Iranian
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AI overview
Iranian is a branch of languages within the larger Indo-European language family, spoken primarily in Iran and surrounding regions. It matters because it represents one of the world's major language groups and helps us understand how human languages are related and have evolved over thousands of years.
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Article
The Iranian languages, or the Iranic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, mainly in the Iranian Plateau.
The Iranian languages are grouped in three stages: Old Iranian (until 400 BCE), Middle Iranian (400 BCE – 900 CE) and New Iranian (since 900 CE). The two directly attested Old Iranian languages are Old Persian (from the Achaemenid Empire) and Avestan (the language of the Avesta). Of the Middle Iranian languages, the better understood and recorded ones are Middle Persian (from the Sasanian Empire), Parthian (from the Parthian Empire), and Bactrian (from the Kushan and Hephthalite empires).