Bactrian

Classification and Dialects
Bactrian is an Iranian language spoken in Bactria and shares a lot of vocabulary and grammar with the Persian language, precisely with Farsi, and has also a lot of words coming from Ancient Greek (e.g.: xelj - sun; from Ancient Greek ἥλῐος / hḗlios), Armenian (e.g.: kamj - wind; from Armenian քամի / k'ami) or even French (e.g.: otobus - bus; from French autobus). Standard Bactrian (called in Bactrian "Pârse Bâtris"; translated in English as "Persian Bactrian") is based partly on the dialect spoken in Antiochopolis (in Bactrian Ântjoxopolj), the capital city of Bactria, and the classical language used in older literature.

Writing System
The Latin alphabet was chosen in 1887 to be the new alphabet used to write Bactrian, in order to replace the Avestan script. There were multiple reasons in favour of this decision :
 * The Avestan script has letters that represent sounds that don't exist in modern Bactrian anymore
 * The classical language, called Classical Bactrian, using the Avestan script was old-fashioned and didn't correspend at all with the spoken language that is modern Bactrian
 * By changing the script and basing the language mostly on the spoken dialect in Antiochopolis, alphabetization and scholarization became more easy and feasable

Nouns
Nouns in Bactrian may be in the singular, plural or countable form, inherited from the dual form in Classical Bactrian. Even though, Classical Bactrian did make a difference between masculine and feminine nouns (and Ancient Bactrian even knew a neuter form), Bactrian nowadays doesn't have any genders for nouns. Nouns may be in different cases depending on their function in the sentence : nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, partitive, vocative.

Declension
Even if the declension system is very regular in Bactrian, there are some defective cases, that are used for a certain set of nouns :
 * Locative : indicates the position in question ; the locative case is only used for countries, cities and islands in the singular and its ending is -âj, e.g. : Bâtriâj sum. (=I'm in Bactria.)
 * Comitative : indicates the accompaniment ; the comitative case is only used with family members and proper names of people and its endings are -en, -enim and -enâ, e.g. : Te seşteren tâj dixtim. (=I saw you with your sister.)
 * Temporal : specifies the moment in time ; the temporal case is only used with the months of the year and the days of the week and its ending are -or and -orim (there is no countable form), e.g. : Se efardior dâjdaştâme. (=We will see each other on Friday.)

Telicity
Telicity expresses the accomplishment of an action by changing the noun, mostly through noun declension. So an atelic action is an incompleted action with its noun being put in the partitive case, whereas the tlic action is a completed action with its noun being put in the accusative case. So note here the difference : Matjânem micândâm. (=I'm reading a book completely. - accusative case for telic action ; so the speaker implies that he is going to finish the book), but : Matjâne micândâm. (=I read a book partially. - partitive case for atelic action ; so the speaker implies here that he is not going to finish the book).

Definiteness
In Bactrian, there are three types of definiteness : neutral, proximal and distal.
 * Neutral definiteness : it is translatable with the English definite pronoun "the" and is formed by adding the prefix e-, e.g. : E-xeljem midâjdâm. (=I see the sun.)
 * Proximal definiteness : it shows that the noun, which the speaker is talking about, is close to the speaker, it is translatable with the English prounoun "this" and is formed by adding the suffix -ne to the noun in addition to the neutral definiteness, e.g. : E-vahânejemne miareçâm. (=I like this house.)
 * Distal definiteness : it shows that the noun, which the speaker is talking about, is far from the speaker, it is translatable with the English prounoun "that" and is formed by adding the suffix -ve to the noun in addition to the neutral definiteness, e.g. : E-vahânejemve miareçâm. (=I like that house.)

Lexicon
Origin percentage of the listed vocabulary (total : 10 words) :
 * Proto-Iranian : 40% (4 words)
 * Ancient Greek : 30% (3 words)
 * Armenian : 20% (2 words)
 * French : 10% (1 word)