An etymological exploration and dissection of Sogdian loanwords in Modern Persian

The most common and natural thing which happens when two languages have contact with each other is the interchange of some elements between them, epigrammatically referred to as borrowing. The most widespread type of borrowing occurs at the level of lexicon. Persian has borrowed a multitude of terms from Sumerian, Sanskrit, Greek, Parthian, Sogdian, Khwarizmi, Arabic, Syriac, Mongolian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, English, and French. This study is an etymological exploration and dissection of Sogdian loanwords in Modern Persian. Sogdian language belongs to the Middle Eastern Iranian languages. It was used as a lingua franca throughout the Eastern Silk Road from the sixth to the tenth centuries. Roughly from the tenth century, it lost its significance due to both the development of Dari Persian and the gradual influence of the Arabic and Turkish languages. The Sogdian loanwords introduced to Persian have undergone both phonetic and semantic changes. Some non-Persian words, such as Sanskrit, Turkish, and Chinese words, have been introduced into Persian through the Sogdian language.