Avestan?

[Karachi]

The link is absolutely beautiful; Muslims should learn to appreciate and respect the Ancient Adyan(religions) more , they still possess much truth to them.

And by the way this sounds like Pushto

Isn't that the same link I posted in the first post?

[Tjanaparh]

To Wahe Guru:

Dear friend, perhaps I expressed myself a bit bad!
Generally the Iranian branch of languages is grouped in two greater groups, estern and western.
The Western group includes for example languages as Kurdish, Persian, Baloch, Tolish, Zazaki..
The esatern group includes according to linguists Pashto, Pamirian languages, Yaghnabi language and Ossetian languages.
Avestan is as I know a bit a theme of dispute but is quiet more related to the eastern "Iranic" , than to Persian.
That is no wonder, as Zarathushtra didn't live on Persian territory, even more, the teachings of Zarathushtra were quiet different and often opposed to the "official zoroastrism" of the Persian empire.

Surely Sanskrit is a close language to Avestan, but not as close as Ancient Persian was.
Avestan was quiet a particular dialect of its time - it had its particular rules how words changed.
Compare please for example Ancient Persian (And armenian too by the way) ARTA(trouth), SAnskrit 'RTA and Avestan ASHA.

Gramatically all the ancient languages were quiet complicated, so anything that was said coud be understood mostly only in one way(todays languages are quiet more simplified).

I am not a specialist at all in that field, but f You believe the scientists Avestan should be more related to the Pamirian, Pashto, Ossetian.

[Wahe Guru]

To Wahe Guru:

Dear friend, perhaps I expressed myself a bit bad!
Generally the Iranian branch of languages is grouped in two greater groups, estern and western.
The Western group includes for example languages as Kurdish, Persian, Baloch, Tolish, Zazaki..
The esatern group includes according to linguists Pashto, Pamirian languages, Yaghnabi language and Ossetian languages.
Avestan is as I know a bit a theme of dispute but is quiet more related to the eastern "Iranic" , than to Persian.
That is no wonder, as Zarathushtra didn't live on Persian territory, even more, the teachings of Zarathushtra were quiet different and often opposed to the "official zoroastrism" of the Persian empire.

Surely Sanskrit is a close language to Avestan, but not as close as Ancient Persian was.
Avestan was quiet a particular dialect of its time - it had its particular rules how words changed.
Compare please for example Ancient Persian (And armenian too by the way) ARTA(trouth), SAnskrit 'RTA and Avestan ASHA.

Gramatically all the ancient languages were quiet complicated, so anything that was said coud be understood mostly only in one way(todays languages are quiet more simplified).

I am not a specialist at all in that field, but f You believe the scientists Avestan should be more related to the Pamirian, Pashto, Ossetian.

Thanks for the post. I am also not an expert in languages but I find language studies interesting and that it one of the reasons I became a member here.

"Surely Sanskrit is a close language to Avestan, but not as close as Ancient Persian was." - I understand why you said that but I have done a bit of searching since last night, and from what I found (so far) I am not sure if that is totally correct. Rig Vedic Sanskrit might actually be closer to old Avestan than "Ancient Persian" is to Avestan, if by ancient Persian you mean the Old Persian Behistun inscriptions. I am going by what I have found so far which is indicating that Rig Vedic Sanskrit and Avestan are far older than the language written in the Behistun inscriptions and generally it is also being written that Avestan is closest to Rig Vedic Sanskrit. If I have time I will try to find out more about it later..

"Compare please for example Ancient Persian (And armenian too by the way) ARTA(trouth), SAnskrit 'RTA and Avestan ASHA." - one or few word comparisons are not good indicators. Armenian is said to have its own branch amongst Ind-European languages but apparently Armenian has borrowed a lot from Persian (and perhaps other way around too?).

"but f You believe the scientists Avestan should be more related to the Pamirian, Pashto, Ossetian" - by descent these three languages are closer to Avestan than say Hindi is to Avestan, but still there seems to be little doubt that Sanskrit would be much closer to Avestan than Pamirian, Pashto, Ossetian.

Following might be of interest to you. From http://www.zoroastrianism.cc/discussions_30.html - seems to be an interesting website but i have no time to read it further.
"# 120) Q: Are Zazaki, Gorani, Mazandarani, and Gilaki languages (Iranian) the closest to Avestan, or are they more close to Parthian?

