That’s wonderful! I have a similar background and am also surprised at how I learnt and still remember it even though it is quite distant from modern Persian
Yeah, I imagine it's closer to Pashto than modern Iranian tbf. Ossetian is another outlier here, close to Georgia/Russia but related to the languages from Pamir/Tajikistan.
Avestan (IIRC, my memory is fuzzy) had some weird similarities to my native language—Polish. Occasionally I'd stumble upon a phrase I could actually understand.
Random example I just remembered: "both ears" (again IIRC) sounded like uba ushi /uba uši/ (uba being 2 in dual, ushi meaning ears). Polish used to have dual number, but now retained it mostly for some body parts ( oba == 2). Ears in PL is uszy /ushee/. You'd sound a bit weird saying saying "oba uszy" in Polish, but people would understand you.
Nowadays I just enjoy the fact that Ashem Vohu is one of the oldest phrases I can utter in its original language. (I'm really good at learning and forgetting languages it seems.)
Avestan (IIRC, my memory is fuzzy) had some weird similarities to my native language—Polish. Occasionally I'd stumble upon a phrase I could actually understand.
Random example I just remembered: "both ears" (again IIRC) sounded like uba ushi /uba uši/ (uba being 2 in dual, ushi meaning ears). Polish used to have dual number, but now retained it mostly for some body parts ( oba == 2). Ears in PL is uszy /ushee/. You'd sound a bit weird saying saying "oba uszy" in Polish, but people would understand you.
Nowadays I just enjoy the fact that Ashem Vohu is one of the oldest phrases I can utter in its original language. (I'm really good at learning and forgetting languages it seems.)