Language
The "Scythian languages" are essentially unattested, and their internal divergence is difficult to judge. They belonged to the Eastern Iranian family of languages.
The Scythian languages may have formed a dialect continuum: "Scytho-Sarmatian" in the west and "Scytho-Khotanese" or Saka in the east. They were mostly marginalized and assimilated as a consequence of the late antiquity and early Middle Ages Slavic and Turkic expansion. Some remnants of the eastern groups have survived as modern Pashto and Pamiri languages in Central Asia. The western (Sarmatian) group of Scythian survived as the language of the Alans and eventually gave rise to the modern Ossetic language.
It is likely that certain peoples included under the "Scythian" umbrella term spoke other languages; for example, the Meotians (Sindi), had adopted Indo-Aryan dialects.
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