The Iranian languages constitute the western group of the larger Indo-Iranian family which represents a major eastern branch of the Indo-European languages. With an estimated 150 to 200 million native speakers, the Iranian languages are one of the world's major language families. Today the Iranian languages are spoken from Central Turkey, Syria and Iraq in the west to Pakistan and the western edge of Xinjiang Uygur Region of China in the east. In the North, its outposts are Ossetic in the central Caucasus and Yaghnobi and Tajik Persian in Tajikistan in Central Asia, while in the South they are bounded by the Persian Gulf, except for the Kumzari enclave on the Musandam peninsula in Oman. Since the Middle period, Iranian Languages have been divided into two main branches: Western Iranian Languages and Eastern Iranian Languages. The Western Languages were thought to have been derived from the western parts of Iranian plateau while the Eastern ones were thought to have been derived from the eastern parts of Iranian plateau. Western Languages were so similar that they were practically mutually intelligible while Eastern Languages were believed to show deep levels of diversity.
