Avestan?

[JattApache]

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 Dravidia
n 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

Of course that the dravidian languages influenced all the indians languages
So why ? Why are you talking about the dravidian languages in that thread ?

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

From what I know (and I know very little about all of this), Avestan is the mother-language of Persian and its dialects and it spread towards the west of modern Afghanistan. At the same time, Sanskrit is the mother-language of all the languages east of Afghanistan. Now Pashto vocabulary is influenced a little bit by both these ancient languages but where did Pashto come from then? Geographically, it's in the middle of where these languages, or their current forms, are spoken today.

[badmash_khel]

From what I know (and I know very little about all of this), Avestan is the mother-language of Persian and its dialects and it spread towards the west of modern Afghanistan. At the same time, Sanskrit is the mother-language of all the languages east of Afghanistan. Now Pashto vocabulary is influenced a little bit by both these ancient languages but where did Pashto come from then? Geographically, it's in the middle of where these languages, or their current forms, are spoken today.

I don't know where pashto came from but it is classified as North Eastern Iranian language and not South Eastern as most people think although pashtuns live in the south east of Iranian speaking world (Iranian pleatue). Pashto is related closely to Ossetian which is also a North Eastern Iranian language but the Osstians live in the North West. Pashto is also related to Bactrian and Pamiri language. Its very intresting which can mean that pashtuns came from the North of Hindukush where pashto was formed to their present home. This makes Pashun ancestory from Scythians and other nomadic Indo-Iranian tribes very likely.

[TolloAfghanSpinDai]

avestan, zoroasters' language.

[Kushan Prince]

uhhh, isn't Avestan closely related to pashto?

[Tjanaparh]

Ashem vohu vahishtem asti, ushta asti, ushta ahmai, hyat ashai vahishtai ashem.