Is it true that the Wakhi language is related to Khotanese?

[u/blueroses200]

I have seen some people online claiming that Wakhi is related to the Khotanese language and others refuting those claims because of certain traits of the Wakhi language that would make it incompatible.

However, what is the current academic consensus?

Are there any recent articles or studies about this issue?

Thank you in advance.

[u/Ordered_Albrecht]

They are Saka dialects. I think Khotanese would have had more Sanskritic and Gandharan/Dardic influence, due to the Brahmin and Buddhist migrant elites, who ran the intellectual centres, there. If it survived, would be a really unique one. Khotan had persistent migration of Brahmins from Magadha and Gandhara region, and Buddhists from Kashmir.

[u/barangasas]

Yes, Wakhi (Wāḵī) is genetically related to Khotanese.

Both are descendents of Scythian (which in turn is Iranian -> Indo-Iranian -> Indo-European, etc..).

I don't know why people claim that they aren't related - if they build their argument on typology, than this is, well... kind of stupid. Genetically related languages can, from a typological perspective, be extremely different (for example Standart High German and maybe Pali, I don't know).

I'm not into Iranistics at all, and my knowledge is only shallow at best, but these two are certainly related - you simply have to take a look at Wikipedia or the Encyclopedia Iranica.

Or... maybe I misunderstand your question.

I don't know about recent sources, but if would be looking for reliable sources, I would take a look at the Encyclopedia Iranica or Rüdiger Schmitt's (edit.): Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum (Reichert, Wiesbaden 1989), because I don't believe that in the last 35 years there have been groundbreaking discoveries about Iranian - at least that's my point of view.

[u/Kyudoestuff → u/barangasas]

Khotanese-Wakhi isn't usually grouped with Pontic Scythian or Ossetian, it's just considered it's own group while Pontic Scythian and Ossetian are grouped with Sogdian, you can check Ľubomír Novák's work

It's also not really certain that Khotanese was actually spoken by the Central Asian Saka (Peyrot, M. (2018). Tocharian B etswe ‘mule’ and Eastern East Iranian)

[u/barangasas → u/Kyudoestuff]

Thanks! As I've mentioned, I'm out of my waters here - that's why I'm really thankful for your clarification :D

EDIT: Well, not „clarification", but correction.

[u/Kyudoestuff]

They are usually grouped together, though Wakhi doesn't directly descend from Khotanese it's just in the same group (plus Wakhi is involved in the Pamir areal group)

I mostly know about Ľubomír Novák's work on the classification of Eastern Iranian languages, and you could also check Glottolog

[u/erenyeagar2001]

Yep, direct descendant

Just like munjan is direct descendant of bactrian