A: There are two languages involved in Avestan, Old Avestan, or Gathic and Young Avestan. They are fairly close. They are both Eastern Iranian languages. Old Avestan was Zarathushtra's own language , some say dialect. Thus Eastern Iranian languages Tajiki, Dari and even Baluchi are a little closer, perhaps. However, I caution you that Old Avestan is very old and archaic its not easy or even desirable to compare it to one modern languague. The closest languages to Old Avestan are Rig Vedic Sanskrit and Young Avestan. After that, it's difficult to just try to read terminology from modern Eastern Iranian languages into the Gathas."

Please see this too http://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/eanes/old..._language.html
"Sanskritists are able to start reading texts from the very beginning of the Old Iranian course, thanks to the close relationship between the Old Iranian languages and Old Indic. Persianists, Classicists and students in Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies have to devote some time to learning grammar, and elementary language instruction is provided for them during the first two terms. "

From here http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zor...ages/index.htm
"Proto Indo-Iranian

The comparative example of the Avestan and Sanskrit languages above demonstrate that the languages are so close that they are for all practical purposes dialects of the same language. They are nevertheless not identical. At the time of their writing, the people of the old Avesta and Rig Veda were likely close neighbours."

[Tjanaparh]

Wahe Guru, in some logical way You are surely right, because even in construction ancient languages were quiet close - so surely Sanskrit and Avestan constructions are much more close than those of Farsi(which is very simple and primitive), still but note that many words in Avestan can be with not too much difficulty derived from Iranic languages. Similarly you should focus on for example Latin or Ancient greek - and you'll find many interesting things!
What I can say about Armenian - it has a triple relation to Iranic languages:
-Common words
-Borowings from Parthian dialect
-Borowings from Farsi

But note that even with Hindi or even sanskrit there are a lot of common words.

I give you an example - generally there is a rule that in Indic languages words which begin with R sound in Armenian beginn with an A sound.
If i am not wrong Ravi means sun in Hindi?!
In Armenian that word sounds like aRev.

However I am leaving the theme.
For me it would be quiet interesting and important to learn as Avestan, as Sanskrit, but at the moment I have a bit difficultiea to do so, even if I have been once invited to India to take 3 month of study Sanskrit, financially it'll be difficult.

[Wahe Guru]

Wahe Guru, in some logical way You are surely right, because even in construction ancient languages were quiet close - so surely Sanskrit and Avestan constructions are much more close than those of Farsi(which is very simple and primitive), still but note that many words in Avestan can be with not too much difficulty derived from Iranic languages. Similarly you should focus on for example Latin or Ancient greek - and you'll find many interesting things!
What I can say about Armenian - it has a triple relation to Iranic languages:
-Common words
-Borowings from Parthian dialect
-Borowings from Farsi

But note that even with Hindi or even sanskrit there are a lot of common words.

I give you an example - generally there is a rule that in Indic languages words which begin with R sound in Armenian beginn with an A sound.
If i am not wrong Ravi means sun in Hindi?!
In Armenian that word sounds like aRev.

However I am leaving the theme.
For me it would be quiet interesting and important to learn as Avestan, as Sanskrit, but at the moment I have a bit difficultiea to do so, even if I have been once invited to India to take 3 month of study Sanskrit, financially it'll be difficult.

I am sure your "detailed, low level" knowledge of languages is much stronger than mine. I only read what others write and then I try to make some conclusions.

Please also note following:
From here http://www.indiadivine.org/audarya/m...e-forward.html
"Avesta and Sanskrit are definitely identical twin sisters, so much so that
hardly any other two akin languages are so identical. That is why, one of my theories is this that the Iranians, during the Achaemenian period, did not need any interpreter to communicate with their Indian counterparts. Yes, they are identical sisters, and no person with his/her clear eyes, clear ears and clear mind, can deny the identity. It has been mainly through Sanskrit that today we understand Avesta as best as we do." - this apparently is written by an Iranian.

Last night I also read something by a European linguist, similar to above, that Rig Vedic (ie did not say Old Persian) was key to fully understanding the Avestan but now I could not find the website again.

