Alanic (also known as Alanian) was a language spoken by the

Alans The Alans () were an ancient and medieval Iranian peoples, Iranic Eurasian nomads, nomadic pastoral people who migrated to what is today North Caucasus – while some continued on to Europe and later North Africa. They are generally regarded ...

from about the 1st to the 13th centuries AD. It formed a

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

directly descended from the earlier Scytho-Sarmatian languages, which in turn formed the

Ossetian language Ossetian ( , , ), commonly referred to as Ossetic and rarely as Ossete, is an Eastern Iranian language that is spoken predominantly in Ossetia, a region situated on both sides of the Russian-Georgian border in the Greater Caucasus region. ...

Byzantine Greek Medieval Greek (also known as Middle Greek, Byzantine Greek, or Romaic; Greek: ) is the stage of the Greek language between the end of classical antiquity in the 5th–6th centuries and the end of the Middle Ages, conventionally dated to the F ...

authors recorded only a few fragments of this language. The Alans, who were a part of the

Migration Period The Migration Period ( 300 to 600 AD), also known as the Barbarian Invasions, was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories ...

, brought their language to

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and the

Maghreb The Maghreb (; ), also known as the Arab Maghreb () and Northwest Africa, is the western part of the Arab world. The region comprises western and central North Africa, including Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. The Maghreb al ...

in 409 AD before being displaced by the invading

Visigoths The Visigoths (; ) were a Germanic people united under the rule of a king and living within the Roman Empire during late antiquity. The Visigoths first appeared in the Balkans, as a Roman-allied Barbarian kingdoms, barbarian military group unite ...

and the

Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived History of the Roman Empire, the events that caused the ...

. Unlike Pontic Scythian, Ossetian did not experience the evolution of the Proto-Scythian sound /d/ to /δ/ and then /l/, although the sound /d/ did evolve into /δ/ at the beginning of Ossetian words. According to

Magomet Isayev Magomet Izmaylovich Isayev (; 1928 – June 20, 2011) was a Russian Esperantist, translator, and linguist. He is most notable for his work on Iranian languages (primarily Ossetic) and Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely sp ...

, the Zelenchuk inscription and other historical data give reason to assume that in the 10th-13th centuries, the Alans already had their own unique written language based on the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

. However subsequent historical events resulted in this written tradition being lost. After the

Mongols Mongols are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, China ( Inner Mongolia and other 11 autonomous territories), as well as the republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia in Russia. The Mongols are the principal member of the large family o ...

destroyed the Alan state, they retreated to the mountains of the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, i ...

and mixed with the indigenous population, forming the modern-day

Ossetians The Ossetians ( or ; ),Merriam-Webster (2021), s.v"Ossete" also known as Ossetes ( ), Ossets ( ), and Alans ( ), are an Iranian peoples, Iranian ethnic group who are indigenous to Ossetia, a region situated across the northern and southern side ...

and the Ossetian language.

Phonology

The closest phonetics to Alanic is the archaic Digor dialect of Ossetian. The main differences are: * In Alanic the transition a > o before nasals has not yet occurred (ban "day", nam "name") * Alanic lacked the plosive-glottal sounds p, t, ts, ch, k, which were adopted by Ossetian from the Caucasian substrate, as well as kh (q), which was adopted from Turkic.

Phrases

Well-known evidence of the Alanic language are the Alanic phrases in the Theogony of the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

author

John Tzetzes John Tzetzes (; , Constantinople – 1180, Constantinople) was a Byzantine poet and grammarian who lived at Constantinople in the 12th century. He is known for making significant contributions in preserving much valuable information from ancien ...

. In 1927, the Hungarian

Byzantinist Byzantine studies is an interdisciplinary branch of the humanities that addresses the history, culture, demography, dress, religion/theology, art, literature/epigraphy, music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination ...

I. Moravcsik discovered the full text of the epilogue to the Theogony in the 15th-century Barberinus manuscript in the

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Library. He published the work in 1930, which contained greeting formulas written in the Greek alphabet for the various languages that the

had come into contact with in the 12th century. These languages included "Scythian" (in fact, the

Cuman language Cuman or Kuman (also called Kipchak, Qypchaq or Polovtsian, self referred to as Tatar () in Codex Cumanicus) was a West Kipchak Turkic language spoken by the Cumans (Polovtsy, Folban, Vallany, Kun) and Kipchaks; the language was similar to t ...

