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The Eastern Iranian languages are a subgroup of the Iranian languages emerging in Middle Iranian times (from ca. the 4th century BC). The Avestan language is often classified as early Eastern Iranian, but this is uncertain. They are divided into a Northeastern and a Southeastern branch. In spite of this separation, Eastern Iranian remained a single dialect continuum subject to common innovation. As opposed to the Middle Western Iranian dialects, Middle Eastern Iranian preserves word-final syllables. Eastern Iranian is thought to have separated from Western Iranian in the course of the later 2nd millennium BC, and was possibly located at the Yaz culture. The largest living Eastern Iranian language is Pashto with some 40 million speakers, a major language of Afghanistan and western Pakistan.
[edit] NortheasternThe Northeastern group includes most Eastern Iranian languages.[1] Most of them are spoken in a contiguous area, in Afghanistan as well as the adjacent parts of western Pakistan, southeastern Tajikistan and the far west of Xinjiang region of China. It also has two other living members in widely separated areas, the Yaghnobi language of northwestern Tajikistan (descended from Sogdian) and the Ossetic language of the Caucasus (descended from Scytho-Sarmatian). These are remnants of a vast ethno-linguistic continuum that stretched over most of the steppes of Central Asia in the 1st millennium BC. The Avestan language itself, the oldest attestation of the Iranian branch, is a member of the group, although the classification is uncertain. With Greek presence in Central Asia, some of the easternmost of these languages were recorded in their Middle Iranian stage (hence the "Eastern" classification), while almost no records of the Scytho-Sarmatian continuum stretching from Kazakhstan west across the Pontic steppe to Ukraine have survived.
[edit] SoutheasternThe Southeastern group includes only Ormuri and Parachi.[1] Ormuri is spoken in Kaniguram in South Waziristan area of Pakistan, but there may be still some speakers in Baraki Barak in Logar province of Afghanistan. Parachi is spoken by few hundred people in Hindukush near Kabul.
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