Tajik language

Tajik
тоҷикӣ, تاجیکی‎, فارسی تاجیکی‎, tojikī
"Tojikī" written in Cyrillic script and Persian (Nasta'liq script)
Native to	Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan
Native speakers	7.9 million (2010 census – 2014)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Iranian Southwestern Iranian Persian Tajik
Writing system	Cyrillic, Latin, Persian, Tajik Braille
Official status
Official language in	Tajikistan
Recognised minority language in	Kyrgyzstan Kazakhstan
Language codes
ISO 639-1	tg
ISO 639-2	tgk
ISO 639-3	tgk
Glottolog	taji1245

Tajiki (Persian: تاجیکی‎‎), or Tajik also referred to as Tajik Persian, Tajiki Persian فارسی تاجیکی‎ (sometimes written Tadjiki or Tadzhiki or Forsii Tojiki; Тоҷикӣ, Форсии Тоҷикӣ, Tojikī [tɔːdʒɪˈkiː]) a Southwestern Iranian language that is the variety of the Persian spoken in Tajikistan. It is closely related to Dari Persian. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Tajik has been considered by a number of writers and researchers to be a variety of Persian (Halimov 1974: 30–31, Oafforov 1979: 33). The popularity of this conception of Tajik as a (less prestigious) variety of Persian was such that, during the period in which Tajik intellectuals were trying to establish Tajik as a language separate from Persian, Sadriddin Ayni, who was a prominent intellectual and educator, had to make a statement that Tajik was not a bastardized dialect of Persian. The issue of whether Tajik and Persian are to be considered two dialects of a single language or two discrete languages has political sides to it (see Perry 1996). Today Tajik is recognized as an autonomous West-Iranian language, independent from Persian and Dari, though genetically linked to them.

Tajik is the official language of Tajikistan. In Afghanistan (where Tajiks make up a large part of the population), this language is less influenced by Turkic languages, is called Dari, and has co-official language status. Tajik has diverged from Persian as spoken in Afghanistan and Iran due to political borders, geographical isolation, the standardization process, and the influence of Russian and neighboring Turkic languages. The standard language is based on the northwestern dialects of Tajik (region of old major city of Samarqand), which have been somewhat influenced by the neighboring Uzbek language as a result of geographical proximity. Tajik also retains numerous archaic elements in its vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar that have been lost elsewhere in the Persophone world, in part due to its relative isolation in the mountains of Central Asia.

Geographical distribution

The most important historically Tajik/Persian-speaking cities of Central Asia—Samarqand and Buxoro—are in present-day Uzbekistan. Ethnic Tajiks are still a majority in these ancient cities. Today, virtually all Tajik speakers in Bukhara are bilingual in Tajik and Uzbek. This Tajik–Uzbek bilingualism has had a strong influence on the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Bukharan Tajik. Tajiks are also found in large numbers in the Surxondaryo Province in the south and along Uzbekistan's eastern border with Tajikistan. Tajik is still widely spoken in Samarqand and Buxoro today, as Tajiks account for perhaps 70% of the total population of Samarqand and have been estimated to make up as much as 90% of Buxoro.

Official statistics in Uzbekistan state that the Tajik community comprises 5% of the nation's total population. However, these numbers do not include ethnic Tajiks who, for a variety of reasons, choose to identify themselves as Uzbeks in population census forms. During the Soviet "Uzbekization" supervised by Sharof Rashidov, the head of the Uzbek Communist Party, Tajiks had to choose either to stay in Uzbekistan and get registered as Uzbek in their passports or leave the republic for the less-developed agricultural and mountainous Tajikistan. The "Uzbekization" movement ended in 1924. Native Tajiks living in the nation of Uzbekistan have reportedly estimated that Tajiks make up 25–30% of the nation's population.

