Editing Sarmatians (section)

===Language===
{{Main|Scytho-Sarmatian languages}}
[[File:Assimilation of Baltic and Aryan Peoples by Uralic Speakers in the Middle and Upper Volga Basin (Shaded Relief BG).png|thumb|Iranic peoples of Central Asia during the Iron Age, including Sarmatians]]
[[File:Sarmatians warriors (reconstruction).jpg|thumb|Sarmatians warriors (reconstruction)]]
The Sarmatians spoke an [[Iranian language]] that was derived from 'Old Iranian' and was heterogenous. By the first century CE, the Iranian tribes in what is today South Russia spoke different languages or dialects, clearly distinguishable.{{sfn|Harmatta|1970|loc=3.4}} According to a group of Iranologists writing in 1968, the numerous Iranian personal names in Greek inscriptions from the [[Black Sea]] coast indicate that the Sarmatians spoke a [[North-Eastern Iranian]] dialect ancestral to Alanian-[[Ossetian language|Ossetian]].<ref>Handbuch der Orientalistik, Iranistik. By I. Gershevitch, O. Hansen, B. Spuler, M.J. Dresden, Prof M Boyce, M. Boyce Summary. E.J. Brill. 1968.</ref> However, Harmatta (1970) argued that "the language of the Sarmatians or that of the Alans as a whole cannot be simply regarded as being Old Ossetian."{{sfn|Harmatta|1970|loc=3.4}}