|Region||Parthia, ancient Iran| |Era||State language 248 BC –
224 AD. Marginalized by Middle Persian from the 3rd century|
|Writing system||Inscriptional Parthian, Manichaean alphabet|
The Parthian language, also known as Arsacid Pahlavi and
Pahlavanik, is a now-extinct ancient Northwestern Iranian
language spoken in Parthia, a region of northeastern ancient
Iran during the rule of the Parthian empire. Parthian was the
language of state of the Parthian Empire (248 BC – 224 AD).
Parthian was a Western Middle Iranian language that, through
language contact, also had some features of the Eastern Iranian
language group, the influence of which is attested primarily in
loan words. Some traces of Eastern influence survives in
Parthian loan words in the Armenian language. Written Parthian
The Parthian language was rendered using the Pahlavi writing
system, which had two essential characteristics: First, its
script derived from Aramaic, the script (and language) of the
Achaemenid chancellery (i.e. Imperial Aramaic).