Ossetian is an
Eastern Iranic language. The vast majority of Scythological scholars agree in considering the Scythian languages a part of the Eastern Iranic languages too. This relies principally on the fact that the Greek inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea Coast contain several hundreds of Sarmatian names showing a close affinity to the
Ossetian language. Some scholars detect a division of Scythian into two dialects: a western, more conservative dialect, and an eastern, more innovative one. The Scythian languages may have formed a
dialect continuum: •
Alanic languages or
Scytho-Sarmatian in the west: were spoken by people originally of Iranic stock from the 8th and 7th century BC onwards in the area of
Ukraine, Southern
Russia and
Kazakhstan. • Modern
Ossetian survives as a continuation of the language family
possibly represented by Scytho-Sarmatian inscriptions, although the Scytho-Sarmatian language family "does not simply represent the same [Ossetian] language" at an earlier date. written in
Khotanese Saka, part of the
Eastern Iranic branch of the
Indo-European languages, listing the animals of the
Chinese zodiac in the cycle of predictions for people born in that year; ink on paper, early 9th century •
Saka languages or
Scytho-Khotanese in the east: spoken in the first century in the
Kingdom of Khotan (located in present-day
Xinjiang, China), and including the
Khotanese of
Khotan and
Tumshuqese of
Tumshuq. • Modern
Wakhi likely descends from this branch. It is highly probable that already in the Old Iranic period, there were some eastern Scythian dialects which gave rise to the ancestor(s) of the
Sogdian and
Yaghnobi languages, although data required to test this hypothesis is presently lacking. More recent scholarship suggests that this is due to the Scythian languages and the Sogdo-Bactrian languages descending from a larger shared genetic phylum coined as
Northeastern Iranian. The Scythian languages shared some features with other Eastern Iranic languages, such as the use of the suffix to denote the plural form, which is also present in
Sogdian,
Chorasmian,
Ossetian, and
Yaghnobi. This again hints towards the idea that these languages share more recent common ancestry through the existence of a possible Northeastern Iranian dialect cluster. == History ==