is the Persian word namāz (), used by speakers of the Indo-Iranian languages ( e. g., Persian ) Turkish and Bosnian.

This is particularly interesting since the Proto-Slavic word for god, * bagu (> Common Slavic * bogъ ), the suffix of Dažbog's name, is argued either to be of Iranian origin ( being related to Indo-Iranian etymons such as Old Persian baga, Sanskrit bhaga ), or being semantically influenced by Iranian source, both being ultimately derived from PIE root *, whose reflexes in both Slavic and Indo-Iranian came to mean both " deity " and " wealth, share ".

The Nuristanis are a people whose ancestors practised what was apparently an ancient Indo-Iranian polytheistic Vedic religion until they were conquered and converted to Islam in the late 19th century by Emir Abdur Rahman Khan.

This issue of classification is clouded by the nationalistic implications of such a classification for the political affiliations of the contested Kashmir region of South Asia and by the fact that the Dardic languages are spoken in an area that borders the region where each of the other Indo-Iranian language families is spoken.

One theory is that the Brahui are a relic population of Dravidians, surrounded by speakers of Indo-Iranian languages, remaining from a time when Dravidian was more widespread.

However, sometimes it is classified in the Dardic languages branch of the Indo-Iranian language family, while another theory characterized it as originally Iranian, but greatly influenced by the nearby Dardic languages.

Throughout their history, up to the development of gunpowder, all the areas of Eurasia would be repeatedly menaced by the Indo-Iranian, Turkic and Mongol nomads from the steppe.

Some scholars now use the term Indo-Iranian to refer to this group, while the term " Aryan " is used to mean " Indo-Iranian " by other scholars such as Josef Wiesehofer. Population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, in his 1994 book The History and Geography of Human Genes, also uses the term Aryan to describe the Indo-Iranians.

This term was itself derived from Indo-Iranian ( cf.

It is however unlikely given that the Indo-Iranian roots of the term are related to the Semitic ones and although — through conflation — Aredvi Sura Anahita ( so the full name ) inherited much from Ishtar-Inanna, the two are considered historically distinct.

The term Aryan has generally been used historically to denote the Indo-Iranians because Arya is the self designation of the Indo-Iranian languages and their speakers, specifically the Iranian and the Indo-Aryan peoples, collectively known as the Indo-Iranians.

Rawlinson speculates that " the Sigynnae retained a better recollection than other European tribes of their migrations westward and Aryan origin ", apparently using the term " Aryan " with a meaning somewhere between Indo-Iranian and Indo-European.