Another thing I have read before is that the Rig Vedic & Avestan are even closer in fact than they appear to be but when written in the Latin alphabet it makes the words appear to be more different than they actually are. I could not find that website this time.

I wish you well with everything.

[Wahe Guru]

Wahe Guru, in some logical way You are surely right, because even in construction ancient languages were quiet close - so surely Sanskrit and Avestan constructions are much more close than those of Farsi(which is very simple and primitive), still but note that many words in Avestan can be with not too much difficulty derived from Iranic languages. Similarly you should focus on for example Latin or Ancient greek - and you'll find many interesting things!
What I can say about Armenian - it has a triple relation to Iranic languages:
-Common words
-Borowings from Parthian dialect
-Borowings from Farsi

But note that even with Hindi or even sanskrit there are a lot of common words.

I give you an example - generally there is a rule that in Indic languages words which begin with R sound in Armenian beginn with an A sound.
If i am not wrong Ravi means sun in Hindi?!
In Armenian that word sounds like aRev.

However I am leaving the theme.
For me it would be quiet interesting and important to learn as Avestan, as Sanskrit, but at the moment I have a bit difficultiea to do so, even if I have been once invited to India to take 3 month of study Sanskrit, financially it'll be difficult.

As for individual words, there are surprises sometimes. There is a comparison table here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_languages for a number of common words in different Iranic languages. I copied a part of the table in picture below.
wiki iranian languages table.jpg

If you see the word for brother, in Punjabi there are a number of words for brother like "bhraa" but also common is "bira" (pronunced like "beera") but same exact word is only shown for Zazaki (spoken in Turkey) and in Kurmani/Sorani (Kurdish). How/why? Unless some linguist informs me, then I would make my own conclusion for how "bira" got into Punjabi. Pashto, Ossetian and Balochi do not seem to have "bira", at least not listed in table for them as the main word for brother.

Hey guys: do you have word "bira" in Pashto for brother? I only see you writing "wrora"?

[Wahe Guru]

post link to the Gurbani Singh punjabi, so I can judge if it sounds similar or not

There is no such thing as "Gurbani Singh punjabi". Have you taken leave of your senses?


Have a listen to this. It will ease your mind I hope

Sri Suktam - Rig Veda Hymn with English subtitles - Mahalakshmi - Goddess of Wealth - YouTube

[Tjanaparh]

Wow , Interesting , it is possible to add Armenian to the table:

Beautiful= Sirun(similar to avestan word a bit), Geghetsik (in dialect there is the word 'rndik - similar to Zakaki and Kurdish as -ik is a diminutive)
Bood = Aryun(quiet different)
Bread= Hats(completely different)
Bring= Berel(sonds a bit similar with Pashto and Avestan)
Brother= Yeghbayr, Akhper/Akhber, Akhpar (surely relative word but different - btw in Balochi the word is same as in russian Brat)
Come= Gal(Gam in first person sounds similar to the avestan)
Cry= Lal ( different)
Dark= Mut' (different)
Daughter= Dustr(similar to many), the Zakaki word kena is similar to Armenian Kin(woman) and to Tolishi Kina(woman)

[badmash_khel]

Avestan sounds like Sanskrit to me. It may sound like farsi because the reciter's first language is farsi, similar to how Africans speak english.

[Karachi]

There is no such thing as "Gurbani Singh punjabi". Have you taken leave of your senses?


Have a listen to this. It will ease your mind I hope

Sri Suktam - Rig Veda Hymn with English subtitles - Mahalakshmi - Goddess of Wealth - YouTube

That sounds like Tamil to be honest, not like avestan, unless the indian speakers speak Sanskrit like Tamil. The thing is, before Sanskrit the language of all of south asia was probably some dravidian group of languages or proto dravidian, I think a lot of dravdian words actually survive in many modern indic languages

So perhaps Sanskrit in it's original form was very similar to avestan, but as Sanskrit became a language of south asia with time, the pronunciation of words became more Dravidian.

I do wonder how original vedic people pronounced rig vedas and Sanskrit, actually I would like Iranians to speak Sanskrit, may be then it will sound more like avestan in the first two videos

[JattApache]

Old Avestan is closely related to Old Persian and also fairly close in nature to Vedic Sanskrit, and the Old Eastern Iranian ancestor dialect of Pashto

[JattApache]

yeah
sikhs are such brave mercenaries of british or were the gurkhas braver ,but i guess the price is the same.

