| Languages of Tajikistan | |
|---|---|
 Tajik-language street signs inDushanbe | |
| Official | Persian Tajik (state) Russian (interethnic)[1] |
| Recognised | Uzbek |
| Indigenous | Aimaqi;Bartangi;Bukhori;Ishkashimi;Khowar;Khufi;Kyrgyz;Oroshani;Parya;Pashto;Rushani;Sanglechi;Shughni;Uzbek;Uyghur;Wakhi;Yaghnobi;Yazgulyam |
| Minority | Armenian;Azerbaijani;Belarusian;Central Asian Arabic;Chinese;Crimean Tatar;Georgian;Dungan;Hazaragi;Tatar;Turkmen;Ukrainian |
| Immigrant | Dari |
| Foreign | Persian;Mandarin Chinese;Arabic (Islam in Tajikistan);English;French;German;Turkish |
| Signed | Russian-Tajik Sign Language |
| Keyboard layout | |
| Source | [2] |
| Alphabet | Tajik Tajik Braille |
There are severallanguages of Tajikistan. Officially, the country recognizesTajik (a variety of Persian) as the state language andRussian as the interethnic language. After these two,Uzbek is the most popular.
Minority languages native to the area includeKyrgyz,Yaghnobi,Parya, and the variousPamir languages. Popular foreign languages to study includeEnglish andChinese.
The two official languages of Tajikistan are Tajik as the state language and Russian as the interethnic language, as understood in Article 2 of the Constitution: "The state language of Tajikistan shall be Tajik. Russian shall be the language of international communication."[1]Tajikistan is one of threeformer Soviet republics in Central Asia to haveRussian as ade jureofficial language, along withKazakhstan andKyrgyzstan.
The highly educated part of the population of Tajikistan, as well as theintelligentsia, prefer to speak Persian — the pronunciation of which in Tajikistan is called the "Iranian style" — and Russian.
The state (national) language (Russian:государственный язык,gosudarstvennyj jazyk;Tajik:забони давлатӣ,zabon-i davlatī) of the Republic of Tajikistan isTajik, which is written in theTajik Cyrillic alphabet. Tajik speakers have no problems communicating with Persian speakers fromIran andDari speakers fromAfghanistan, as the Tajik language, according to several linguists, is a variant of thePersian language. Several million native Tajik speakers also live in neighboringUzbekistan and inRussia.[3]
According to article 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Tajikistan,[1] Russian is recognized as the second official language of Tajikistan; the official language of inter-ethnic communication (Russian:язык межнационального общения,jazyk mežnacional'nogo obšenija;Tajik:забони муоширати байни миллатҳо,zabon-i muoširati bayn-i millatho). Russian had previously lost its official status afterTajikistan's independence in late 1991, which was then restored with the Constitution.[4][5]
Approximately 90% of the population of Tajikistan speaks Russian at various levels. The varieties of Russian spoken in Tajikistan are referred to by scholars asTajik(istani) Russian[6] and it shares some similarities withUzbek(istani) Russian — andCentral Asian varieties of the Russian language in general — such as morphological differences and the lexical differences like the use of wordsурюк[7] for a wild apricot orкислушка for rhubarb.[8] Previously, from the creation of the Tajikistan SSR until Tajik became the official language of theTajikistan Soviet Socialist Republic on July 22, 1989, the only official language of the republic was theRussian language, and the Tajik language had only the status of the “national language”.
Colloquial speech has retained almost all Russian borrowed elements (with the exception of words of purely Soviet semantics). Most borrowings, especially colloquial ones, change their phonetics and acquire a sound that is more suitable for the Tajik ear. In most cases, this means, first of all, a change of stress (in the Tajik language, a fixed stress on the last syllable) - картошка, майка; loss of a soft sign that is absent in Tajik - апрел, контрол, change of the sound "ц" to the sound "с" - сирк (цирк), консерт (концерт), frequent replacement of the sound "А" with the sound "О" - мошин (машина), the sound "Ы" for the sound "И" - вибор (выбор), disappearance of the ending to zero - конфет. However, a number of words remain unchanged: март, газета.[9]
Apart from Russian,Uzbek is actually the second most widely spoken language in Tajikistan after Tajik. Native Uzbek speakers live in the north and west of Tajikistan.
| language | percent | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tajiki Persian | 84.4% | |||
| Uzbek | 11.9% | |||
| Kyrgyz | 0.8% | |||
| Russian | 0.5% | |||
| Other | 2.4% | |||
In fourth place (after Tajik, Russian and Uzbek) by number of native speakers are variousPamir languages, whose native speakers live inKuhistani Badakshshan Autonomous Region. The majority ofZoroastrians in Tajikistan speak one of the Pamir languages. Pamiri often view the exclusion of their languages from educational and official spheres in favour of Tajik as threatening intentional and gradual assimilation. The only support for their languages is from the private Aga Khan foundation. Moreover, Pamiris rarely occupy higher positions of power than first deputy and are not present in law enforcement and security owing to suspicions of anti-government sympathies — such as during theTajikistani Civil War — and more favourable views towards Russia and Russians contextualised in theannexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation.[11]
Native speakers of the Kyrgyz language live in the north ofKuhistani Badakshshan Autonomous Region.
Yagnobi language speakers live in the west of the country. TheParya language of localRomani people (Central Asian Romani [ru]) is also widely spoken in Tajikistan. Tajikistan also has small communities of native speakers ofPersian,Arabic,Pashto,Georgian,Armenian,Azerbaijani,Tatar,Turkmen,Kazakh,Chinese,Ukrainian.[12]
Among foreign languages, the most popular European language isEnglish, which is taught in schools in Tajikistan as one of the foreign languages. Some young people, as well as those working in the tourism sector of Tajikistan, speak English at different levels. Of the European languages, there are also a number of native speakers ofGerman[citation needed] andFrench.[citation needed]
Many among the Uzbek population learnTurkish in addition toRussian.
Additionally,Mandarin Chinese has grown to become a popular language of study.[13]
