How similar are the Indo-iranian languages?

[Ciarán12]

I'm curious to know if the languages of the Indo-iranian branch are as similar to one another as sister languages from other IE language branches are. Is the relationship between Persian and Hindi, for example, as close as Portuguese and Italian or German and Swedish? I get the impression they're not that close.

[vijayjohn]

Nope, that's more like Hindi vs. Marathi and Persian vs. Kurdish.

Hindi vs. Persian is more like...well, I guess the closest parallel I can think of is something like Russian versus...Latvian?

I think the Indo-Iranian languages may actually be the most diverse branch of Indo-European languages there is. I mean, it lumps together Indo-Aryan languages, Iranian languages, Dardic languages, and Nuristani languages. Each one of those branches is very different from the other, I guess kind of like North Germanic vs. West Germanic.

[Ciarán12]

Nope, that's more like Hindi vs. Marathi and Persian vs. Kurdish.

Hindi vs. Persian is more like...well, I guess the closest parallel I can think of is something like Russian versus...Latvian?

Okay, thanks. So the Indo-iranian connection is more like the Balto-Slavic one than the Slavic or Baltic (or Celtic or Germanic etc....) ones. I had that feeling.

I think the Indo-Iranian languages may actually be the most diverse branch of Indo-European languages there is. I mean, it lumps together Indo-Aryan languages, Iranian languages, Dardic languages, and Nuristani languages. Each one of those branches is very different from the other,

Would you say they are all more or less equally different or are their groupings amongst those? And are the differences more in vocabulary or grammar? For instance, the Brythonic and Gaelic Celtic languages are very different in terms of vocabulary, but grammatically quite similar. I assume also that we're talking about zero mutual intelligibility between any of these subgroups?

I guess kind of like North Germanic vs. West Germanic.

Hmm, an odd analagy to draw I think, I'd consider North and West Germanic languages to be quite close. I mean, if you study German and Swedish you immediately have no doubt they are related and once you have time to adjust to the regular sound changes you can get quite a bit of leverage out of knowing the other.

[vijayjohn]

Okay, thanks. So the Indo-iranian connection is more like the Balto-Slavic one than the Slavic or Baltic (or Celtic or Germanic etc....) ones. I had that feeling.

Np! And yes, that's exactly what I was going for.

Would you say they are all more or less equally different or are their groupings amongst those?

The subgrouping is tricky. Everyone (that I can think of, anyway ) acknowledges that Indo-Aryan and Iranian are different (sub)branches, but where Dardic and Nuristani fit into this is more controversial. I think Nuristani and especially Dardic are typically lumped in with Indo-Aryan at least in older sources, but I have also read about an alternative approach that groups Nuristani with Iranian. The leading scholars on Nuristani languages have been arguing pretty strongly that they're a separate branch and that the (phonological, syntactic, and perhaps morphological, if my vague memory is correct) differences between them and all the other Indo-Iranian languages go back to Proto-Indo-iranian. They also argue that Dardic languages are Indo-Aryan, but I have read about this being questioned as well.

So basically: Indo-Aryan + Dardic vs. Nuristani vs. Iranian seems to be the most widely accepted subgrouping now. That being said, there is not very much data on the Dardic and Nuristani languages anyway, so people usually ignore those...

And are the differences more in vocabulary or grammar? For instance, the Brythonic and Gaelic Celtic languages are very different in terms of vocabulary, but grammatically quite similar.

I think it's more the opposite for Indo-Iranian. There are big differences in grammar even within a given branch; I don't really get the same impression about the lexical differences. I could be wrong about that, though.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your question. What would be an example of the large differences in vocabulary between Brythonic and Goidelic?

I assume also that we're talking about zero mutual intelligibility between any of these subgroups?

I would say language contact and extensive multilingualism in the region complicate the question of mutual intelligibility. Persian and Hindi look really similar on the surface, but that's because Persian has had a prestigious position in North Indian culture for almost a millennium and was also the court language in the Mughal Empire and the Delhi Sultanate, so Hindi has borrowed plenty of vocabulary directly from Persian. The similarities to Persian are more superficial in most other Indo-Aryan languages. Dardic and Nuristani languages are in close contact with each other for the most part, and by now at least, all of them are in direct contact with either Iranian languages or Indo-Aryan languages or both. As a result, people who speak Dardic and/or Nuristani languages are very likely to speak other Indo-Iranian languages, too, but definitely not the other way around, especially given that Dardic/Nuristani languages are mostly endangered and limited to the war-torn Hindu Kush.

Once you strip all that away, though, yes, I'd say you're dealing with zero mutual intelligibility.

I guess kind of like North Germanic vs. West Germanic.

Hmm, an odd analagy to draw I think, I'd consider North and West Germanic languages to be quite close. I mean, if you study German and Swedish you immediately have no doubt they are related and once you have time to adjust to the regular sound changes you can get quite a bit of leverage out of knowing the other.