Why are you trolling ?
I think the sikhs are brave and courageous people
All the sikhs were not mercenaries of british as you said, read about " Shaheed bhagat singh "

[Wahe Guru]

That sounds like Tamil to be honest, not like avestan, unless the indian speakers speak Sanskrit like Tamil. The thing is, before Sanskrit the language of all of south asia was probably some dravidian group of languages or proto dravidian, I think a lot of dravdian words actually survive in many modern indic languages

So perhaps Sanskrit in it's original form was very similar to avestan, but as Sanskrit became a language of south asia with time, the pronunciation of words became more Dravidian.

I do wonder how original vedic people pronounced rig vedas and Sanskrit, actually I would like Iranians to speak Sanskrit, may be then it will sound more like avestan in the first two videos

Sanskrit does not at all sound like Tamil and never would have. I suggest you dont join a linguistics class as you will not do too well I think.

I have heard (and do hear) Tamil quite often. Pronunciation - I never thought that Tamil (or Malayalam) sounded like Punjabi and nor has that been said by other Punjabis who have heard Tamil. If I can say so (no disrespect to any language), Tamil sounds a bit "funny", Farsi and Pashto languages sound a bit like "stones being shaken in a tin box" (which I think is due to the more frequent and strong "sh" sound in words as in the German name "Schmidt") and Arabic sounds neither funny or so strange to me as a non-Arabic speaker.

Tamil is very distinctive even from Bengali or Gujarati or say Punjabi, let alone Sanskrit. If you know Urdu, then I find it strange that you cannot tell difference between Sanskrit and Tamil? I am guessing that you are getting confused from the "am" ending words in Sanskrit and relating those with the "an" sounding words or similar in Tamil. Or you have heard Sanskrit in a few movies and relating it with Tamil. Remember that Tamil priests also conduct their religious stuff using Sanskrit because Tamils are mostly Hindus. I believe the "am" ending words are actually related (indirectly not directly perhaps) to references to "Lord" or "God" in some way. Sanskrit is especially connected to religious uses (like Avestan) and I have read that the "am" sound has been influenced into the Dravidian languages. That could be another source of confusion.

Listen to this story being told in Sanskrit. Its easy to tell that Sanskrit words sound like the Sanskrit words you read in texts next to Avestan words.
The Four Friends: Learn Sanskrit with subtitles - Story for Children "BookBox.com" - YouTube and this also in Sanskrit
The Greatest Treasure: Learn Sanskrit with subtitles - Story for Children "BookBox.com" - YouTube

Listen here to a story being told in Tamil - this cannot be mistaken for Sanskrit or even Punjabi or Urdu or Bengali or most any other languages in Asia.
Vikramarithan Stories in tamil - YouTube

Regarding influence - Tamil appears to have a lot more influence from Sanskrit than other way around - which if you think of the history and religion would be the case. No doubt Dravidian languages have also influenced Sanskrit over the long time, but to a lesser extent. Sanskrit is very conservative being a "holy language" due to religious uses. Sanskrit used by those priests has been preserved quite carefully. The Indic languages that have been used by the population are (I think) not descended directly from the Sanskrit that we know today - similar to no language being known to be directly descended from Avestan as well. Vedic Sanskrit is oldest and therefore less influenced by any Dravidian. Therefore the oldest Vedic Sanskrit and oldest Avestan are very close. That is how I understand things.

Now let me ask you, perhaps (?) 40+% or more (?) of Farsi words commonly used are Arabic, but does Farsi sound like Arabic? NO it does not. It is easy to tell Arabic speech from Farsi. Even Pashto has a lot of Arabic words and Punjabi has plenty too, but none of them sound Arabic.

Going back to Avestan (as heard in your web link) - again I can hear the frequent "sh" sound and "s" sound which would perhaps make Avestan sound similar to Farsi (or Pashto) in that respect. But Sanskrit is still much closer to Avestan than todays Farsi or Pashto or Ossetian...otherwise the scholars would not use Sanskrit to learn Avestan but instead use Farsi or Pashto. It is not only the sound that makes Sanskirt and Avestan close.