Tajiks constitute 80% of Tajikistan's population, and Persian dominates in most parts of the country. Some Tajiks in Badakhshan in southeastern Tajikistan, where the Pamiri languages are the native languages of most residents, are bilingual. Tajiks are the dominant ethnic group in Northern Afghanistan as well, and are also the majority group in scattered pockets elsewhere in the country, particularly urban areas such as Kabul, Mazar, Kunduz, Ghazni and Herat. Tajiks constitute between 25% and 30% of the total population of the country. In Afghanistan, the dialects spoken by ethnic Tajiks are written using the Perso-Arabic script and referred to as Dari, along with the Persian dialects of other groups in Afghanistan such as the Hazara and Aimaq. 50% of Afghan citizens are native speakers of Dari. A large Tajik-speaking diaspora exists due to the instability that has plagued Central Asia in recent years, with significant numbers of Tajiks found in Russia, Kazakhstan, and beyond. This Tajik diaspora is also the result of the poor state of the economy of Tajikistan, and each year approximately one million men leave Tajikistan in order to gain employment in Russia.

Dialects

Tajik dialects can be approximately split into the following groups:

1. Northern dialects (Northern Tajikistan, Buxoro, Samarqand, Kyrgyzstan, and the Varzob valley region of Dushanbe).
2. Central dialects (dialects of the upper Zeravshan Valley)
3. Southern dialects (South and East of Dushanbe, Kulob, and the Kerategin region of Tajikistan)
4. Southeastern dialects (dialects of the Darvoz region and the Oxus near Rushan)

The dialects used among the native Bukharian Jews of Central Asia are known as Bukhori, and belong to the northern dialect grouping. They are chiefly distinguished by the inclusion of Hebrew terms, principally religious vocabulary, and a historical use of the Hebrew alphabet. Despite these differences, Bukhori is readily intelligible to other Tajik-speakers, particularly speakers of northern dialects.

A very important moment in the development of the contemporary Tajik, especially of the spoken language, is the tendency in changing its dialectal orientation. The dialects of Northern Tajikistan were the foundation of the prevalent standard Tajik, while the Southern dialects did not enjoy either popularity or prestige. Now all politicians and public officials make their speeches in the Kulob dialect, which is also used in broadcasting.

Phonology

Vowels

The table below lists the six vowel phonemes in standard, literary Tajik. Letters from the Tajik Cyrillic alphabet are given first, followed by IPA transcription. Local dialects frequently have more than the six seen below. The Tajik Cyrillic alphabet also contains the letter Ӣ ӣ, which is a [iː].

Tajik vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	и /i/		у /u/
Mid	е /eː/	ӯ1 /ɵː/	о2 /ɔː/
Open	а /æ/

1. In central and southern dialects, /ɵː/ merges with /u/.
2. The open back vowel has varyingly been described as mid-back, [ɒ], [ɔ], and [ɔː]. It is analogous to standard Persian â/ﺁ (long a).

Consonants

The Tajik language contains 24 consonants and 16 of them are identical, except for their voicing, these contrastive pairs are: [б/п] [в/ф] [д/т] [з/с] [ж/ш] [ҷ/ч] [г/к] [ғ/х]. The table below lists the consonant phonemes in standard, literary Tajik. Letters from the Tajik Cyrillic alphabet are given first, followed by IPA transcription.

	Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	м /m/	н /n/
Stop	п б /p/ /b/	т д /t/ /d/	ч ҷ /tʃ/ /dʒ/		к г /k/ /ɡ/	қ /q/	ъ /ʔ/
Fricative	ф в /f/ /v/	с з /s/ /z/	ш ж /ʃ/ /ʒ/			х ғ /χ/ /ʁ/	ҳ /h/
Trill		р /r/
Approximant		л /l/		й /j/

Word stress

Word stress generally falls on the first syllable in finite verb forms and on the last syllable in nouns and noun-like words. Examples of where stress does not fall on the last syllable are adverbs like: бале (bale, meaning "yes") and зеро (zero, meaning "because"). Stress also does not fall on enclitics, nor on the marker of the direct object.

Grammar

Main article: Tajik grammar

The word order of Tajiki Persian is subject–object–verb. Tajik Persian grammar is almost identical to the classical Persian grammar (and the grammar of modern varieties such as Iranian Persian), although there are notable differences. The most notable difference between classical Persian grammar and Tajik Persian grammar is the construction of the present progressive tense in each language. In Tajik, the present progressive form consists of a present progressive participle, from the verb истодан istodan 'to stand', and a cliticized form of the verb -acт -ast 'to be'.

