indoiranske

Indo-Iranian, or Indoiranske in some languages, is a major branch of the Indo-European language family. It comprises two primary sub-branches, Indo-Aryan (Indic) and Iranian, and includes hundreds of languages and dialects spoken over a wide area from the Indian subcontinent to the Iranian plateau and parts of Central Asia. Prominent Indo-Aryan languages include Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Sindhi, and Assamese, while prominent Iranian languages include Persian (Farsi), Dari, Tajik, Pashto, Kurdish, and Balochi. The group also contains smaller languages such as Ossetian and various regional varieties studied within Afghanistan, Iran, India, Pakistan, and surrounding regions.

Historically, Proto-Indo-Iranian was spoken around the late 3rd to early 2nd millennium BCE. The split into Indic and Iranian is dated roughly to the first millennium BCE. The oldest attested Indo-Iranian languages are Avestan (the sacred language of the Avesta) and Old Persian; later developments produced classical Sanskrit and its descendants in India, the various Prakrits, and the modern Indic languages, alongside the Iranian languages that culminated in Persian literary traditions and other regional varieties.

Linguistically, Indo-Iranian languages share features such as rich inflection in nouns and verbs, a general tendency toward subject–object–verb word order, and extensive derivational morphology. They exhibit substantial regional variation in phonology, grammar, and script. Writing systems range from Devanagari and other Brahmi-based scripts to Perso-Arabic scripts and Cyrillic in Tajik, reflecting the diverse cultural and historical contexts of the languages.