AryanSprachen

AryanSprachen is a term that historically referred to a language family. It is now largely considered an outdated and problematic designation, having been superseded by the more accurate term Indo-Iranian languages. The Indo-Iranian languages are a major branch of the Indo-European language family, spoken primarily in South Asia and parts of Western Asia. This group includes the Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, and Marathi, and the Iranian languages, such as Persian, Pashto, and Kurdish.

The term "Aryan" was originally used by linguists to describe the ancestral language from which these groups descended. However, the term became corrupted and misused in the late 19th and 20th centuries, particularly by Nazi Germany, to denote a supposed master race. This racist ideology distorted the linguistic and anthropological understanding of the term, leading to its discrediting in academic and public discourse.

Modern linguistics strictly uses "Indo-Iranian" to refer to the language family and avoids the term "Aryan" due to its historical baggage and scientific inaccuracies. The focus is now on the genetic relationships between these languages and their shared history, tracing their origins to a common proto-language spoken thousands of years ago. Research into Indo-Iranian languages continues to be a significant area of study in historical linguistics and comparative philology.