Ман	мактуб	навишта	истода-ам
man	maktub	navishta	istoda-am
I	letter	write	PRS.PROG=be.1sg
'I am writing a letter.'

In Classical Persian, the present progressive form consists of the verb دار dār 'to have' followed by a conjugated verb in either the simple present tense, the habitual past tense, or the habitual past perfect tense.

من کنم کار دارم
man	kon-am	kār	dār-am
I	do-1sg.PRS	work	have-1sg.PRS
'I am working.'

Nouns

Nouns are not marked for grammatical gender, although they are marked for number.

Two forms of number exist in Tajik, singular and plural. The plural is marked by either the suffix -ҳо -ho or -он -on (with contextual variants -ён -yon and -гон -gon), although Arabic loan words may use Arabic forms. There is no definite article, but the indefinite article exists in the form of the number "one" як yak, and -е -e, the first positioned before the noun and the second joining the noun as a suffix. When a noun is used as a direct object, it is marked by the suffix -ро -ro, e.g. Рустамро задам (Rustam-ro zadam), "I hit Rustam". This direct object suffix is added to the word after any plural suffixes. The form -ро can be literary or formal. In older forms of the Persian language, -ро could indicate both direct and indirect objects and some phrases used in modern Persian and Tajik have maintained this suffix on indirect objects, as seen in the following example: (Худоро шукр Khudo-ro shukr - "Thank God"). Modern Persian does not use the direct object marker as a suffix on the noun, but rather, as a stand-alone morpheme.

Prepositions

Simple prepositions

Tajik	English
аз (az)	from, through, across
ба (ba)	to
бар (bar)	on, upon, onto
бе (be)	without
бо (bo)	with
дар (dar)	at, in
то (to)	up to, as far as, until
чун (chun)	like, as

Vocabulary

Tajik is conservative in its vocabulary, retaining numerous terms that have long since fallen into disuse in Iran and Afghanistan, such as арзиз (arziz), meaning "thin", and фарбеҳ (farbeh), meaning "fat". Most modern loan words in Tajik come from Russian as a result of the position of Tajikistan within the Soviet Union. The vast majority of these Russian loanwords which have entered the Tajik language through the fields of socioeconomics, technology, and government, where most of the concepts and vocabulary of these fields have been borrowed from the Russian language. The introduction of Russian loanwords into the Tajik language was largely justified under the Soviet policy of modernization and the necessary subordination of all languages to Russian for the achievement of a Communist state. Vocabulary also comes from the geographically close Uzbek language and, as is usual in Islamic countries, from Arabic. Since the late 1980s, an effort has been made to replace loanwords with native equivalents, using either old terms that had fallen out of use, or coined terminology. Many of the coined terms for modern items such as гармкунак (garmkunak), meaning 'heater' and чангкашак (changkashak), meaning 'vacuum cleaner' differ from their Afghan and Iranian equivalents, adding to the difficulty in intelligibility between Tajik and other forms of Persian.

In the table below, Persian refers to the standard language of Iran, which differs somewhat from the Dari Persian of Afghanistan. Another Iranian language, Pashto, has also been included for comparative purposes.