I was trying to come up with an analogy with Western Europe because I figure that's what you'd be most familiar with, but it's hard to do that, and I guess it didn't work. It's way smaller and way less linguistically diverse than the region covered by Indo-Iranian, but at the same time, it's also home to multiple branches of the IE family (e.g. the relationship between Romance and Germanic seems not to be as clear-cut as the relationship between Iranian and Indo-Aryan).

[Surgeon]

My understanding is that Hindi, Punjabi and Marathi are quite close. And Assamese and Bengali are really close (even using the same script). Not sure about Gujarati or Konkani.

[Lur]

I was trying to come up with an analogy with Western Europe because I figure that's what you'd be most familiar with, but it's hard to do that, and I guess it didn't work.

We have, um... Basque instead of Burushaski

[Yasna]

We have, um... Basque instead of Burushaski

Speaking of Burushaski.

Pakistan's 'Burushaski' Language Finds New Relatives

[vijayjohn]

I think he's just a quack. The similarities he's talking about are apparently just areal since Burushaski is surrounded by Indo-European languages. He's not the first one to try (and fail) to demonstrate this.

My understanding is that Hindi, Punjabi and Marathi are quite close. And Assamese and Bengali are really close (even using the same script). Not sure about Gujarati or Konkani.

Hindi and Punjabi are pretty similar if not closely related, although I can think of at least one phonological innovation off the top of my head that Punjabi shares with Dardic languages and not with Hindi or the other Central Indo-Aryan languages. Marathi isn't very closely related to either of them; it's Southern Indo-Aryan whereas Hindi is Central Indo-Aryan. Konkani is another Southern Indo-Aryan language and thus closely related to Marathi. (Sinhalese is not Southern Indo-Aryan but rather Insular Indo-Aryan - I'm not sure whether that's the right term for it, but the point is that Sinhalese isn't particularly closely related to any other modern Indo-Aryan languages aside from Dhivehi in the Maldives). Gujarati is also classified as Central Indo-Aryan AFAIK but doesn't strike me as particularly close to Hindi and lacks a lot of the Central Indo-Aryan innovations. If I'm recalling Masica correctly, then Gujarati, Marathi, and Konkani are all heavily influenced by Dravidian languages due to Kannada having been widely spoken at various times in Indian history at least as far north as Gujarat (which would seem to be almost up to the modern-day border with Pakistan).

[Surgeon]

Shukriya. Dhanyavaad.

Edit: OMG. I just read a few articles about thank you and please in India. Should I avoid these words when communicating with Indians? (I know you specifically are a Texan, but is it true that Indians are offended when you use it for minute errands or favors they do for you?)

In my mind, not saying thank you in a restaurant feels snobby and arrogant. At least a nod as a form of appreciation and acknowledgment of the action is a must for me.

[Johanna]

I guess kind of like North Germanic vs. West Germanic.

Hmm, an odd analagy to draw I think, I'd consider North and West Germanic languages to be quite close. I mean, if you study German and Swedish you immediately have no doubt they are related and once you have time to adjust to the regular sound changes you can get quite a bit of leverage out of knowing the other.

Keep in mind that Low German is to Swedish what Norman French is to English though. It's just that it's much harder to realize that those words are loans in the first place since both languages are Germanic.

I would probably think of it more like along the lines between Italic and Hellenic languages. They're obviously related, but it's just as obvious that they belong to different subfamilies, and they also have a couple of well-documented classical languages among them.

[linguoboy]

I guess kind of like North Germanic vs. West Germanic.

Hmm, an odd analagy to draw I think, I'd consider North and West Germanic languages to be quite close. I mean, if you study German and Swedish you immediately have no doubt they are related and once you have time to adjust to the regular sound changes you can get quite a bit of leverage out of knowing the other.

Keep in mind that Low German is to Swedish what Norman French is to English though. It's just that it's much harder to realize that those words are loans in the first place since both languages are Germanic.

Similarly, Persian is to Hindustani (and related languages) as Low Saxon is to Swedish (and related languages). I've been surprised over the years to learn just how much "Hindi" is actually derived from Persian.

Hindi and Panjabi are very close indeed. They differ most conspicuously in their prepositions, which can make simple phrases unintelligible even when all the vocabulary is the same or nearly so. (There are some common correspondences, namely the development of tone in Panjabi and the loss of geminates in Hindi, which cover a great deal of the inherited lexicon.)

[vijayjohn]

OMG. I just read a few articles about thank you and please in India. Should I avoid these words when communicating with Indians? (I know you specifically are a Texan, but is it true that Indians are offended when you use it for minute errands or favors they do for you?)

