Tajik, Tajik Persian, Tajiki Persian, also called Tajiki, as well as sometimes referred to as Eastern Persian, is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by ethnic Tajiks. It is closely related to neighbouring Dari in Afghanistan, with which it forms a continuum of mutually intelligible varieties of Persian. Several scholars consider Tajik to be a dialectal variety of Persian rather than a language in its own right.Lazard, G. 1989Halimov 1974: 30–31Gafforov 1979: 33 The question of whether Tajik and Persian should be considered two dialects of a single language or two discrete languagesStudies pertaining to the association between Tajik and Persian include Amanova (1991), Kozlov (1949), Lazard (1970), Rozenfel'd (1961) and Wei-Mintz (1962). The following papers/presentations focus on specific aspects of Tajik and their historical modern Persian counterparts: Cejpek (1956), Jilraev (1962), Lorenz (1961, 1964), Murav'eva (1956), Murav'eva and Rubinl!ik (1959), Ostrovskij (1973) and Sadeghi (1991). has political aspects to it.
Through Early New Persian, Tajik, like Iranian Persian and Dari Persian, is a continuation of Middle Persian, the official administrative, religious, and literary language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation of Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC).Lazard, Gilbert (1975), The Rise of the New Persian Language.in Frye, R. N., The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 4, pp. 595–632, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Frye, R. N., "Darī", The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Brill Publications, CD versionRichard Foltz, A History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East, London: Bloomsbury, 2nd ed., 2023, pp. 2–5.
Tajiki is one of the two official languages of Tajikistan, the other being Russian, which serves as the official interethnic language. In Afghanistan, this language is less influenced by Turkic languages and is regarded as a form of Dari, which has co‑official status. The Tajiki Persian of Tajikistan has diverged from Persian as spoken in Afghanistan, and even more from that of Iran, owing to political borders, geographical isolation, standardisation processes, and the influence of Russian and neighbouring Turkic languages. The standard language is based on the north‑western dialects of Tajik (the region of the old major city of Samarqand), which have been somewhat influenced by the neighbouring 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 because of its relative isolation in the mountains of Central Asia.
Name Up to and including the 19th century, speakers in Afghanistan and Central Asia had no separate name for the language and simply regarded themselves as speaking Farsi, which is the endonym for the Persian language. The term Tajik derives from Persian, although it has been adopted by the speakers themselves.Ben Walter, Gendering Human Security in Afghanistan in a Time of Western Intervention (Routledge 2017), p. 51: for more details, see the article on Tajik people. For most of the 20th century, its name was rendered in the Russian spelling of Tadzhik.
In 1989, with the growth of Tajik nationalism, a law was enacted declaring Tajik the state (national) language, with Russian as the official language (as throughout the Union).In 1990 the Russian language was declared as the official language of the USSR and the constituent republics had rights to declare additional state languages within their jurisdictions. See Article 4 of the Law on Languages of Nations of USSR. In addition, the law officially equated Tajik with Persian, placing the word Farsi (the endonym for the Persian language) after Tajik. The law also called for a gradual reintroduction of the Perso‑Arabic alphabet.ed. Ehteshami 2002, p. 219.ed. Malik 1996, p. 274.Banuazizi & Weiner 1994, p. 33.
In 1999, the word Farsi was removed from the state language law.
Geographical distribution Two major cities of Central Asia, Samarkand and Bukhara, are in present‑day Uzbekistan, but are defined by a prominent native usage of the Tajik language.B. Rezvani: "Ethno-territorial conflict and coexistence in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Fereydan. Appendix 4: Tajik population in Uzbekistan" (). Dissertation. Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam. 2013Paul Bergne: The Birth of Tajikistan. National Identity and the Origins of the Republic. International Library of Central Asia Studies. I.B. Tauris. 2007. Pg. 106 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 Region in the south and along Uzbekistan's eastern border with Tajikistan. Tajiki is still spoken by the majority of the population in Samarkand and Bukhara today, although, as Richard Foltz has noted, their spoken dialects diverge considerably from the standard literary language and most cannot read it.
Official statistics in Uzbekistan state that the Tajik community comprises 5% of the nation's total population.Uzbekistan. The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency (13 December 2007). Retrieved on 2007-12-26. However, these numbers do not include ethnic Tajiks who, for a variety of reasons, choose to identify themselves as Uzbeks in population census forms.See for example the Country report on Uzbekistan, released by the United States Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor here.