Further quotes:
"Due to the age of orally Avestan text, it facilitated the study of Iranian and Indic languages. In fact, the oldest Avestan is so similar to the oldest Sanskrit that you can translate text in one language to another by applying few phonological changes. Like so:

Purple is Avestan, Red is Sanskrit. The ə symbol represents the mid central vowel (schwa) like the "e"s in "taken".

təm amavantəm yazatəm
tam amavantam yajatam
R="Magenta"]surəm damohu scvistəm[/COLOR]
suram dhamasu savistham


miθrəm yazai zaoθrabyo
mitram yajai hotrabhyah"


Avestan:
Ahyâ yâsâ nemanghâ
ustâna-zastô refedhrahyâ
Manyêush Mazdâ pourvim
spentahyâ ashâ vîspeng shyaothanâ
vangheush khratûm mananghô
yâ khshnevîshâ gêush-châ urvânem.

Sanskrit:
asyâ yâchâ namasâ
uttânahastô repadhrasyâ
manyôh mêdhâ purvyam
shvintasyâ rtâ vishvân chyautnâ
vasôh kratûm manasô
yâ kshnavishâ gsh-châ urvânam.

Your original question (#1 post): "Avestan is not spoken any more, but I think these are some kind of prayers from Avestan, can any body tell me what modern language avestan sounds like?" - I don't think anyone could properly give one language and it does not make much difference because there is little to learn from the question, but we can say Sanskrit and Avestan would sound (and do sound - if you think a bit harder) much more similar to each other than a modern language to either of them. Thats how I hear it.

[RevolutionThroughReason]

As for individual words, there are surprises sometimes. There is a comparison table here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_languages for a number of common words in different Iranic languages. I copied a part of the table in picture below.
[ATTACH]7318[/ATTACH]

If you see the word for brother, in Punjabi there are a number of words for brother like "bhraa" but also common is "bira" (pronunced like "beera") but same exact word is only shown for Zazaki (spoken in Turkey) and in Kurmani/Sorani (Kurdish). How/why? Unless some linguist informs me, then I would make my own conclusion for how "bira" got into Punjabi. Pashto, Ossetian and Balochi do not seem to have "bira", at least not listed in table for them as the main word for brother.

Hey guys: do you have word "bira" in Pashto for brother? I only see you writing "wrora"?

Many words that may superficially appear different by their consonants are actually phonetic variants. Wror sometimes becomes Vror and V and B both are labial sounds so we can observe the transition of one to the other.

[Karachi]

wahe guru read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravidi...ce_on_Sanskrit:

The Ṛg Vedic language has retroflex consonants even though it is well known that the Indo-European family and the Indo-Iranian subfamily to which Sanskrit belongs lack retroflex consonants (ṭ/ḍ, ṇ) with about 88 words in the Ṛg Veda having unconditioned retroflexes (Kuiper 1991, Witzel 1999). Some sample words are: (Iṭanta, Kaṇva,śakaṭī, kevaṭa, puṇya, maṇḍūka) This is cited as a serious evidence of substrate influence from close contact of the Vedic speakers with speakers of a foreign language family rich in retroflex consonants (Kuiper 1991, Witzel 1999). Obviously the Dravidian family would be a serious candidate here since it is rich in retroflex phonemes reconstructible back to the Proto-Dravidian stage.
A more serious influence on Vedic Sanskrit is the extensive grammatical influence attested by the usage of the quotative marker iti and the occurrence of gerunds of verbs, a grammatical feature not found even in the Avestan language, a sister language of the Vedic Sanskrit. As Krishnamurti states: "Besides, the Ṛg Veda has used the gerund, not found in Avestan, with the same grammatical function as in Dravidian, as a non-finite verb for 'incomplete' action. Ṛg Vedic language also attests the use of iti as a quotative clause complementizer. All these features are not a consequence of simple borrowing but they indicate substratum influence (Kuiper 1991: ch 2)".

Dravdian clearly influenced even the rig vedas, the earliest Sanskrit text. The thing is dravidian was most likely the language of all of south asia before indo aryans came, so it is common sense the local language like dravidian would influence languages arriving from outside