Along by owning Old Persian or even Aryan Language, Avestan is one of the two Old Iranian languages of which we have grounds to believe. A structure of the language & its audio system testifies to its status as an East Iranian language.

A Avestan language, every bit reflected in the Avesta, is divided into deuce different stages:

One- Old Avestan or even Gathic Avestan: This form of a language was utilized to compose the Gathas and Yasna Haptanghaiti, probably by Zoroaster himself. Gathic Avestan is an archaic language by owning the complicated grammar which consists of eight case forms and a extremely inflected noun system. These are however quite more or less a Vedic Sanskrit. Such as Zoroaster's life, widely differing dates for Avestan use at times been proposed; scholarly consensus floats in the area of 1000 BC (roughly contemporary to the Brahmana period of Vedic Sanskrit).

Two- Young Avestan: a language utilized for composing a major area of Avesta, including a rest of the Yasnas, the Yashts, and Vidaevdat. Young Avestan itself has 2 forms, 1 known as Original Young Avestan, & a more, Artificial Young Avestan. a 1st form was probably the natural development of Old Avestan & was virtually all probably besides a spoken language as much as the 8th century BCE. the Artificial Young Avestan nevertheless occurs as corrupt form of the language, a form that was never spoken & was utilized per priests (Magi) in afterwards days sequentially to compose recently texts. Vidaevdat is the virtually all important text that was composed inside Artificial Young Avestan.

Phonology

A Avestan healthy differs from either a late Old Persian principally per big inventory of vowels. When opposed to Sanskrit, Avestan has retained sonant sibilant consonant, & has spirant like than aspirate series. There are various conventions for transliteration. Vowels: Consonants: A Avesta was non written until at least a 1st century AD, & virtually all in all probability until 4th century AD. A script utilized for the writing of Avesta, known as Dīn Dabireh, during the Sassanian times (226–650 AD) was a derivative of Pahlavi script of Middle Persian. Five hundredīn Dabireh is specially designed to reflect a Avestan audio system, non unlike Devanāgarī, it allows phonetic disambiguation of allophones.