Ossetian language

Ossetian, Ossetian or Ossetian is a language of the Iranian family spoken in Ossetia (in Ossetian: Ирыстон, romanized: Iryston), on the central slopes of the mountains of the Caucasus, in a border area between Russia and Georgia. The area in Russia is known as North Ossetia-Alania, while the area south of the border is called South Ossetia, recognized by Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Nauru as an independent state, but considered by the rest of the international community. as part of Georgia. The number of Ossetian speakers is around 525,000, sixty percent of whom live in North Ossetia and ten percent in South Ossetia. Ossetian is a relative and possibly a descendant of the extinct Scythian, Sarmatian, and Alanic languages.

History

The Ossetian language belongs to the northeastern Iranian branch of Indo-European languages. It is considered the inheritor of the Scythian dialects of antiquity (of which it preserves and develops the fundamental phonetic characteristics that separate them from other ancient Iranian languages) and of the Alans of the Middle Ages.

There is a tradition of writing in Ossetian (in both Iriano and Digorese varieties) dating back to the late 18th century. There are many epics in Ossetian, the most famous being those of the Nart warriors. The literary language was established by the poet Kostá Jetagúrov (1859–1906).

Extension

Ossetian is the national and literary language of the Ossetian nation, extending over the territory of the Autonomous Republic of North Ossetia-Alania and the self-proclaimed Republic of South Ossetia, with about 500,000 speakers.

The Russian region is called North Ossetia-Alania (colloquially Alania), with the capital Vladikavkaz), while the Georgian side is South Ossetia (capital: Tskhinval). There are about 500,000 Ossetian language speakers, of whom 60% live in North Ossetia and 15% in South Ossetia.

Variants

There are two dialects or geographical variants: ironau (iriano in Spanish) and digoronau (digorese in Spanish), the first variant being the most widely spoken, although both are official. Written Ossetian can be easily recognized because it uses the letter æ, which is not the case in any other language that uses the Cyrillic alphabet..

Alphabet

The literary form of the language has 35 phonemes: 26 consonants, 7 vowels, and 2 diphthongs.

• Cyrillic alphabet (from 1937):

• Latin Alphabet (from 1923 to 1937): A/a, Æ/æ, B/b, C/c, Č/č, D/d, E/e, F/f, G/g, H/h, I/i, J/j, K/k, L/l, M/m, N/n, O/o, P/p, Q/q, R/r, S/x