Tajik	моҳ (māh)	нав (nav)	модар (mādar)	хоҳар (xāhar)	шаб (šab)	бинӣ (binī)	се (se)	сиёҳ (siyāh)	сурх (sorx)	зард (zard)	сабз (sabz)	гург (gorg)
Other Iranian languages
Persian	ماه māh	نو nov	مادر mādar	خواهر xāhar	شب šab	بینی bīnī	سه se	سياه siyāh	سرخ sorx	زرد zard	سبز sabz	گرگ gorg
Pashto	myâsht	nəwai	mor	xor	shpa	poza	dre	tor	sur	zyaṛ	shin, zarghun	lewə
Other Indo-European languages
English	month	new	mother	sister	night	nose	three	black	red	yellow	green	wolf
Armenian	ամիս amis	նոր nor	մայր mayr	քույր k'uyr	գիշեր gišer	քիթ k'it'	երեք yerek'	սև sev	կարմիր karmir	դեղին deġin	կանաչ kanač	գայլ gayl
Urdu	مہینہ məhīna	نئے nəye	ماں māṃ	بہن bêhn	رات rāt	ناک nāk	تین tīn	کالا kālā	لال lāl	پیلا pīlā	ہرا harā	بھیڑیا bheṛiyā
Latin	mēnsis	novus	māter	soror	nox	nasus	trēs	āter, Niger	ruber	flāvus, gilvus	viridis	lupus
Spanish	mes	nuevo	madre	hermana	noche	nariz	tres	negro	rojo	amarillo	verde	lobo
Greek	μήνας minas	νέος neos	μητέρα mitera	αδελφή adhelfi	νύχτα nihta	μύτη miti	τρία tria	μαύρος mavros	κόκκινος kokkinos	κίτρινος kitrinos	πράσινος prasinos	λύκος likos
Russian	месяц mesyats	новый noviy	мать mat'	сестра sestra	ночь noch	нос nos	три tri	чёрный chorniy	красный, рыжий krasniy, ryzhiy	жёлтый zholtiy	зелёный zelyoniy	волк volk
Serbo-Croatian	m(j)esec	nov	mater	sestra	noć	nos	tri tri	crn	crven	žut	zelen	vuk
Lithuanian	mėnuo	naujas	motina	sesuo	naktis	nosis	trys	juoda	raudona	geltona	žalia	vilkas
Hindi	महीना mahīnā	नया nayā	माँ māṃ	बहन bahan	रात rāt	नाक nāk	तीन tīn	काला kālā	लाल lāl	पीला pīlā	हरा harā	भेड़िया bheṛiyā
Bengali	মাস Māsa	নতুন Natuna	মা Mā	বোন Bōna	রাত্রি Rātri	নাক nāk	তিন Tina	কালো Kālō	লাল Lāla	হলুদ Haluda	সবুজ Sabuja	নেকড়ে Nēkaṛē

Writing system

Tajik Republic's 1929 coat of arms with Tajik language in Perso-Arabic script جمهوريه اجتماعی شوروى مختار تاجيكستان‎

Main article: Tajik alphabet

In Tajikistan and other countries of the former Soviet Union, Tajik Persian is currently written in Cyrillic script, although it was written in the Latin script beginning in 1928, and the Arabic alphabet prior to 1928. In the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, the use of the Latin script was later replaced in 1939 by the Cyrillic script. The Tajik alphabet added six additional letters to the Cyrillic script inventory and these additional letters are distinguished in the Tajik orthography by the use of diacritics. In an interview to Iranian news media in 2008, Tajikistan's deputy culture minister said Tajikistan would study the issue of switching its Tajik alphabet from Cyrillic to Perso-Arabic script used in Iran and Afghanistan when the government feels that "the Tajik people become familiar with the Persian alphabet".

History

According to many scholars, the New Persian language (which subsequently evolved into the Persian forms spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan) developed in Transoxiana and Khorasan, in what are today parts of Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. While the New Persian language was descended primarily from Middle Persian, it also incorporated substantial elements of other Iranian languages of ancient Central Asia, such as Sogdian.

Following the Arab conquest of Iran and most of Central Asia in the 8th century AD, Arabic for a time became the court language, and Persian and other Iranian languages were relegated to the private sphere. In the 9th century AD, following the rise of the Samanids, whose state was centered around the cities of Bukhoro (Buxoro), Samarqand and Herat, and covered much of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and northeastern Iran, New Persian emerged as the court language and swiftly displaced Arabic. Arabic influence continued to show itself in the form of the Perso-Arabic script used to write the language (replaced in Tajik by Latin and then Cyrillic in the 20th century) and a large number of Arabic loanwords.

New Persian became the lingua franca of Central Asia for centuries, although it eventually lost ground to the Chaghatai language in much of its former domains as a growing number of Turkic tribes moved into the region from the east. Since the 16th century AD, Tajik has come under increasing pressure from neighboring Turkic languages. Once spoken in areas of Turkmenistan, such as Merv, Tajik is today virtually non-existent in that country. Uzbek has also largely replaced Tajik in most areas of modern Uzbekistan. Nevertheless, Tajik persisted in pockets, notably in Samarqand, Bukhoro and Surxondaryo Province, as well as in much of what is today Tajikistan.