I wouldn't say offended, at most weirded out. Traditionally, we just don't use "please" and "thank you" as much as Europeans and people of European descent do. My understanding is that this is true in China as well; it may be true in some other (nearby?) parts of Asia, too. We barely even have words for either of those in most of our languages, so when we do want to say either of these things, we're more likely to just say them in English, even when we're otherwise talking to each other entirely in our own languages.

That being said, in the years since independence, I think those of us with any access to Western culture have been learning more and more about it, so people nowadays don't necessarily see it as being quite as weird as they used to. Besides, it's somewhat more understandable when foreigners do these kinds of things than when Indians do.

It's also worth pointing out that this is much more normal in some languages than in others. AFAICT it's e.g. pretty common to say 'thank you' in Hindi/Urdu and to some extent in Bengali or Tamil but not so much in Malayalam.

[Saim]

Yeah, I agree. In Urdu as spoken in Pakistan you can say شکریہ but not in anywhere near as many contexts as in English.

[eskandar]

Shukriya. Dhanyavaad.

Edit: OMG. I just read a few articles about thank you and please in India. Should I avoid these words when communicating with Indians? (I know you specifically are a Texan, but is it true that Indians are offended when you use it for minute errands or favors they do for you?)

In my mind, not saying thank you in a restaurant feels snobby and arrogant. At least a nod as a form of appreciation and acknowledgment of the action is a must for me.

In my experience in India: best to use the English "thank you" even when speaking Hindi/Urdu, as Vijay suggests. The H/U equivalents are very heavy. In the entire time I lived there I never actually heard someone say "dhanyavaad" except in pedagogical situations (teaching the word), or formal recordings in airports, etc. Among Urdu-speakers in formal settings you can say things like "shukriya" (thank you) and "ba-raah-e-karam"/"ba-raah-e-mehrbani" (please), but they are extremely formal. As Saim says, the context is more limited, too.

In English it's quite normal to say "thanks" when someone does something as simple as passing the salt at the dinner table. Simple things like this go unthanked in Hindi/Urdu, the message behind the silence being: we are friends, and it's only natural that you'd do this for me; I'd do the same for you. Thanking communicates distance, as if saying "we are strangers, I thank you for going out of your way to do something for me, I'm not sure I'd do the same for you" - hence the offense when used excessively, for minute favors, etc. At least, that's how I understand it.

Hindi and Panjabi are very close indeed. They differ most conspicuously in their prepositions

Postpositions, I'm sure you meant to say.

[vijayjohn]

Among Urdu-speakers in formal settings you can say things like "shukriya" (thank you) and "ba-raah-e-karam"/"ba-raah-e-mehrbani" (please), but they are extremely formal. As Saim says, the context is more limited, too.

Interesting, I didn't know either of those expressions for 'please'!

Am I remembering wrong, or is shukriya pretty commonly used in Bollywood movies?

In English it's quite normal to say "thanks" when someone does something as simple as passing the salt at the dinner table. Simple things like this go unthanked in Hindi/Urdu, the message behind the silence being: we are friends, and it's only natural that you'd do this for me; I'd do the same for you. Thanking communicates distance, as if saying "we are strangers, I thank you for going out of your way to do something for me, I'm not sure I'd do the same for you" - hence the offense when used excessively, for minute favors, etc. At least, that's how I understand it.

I think maybe gratefulness is just implied in some situations. Like in some Indian movies, there are situations where someone's employee saves them from a situation they consider dangerous or frightening, but then they (of course) don't say anything to their employee. I wonder, is it that they're silent because they're ungrateful, or could it be because their actions speak for themselves? Or maybe my understanding of it wrong. *shrug*

[eskandar]

Among Urdu-speakers in formal settings you can say things like "shukriya" (thank you) and "ba-raah-e-karam"/"ba-raah-e-mehrbani" (please), but they are extremely formal. As Saim says, the context is more limited, too.

Interesting, I didn't know either of those expressions for 'please'!

They're frozen Persian expressions used in Urdu. براہِ کرم and براہِ مہربانی . "Kindly" would maybe be a better translation of both.

Am I remembering wrong, or is shukriya pretty commonly used in Bollywood movies?

I think you're right. All kinds of very Urdu-y things are common in Bollywood, though.

[vijayjohn]

I was just thinking about this a little more, and I think that perhaps there is something ritualistic about thanking people in English, and the reason why we Indians don't say it so much is because we just don't participate in the same rituals of politeness by default. I think you could say that saying "thank you" after someone says "bless you!" is a ritual, and similarly with saying it after someone passes you salt or does part of their job or whatever. There's no intrinsic need for humans to say "thank you" in any of these situations, and whether we do or not varies by culture. Malayalees don't have any of these rituals. As a whole, we thank deities often and humans seldom, perhaps because we tend to think of deities as responsible for running our lives and demanding more praise than humans could ever ask for, to the point where we even have words specifically for thanking deities (that aren't for thanking each other).