Avesta language - grammar and vocabulary
The grammar-and-vocabulary domain asks for parsing (case, number, gender, person, tense, mood, voice) and for reliable glosses of high-frequency words. Avestan is an Old Iranian language, closely related to Old Persian and to Vedic Sanskrit, and like them it is heavily inflected.
Nouns and adjectives
- Three genders, three numbers (singular, dual, plural) and eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative.
- Masculine a-stems, singular: yasna- → nom. yasnō, voc. yasna, acc. yasnəm, instr. yasnā, dat. yasnāi, abl. yasnāt, gen. yasnahe, loc. yasne.
- Feminine ā-stems: daēnā- → nom. daēnā, acc. daēnąm, dat. daēnāi, gen. daēnāyå.
- Adjectives agree in case, number and gender; comparatives end in -yah-, superlatives in -išta- (vohu "good" → vahištəm "the best").
Verbs
- Stems: present, aorist, perfect; moods: indicative, subjunctive, optative, imperative, injunctive; voices: active, middle, passive.
- Primary endings: -mi, -hi, -ti; middle -ē, -maidē, -nte.
- yaz- "to worship" → yazāmi "I worship", yazamaidē "we worship".
- Enclitics lean on the first stressed word of the clause: -ca "and", -cit "even", -zī "for".
Worked example
Parse ašāi in the Ashem Vohu. The stem is aša- "truth, order", an a-stem; the ending -āi marks the dative singular, so ašāi = "to/for truth". Cross-check with the context: uštā ahmāi ... ašāi vahištāi - the dative ahmāi "to him" agrees in case with ašāi vahištāi, confirming the parse. An instrumental would have been ašā, a genitive ašahyā.
Traps
- False friends: Avestan daēva means "demon", while Vedic deva means "god"; Avestan ahura answers to Vedic asura.
- Mistaking a locative in -e (yasne) for a dative.
- Ignoring -ca and so losing a coordination in a gloss.