The Semnani languages or Komisenian languages are a group of

Northwestern Iranian languages The Western Iranic languages are a branch of the Iranic languages, attested from the time of Old Persian (6th century BC) and Median. Languages The traditional Northwestern branch is a convention for non-Southwestern languages, rather than a g ...

, spoken in Semnan province (only 68,700 native speakers in 2019) of

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

that share many linguistic features and structures with

Iranian languages The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau. The Iranian languages are grouped ...

. These languages are also called "dialects" in some sources. The Semnani languages are descendants of the extinct

Parthian Parthian may be: Historical * A demonym "of Parthia", a region of north-eastern of Greater Iran * Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD) * Parthian language, a now-extinct Middle Iranian language * Parthian shot, an archery skill famously employed by ...

whereas the Caspian languages are descended from the extinct

Median In statistics and probability theory, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as "the middle" value. The basic fe ...

. There are six Semnani languages named in the literature. Some may be dialects, but there is little published work on their relationships. * Semnani (incl. one of several dialects termed 'Biyabunaki') * Sangsari * Sorkhei *

Aftari Iftar ( ar, translit=Iftar Ramadan, إفطار رمضان), also known as (from , , 'breakfast'), (), is the evening meal with which Muslims end their daily Ramadan fast at sunset. They break their fast at the time of the call to prayer ...

* Lasgerdi

Cognate setsLecoq, pg. 310.

Notes

Bibliography

*Pierre Lecoq. 1989. "Les dialectes caspiens et les dialectes du nord-ouest de l'Iran," ''Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum''. Ed. Rüdiger Schmitt. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag. Pages 296-314. *Habib Borjian. 2008. “The Komisenian Dialect of Aftar,” Archiv Orientální 76: 379-416. Northwestern Iranian languages {{Iran-stub