The creation of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union in 1929 helped to safeguard the future of Tajik, as it became an official language of the republic alongside Russian. Still, substantial numbers of Tajik-speakers remained outside the borders of the republic, mostly in the neighboring Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, which created a source of tension between Tajiks and Uzbeks. Neither Samarqand nor Bukhoro was included in the nascent Tajik S.S.R., despite their immense historical importance in Tajik history. After the creation of the Tajik S.S.R., a large number of ethnic Tajiks from the Uzbek S.S.R. migrated there, particularly to the region of the capital, Dushanbe, exercising a substantial influence in the republic's political, cultural and economic life. The influence of this influx of ethnic Tajik immigrants from the Uzbek S.S.R. is most prominently manifested in the fact that literary Tajik is based on their northwestern dialects of the language, rather than the central dialects that are spoken by the natives in the Dushanbe region and adjacent areas.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and Tajikistan's independence in 1991, the government of Tajikistan has made substantial efforts to promote the use of Tajik in all spheres of public and private life. Tajik is gaining ground among the once-Russified upper classes, and continues its role as the vernacular of the majority of the country's population. There has been a rise in the number of Tajik publications. Increasing contact with media from Iran and Afghanistan, after decades of isolation under the Soviets, is also having an effect on the development of the language. In 2009, Tajikistan adopted a law that removes Russian as the "language for interethnic communication."

See also

• Academy of Persian Language and Literature
• Bukhori
• Dari (Persian)
• Iranian people
• Iranian Studies
• List of Persian poets and authors
• List of Tajik singers
• Persian language
• Tajik alphabet
• Tajik Wikipedia
• Tajiks

References

• Azim Baizoyev, John Hayward: A beginner's guide to Tajiki. - 1. publ. - London [u. a.]: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. (includes a Tajiki-English Dictionary)
• Ido, S. (2005) Tajik ISBN 3-89586-316-5
• Korotow, M. (2004) Tadschikisch Wort für Wort. Kauderwelsch ISBN 3-89416-347-X
• Lazard, G. (1956) "Caractères distinctifs de la langue tadjik". Bulletin de la Société Linguistique de Paris. 52. pp. 117–186
• Lazard, G. "Le Persan". Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden. 1989.
• Windfuhr, G. (1987) in Comrie, B. (ed.) "Persian". The World's Major Languages. pp. 523–546
• Perry, J. R. (2005) A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar (Boston : Brill) ISBN 90-04-14323-8
• Rastorgueva, V. (1963) A Short Sketch of Tajik Grammar (Netherlands : Mouton) ISBN 0-933070-28-4
• Назарзода, С. – Сангинов, А. – Каримов, С. – Султон, М. Ҳ. (2008) Фарҳанги тафсирии забони тоҷикӣ (иборат аз ду ҷилд). Ҷилди I. А – Н. Ҷилди II. О – Я. (Душанбе).
• Khojayori, Nasrullo, and Mikael Thompson. Tajiki Reference Grammar for Beginners. Washington, DC: Georgetown UP, 2009. ISBN 978-1-58901-269-1
• Windfuhr, Gernot. "Persian and Tajik." The Iranian Languages. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7007-1131-4
• Windfuhr, Gernot. Persian Grammar: History and State of Its Study. De Gruyter, 1979. Trends in Linguistics. State-Of-The-Art Reports. ISBN 978-9027977748
• Marashi, Mehdi, and Mohammad Ali Jazayery. Persian Studies in North America: Studies in Honor of Mohammad Ali Jazayery. Bethesda, MD: Iran, 1994. ISBN 978-0936347356

External links

Wiktionary has a category on Tajik language

• Tajiki Cyrillic to Persian alphabet converter
• A Worldwide Community for Tajiks
• Tajik Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
• BBC news in Tajik
• English-Tajik-Russian Dictionary
• Free Online Tajik Dictionary
• Welcome to Tajikistan