During the Soviet 'Uzbekisation' supervised by Sharof Rashidov, the head of the Uzbek Communist Party, Tajiks had to choose either to stay in Uzbekistan and be registered as Uzbek in their passports or to leave the republic for the less‑developed agricultural and mountainous Tajikistan.Rahim Masov, The History of the Clumsy Delimitation, Irfon Publ. House, Dushanbe, 1991 . English translation: The History of a National Catastrophe, transl. Iraj Bashiri, 1996. The 'Uzbekisation' movement ended in 1924.Rahim Masov. (1996)The History of a National Catastrophe Bashiri Working Papers on Central Asia and Iran
In Tajikistan, Tajiks constitute 80% of the population, and the language dominates in most parts of the country. Some Tajiks in Gorno-Badakhshan in south‑eastern Tajikistan, where the Pamir 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 in urban areas such as Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Ghazni, and Herat. Tajiks constitute between 25% and 35% of the total population of the country. In Afghanistan, the dialects spoken by ethnic Tajiks are written using the Persian alphabet and referred to as Dari, along with the dialects of other groups in Afghanistan such as the Hazaragi and Aimaq dialects. Approximately 48%–58% of Afghan citizens are native speakers of Dari. A large Tajik‑speaking diaspora exists owing 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; each year approximately one million men leave Tajikistan to find employment in Russia.
Dialects Tajik dialects can be roughly divided into the following groups:
Northern dialects (Northern Tajikistan, Bukhara, Samarkand, Kyrgyzstan, and the Varzob valley region of Dushanbe).Windfuhr, Gernot. "Persian and Tajik." The Iranian Languages. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009. 421 Central dialects (dialects of the upper Zarafshan Valley). Southern dialects (south and east of Dushanbe, Kulob, and the Rasht region of Tajikistan). Southeastern dialects (dialects of the Darvoz region and the Amu Darya near Rushon).
The dialect used by the Bukharan Jews of Central Asia is known as the Bukhori dialect and belongs to the northern dialect grouping. It is chiefly distinguished by the inclusion of Hebrew terms, principally religious vocabulary, and the 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 contemporary Tajik, especially of the spoken language, is the tendency towards a change in 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.E.K. Sobirov (Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences). On learning the vocabulary of the Tajik language in modern times, p. 115.
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. + Tajik vowelsKhojayori, Nasrullo, and Mikael Thompson. Tajiki Reference Grammar for Beginners. Washington, DC: Georgetown UP, 2009. Front Central Back Close Mid ~ Open ~
In northern and Uzbek dialects, classical has shifted forward in the mouth to . In central and southern dialects, classical has shifted upward and merged into .A Beginners' Guide to Tajiki by Azim Baizoyev and John Hayward, Routledge, London and New York, 2003, p. 3 In the Zarafshon dialect, earlier has shifted to or , however from earlier remained (possibly due to influence from Yaghnobi).
The open back vowel has varyingly been described as mid-back ,Lazard, G. 1956Perry, J. R. (2005) ,Nakanishi, Akira, Writing Systems of the World and .Korotkow, M. (2004) It is analogous to Early New, Classical and Dari/Afghan Persian ā, and Iranian Persian â (i.e., long a). However, it is standardly not a back vowel.Standard Tajik phonology by Shinji Ido, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 2023
The vowel ⟨Ӣ ӣ⟩ usually represents a stressed /i/ at the end of a word. However, not all instances of ⟨Ӣ ӣ⟩ are stressed, as can be seen with the second person singular suffix -ӣ remaining unstressed.
The vowels /i/, /u/ and /a/ may be reduced to [ə] in unstressed syllables.
Consonants The Tajik language contains 24 consonants, 16 of which form contrastive pairs by voicing: [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.
LabialDental/Alveolar Post-alv./PalatalVelarUvularGlottalNasalм н Stop/Affricatevoicelessп т ч к қ ъ voicedб д ҷ г Fricativevoicelessф с ш х ҳ voicedв з ж ғ Approximantл й Trillр
At least in the dialect of Bukhara, ⟨Ч ч⟩ and ⟨Ҷ ҷ⟩ are pronounced and respectively, with ⟨Ш ш⟩ and ⟨Ж ж⟩ also being and .Ido, Shinji. 2014. Illustrations of the IPA: Bukharan Tajik. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 44. 87–102. Cambridge University Press.
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: (bale, meaning "yes") and (zero, meaning "because"). Stress also does not fall on enclitics, nor on the marker of the direct object.
Grammar