The Middle Iranian language of the Sogdian merchant city-states of Central Asia — the lingua franca of the Silk Road for over a thousand years.
Where it was spoken
Sogdian was the language of Samarkand, Bukhara, and the surrounding Sogdian city-states in modern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan from the 4th century BCE through the 11th century CE. Sogdian merchant communities established themselves along trade routes to China, leaving inscriptions and manuscripts at Dunhuang, Turfan, and as far east as Mongolia. The closely related Yaghnobi language, spoken by a few thousand in the Yaghnob Valley of Tajikistan, is its only living descendant.
What it sounded like
Sogdian preserved Old Iranian distinctions of gender, number, and case that Persian had already simplified. Its verb system distinguished durative, perfective, and aorist aspects.
How it’s written
Sogdian texts appear in three scripts: the Sogdian alphabet (an Aramaic derivative), the Manichaean script used by religious communities, and Syriac for Christian texts.
Find more languages by letter
Sogdian starts with S and ends with N. Browse other languages along the same letter.
Languages that contain a letter from "Sogdian":