), "

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

" (in fact, Turkish-Seljuk),

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Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

and Alanic. Thus, this is the only written monument of Alanic whose ethnolinguistic affiliation has been attested by the person who wrote it. The translation from

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

and Latin transliterations of greeting phrases in “barbarian” languages was published by S. M. Perevalov in 1998: τοις Άλανοις προσφθέγγομαι κατά' την τούτων γλώσσαν : address the Alans in their language:καλή' ήμερα σου, αυ'θέτα μου, αρχόντισσα, πόθεν είσαι; : Good day, my lord, Archontissa, where are you from?"ταπαγχας μέσφιλι χσινά κορθι καντά, και ταλλα. : apankhas mesfili khsina korthi kanda and so onαν δ'εχη Άλάνισσα παπαν φίλον, α'κουσαις ταύτα. : f an Alan has a (holy) father as her lover, you will hear this:Ουκ αίσχύνεσαι, αυθέντριά μου, να' γαμη το μουνίν σου παπάς : Aren't you ashamed, my lady? After all, your father has relations with you"То φάρνετζ κίντζι μέσφιλι καιτζ φουα σαουγγε. : �ο 'farnetz kintzi mesfili kaitzfua saunge.' The language of these phrases is an archaic version of the Ossetian language . Thus, "Tapankhas" ("good day") corresponds to the Ironian "dæ bon xorz", the Digor "dæ bon xwarz" - "let your day be good". It is noteworthy that a similar phrase - "daban horz" - was found in the Jassic glossary of 1422. Both phrases can be compared in their entirety with modern Ossetian analogues: The first apankhas mesfili khsina korthi kandacorresponds to the modern Ossetian (Digor): :: Dæ bon xwarz, me ’fsijni ’xsijnæ. Kurdigæj dæ? ::: «Good afternoon, my master's mistress (wife). Where are you from?» The second phrase - arnetz kintzi mesfili kaitzfua saunge.corresponds to the Ossetian : ’F(s)arm neci (’j) kindzi ’fsijni, kæci fæwwa sawgini. :: — «“There is no shame (for) a lady-daughter-in-law who is a priest’s (given to a priest)”». There has also been a comparison of the word for horse in various Indo-Iranian languages and the reconstructed Alanic word for horse:

Zelenchuk inscription

The Zelenchuk inscription is a 10th-century inscription on a gravestone discovered by archaeologist Dmitry Strukov in 1888 on the right bank of the Bolshoy Zelenchuk river. It is considered the most famous written monument of the Alanic language or the oldest monument of the

. The inscription was read and published in 1893 by Academician Vsevolod Miller as follows: Ις Χς : esus ChristΟατς(?) Νικολαοή : aint (?) NicholasΣαχηρη φουρτ : akhir's sonX… ρη φουρτ : �... and sonΠακαθαρ Πακαθαη φουρτ : akatar Bakatai sonΑνπαλ Αναπαλανη φουρτ : nbal Anabalan sonλακανη τζηρθε (?) : onument to the Youth (?)<λακανητε ηρθε> (?) : Young men Ira (?)> According to the modern researcher T. T. Kambolov, the inscription can be deciphered as follows: "Jesus Christ, Saint Nicholas, Sakhir son of Khors, Khors son of Bagatar, Bagatar son of Anbalan, Anbalan son of Lag - their graves." It is assumed that the slab was installed on the site of a collective burial and that names were added as new graves appeared, which can be noticed from the some symbols being drawn differently. In 1892, the inscription was rediscovered by G. I. Kulikovsky, which he made a new imprint of. This was the last time the monument was seen as expeditions in 1946 and 1964 failed to find the gravestone.

References

{{Languages of the Caucasus Extinct languages of Europe Eastern Iranian languages Languages extinct in the 13th century Languages attested from the 2nd millennium Languages attested from the 1st millennium Alans Languages of South Ossetia