Iranian

Linguistically, a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European languages, which in modern times includes Persian (q.v.)--the most widely used--Pushtu, Kurdish (q.v.) dialects, and Ossetic. In the Middle Iranian stage of the group’s development (third century B.C. to tenth century A.D.), the chief languages were Parthian, Pahlavi (middle Persian), and Soghdian.