Tajik,[2][a]Tajik Persian,Tajiki Persian,[b] also calledTajiki, is the variety ofPersian spoken inTajikistan andUzbekistan byTajiks. It is closely related to neighbouringDari ofAfghanistan with which it forms acontinuum ofmutually intelligible varieties of thePersian language. Several scholars consider Tajik as a dialectal variety of Persian rather than a language on its own.[3][4][5] The popularity of this conception of Tajik as a variety of Persian was such that, during the period in whichTajik intellectuals were trying to establish Tajik as a language separate from Persian, prominent intellectualSadriddin Ayni counterargued that Tajik was not a "bastardised dialect" of Persian.[6] The issue of whether Tajik and Persian are to be considered two dialects of a single language or two discrete languages[7] has political aspects to it.[6]
Tajiki is one of the two official languages of Tajikistan, the other beingRussian[12][13] as the official interethnic language. InAfghanistan, this language is less influenced byTurkic languages and is regarded as a form ofDari, which has co-official language status.[14] The Tajiki Persian of Tajikistan has diverged from Persian as spoken in Afghanistan and even more from that ofIran due to political borders, geographical isolation, the standardisation process and the influence ofRussian and neighbouring Turkic languages. The standard language is based on the northwestern dialects of Tajik (region of the old major city ofSamarqand), which have been somewhat influenced by the neighbouringUzbek 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 ofCentral Asia.
Up to and including the nineteenth century, speakers in Afghanistan and Central Asia had no separate name for the language and simply regarded themselves as speakingFarsi, which is theendonym for the Persian language. The termTajik derives from Persian, although it has been adopted by the speakers themselves.[15] For most of the 20th century, its name was rendered in the Russian spelling ofTadzhik.[16]
In 1989, with the growth in Tajik nationalism, a law was enacted declaring Tajik thestate (national) language, with Russian being theofficial language (as throughout theUnion).[17] In addition, the law officially equated Tajik withPersian, placing the wordFarsi (the endonym for the Persian language) after Tajik. The law also called for a gradual reintroduction of the Perso-Arabic alphabet.[18][19][20]
In 1999, the wordFarsi was removed from the state language law.[21]
Two major cities ofCentral Asia,Samarkand andBukhara, are in present-dayUzbekistan, but are defined by a prominent native usage of Tajik language.[22][better source needed][23] Today, virtually all Tajik speakers in Bukhara are bilingual in Tajik and Uzbek.[citation needed] This Tajik–Uzbekbilingualism has had a strong influence on the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Bukharan Tajik.[24]
Tajiks are also found in large numbers in theSurxondaryo 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, asRichard Foltz has noted, their spoken dialects diverge considerably from the standard literary language and most cannot read it.[25]
Official statistics in Uzbekistan state that the Tajik community comprises 5% of the nation's total population.[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.[27]
During the Soviet "Uzbekisation" supervised bySharof 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.[28] The "Uzbekisation" movement ended in 1924.[29]
In Tajikistan Tajiks constitute 80% of the population and the language dominates in most parts of the country. Some Tajiks inGorno-Badakhshan in southeastern Tajikistan, where thePamir 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 asKabul,Mazar-i-Sharif,Kunduz,Ghazni, andHerat. Tajiks constitute between 25% and 35% of the total population of the country. In Afghanistan, the dialects spoken by ethnic Tajiks are written using thePersian alphabet and referred to asDari, along with the dialects of other groups in Afghanistan such as theHazaragi andAimaq dialects. Approximately 48%-58% of Afghan citizens are native speakers of Dari.[30] A large Tajik-speakingdiaspora exists due to the instability that has plagued Central Asia in recent years, with significant numbers of Tajiks found inRussia,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 to gain employment in Russia.[31]
The dialect used by theBukharan Jews of Central Asia is known as theBukhori dialect and belongs to the northern dialect grouping. It is chiefly distinguished by the inclusion ofHebrew terms, principally religious vocabulary, and historical use of theHebrew alphabet. Despite these differences, Bukhori isreadily 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.[33]
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.
In northern and Uzbek dialects, classical/o̞/ haschain shifted forward in the mouth to/ɵ̞/. In central and southern dialects, classical/o̞/ has chain shifted upward and merged into/u/.[35] In theZarafshon dialect, earlier/u/ has shifted to/y/ or/ʊ/, however/u/ from earlier/ɵ/ remained (possibly due to influence fromYaghnobi).[36]
The open back vowel has varyingly been described as mid-back[o̞],[37][38][ɒ],[39][ɔ][6] and[ɔː].[40] It is analogous to standard Persianâ (longa). However, it is standardly not a back vowel.[41]
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.
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].[34] The table below lists the consonant phonemes in standard, literary Tajik. Letters from the Tajik Cyrillic alphabet are given first, followed by IPA transcription.
Word stress generally falls on the first syllable in finite verb forms and on the last syllable in nouns and noun-like words.[34] 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 onenclitics, nor on the marker of the direct object.
The word order of Tajiki Persian issubject–object–verb. Tajik Persian grammar is similar to the classical Persian grammar (and the grammar of modern varieties such as Iranian Persian).[43] 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 cliticised form of the verb -acт,-ast, 'to be'.[6]
Ман
man
I
мактуб
maktub
letter
навишта
navišta
write
истода-ам
istoda-am
be
Ман мактуб навишта истода-ам
man maktub navišta istoda-am
I letter write be
'I am writing a letter.'
In Iranian 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.[44]
Nouns are not marked forgrammatical 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"якyak and-е-e, the first positioned before the noun and the second joining the noun as a suffix. When a noun is used as adirect object, it is marked by the suffix-ро-ro, e.g.,Рустамро задамRustam-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 modernPersian and Tajik have maintained this suffix on indirect objects, as seen in the following example:Худоро шукрXudo-ro šukr'Thank God'). ModernPersian does not use the direct object marker as a suffix on the noun, but rather, as a stand-alonemorpheme.[34]
Tajik is conservative in its vocabulary, retaining numerous terms that have long since fallen into disuse in Iran and Afghanistan, such asарзизarziz'tin' andфарбеҳfarbeh'fat'. Most modernloan words in Tajik come fromRussian as a result of the position of Tajikistan within theSoviet 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 theSoviet policy of modernisation and the necessary subordination of all languages to Russian for the achievement of aCommunist state.[45] Vocabulary also comes from the geographically closeUzbek language and, as is usual inIslamic countries, fromArabic. 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 (including from Iranian Persian). Many of the coined terms for modern items such asгармкунакgarmkunak'heater' andчангкашакčangkašak'vacuum cleaner' differ from their Afghan and Iranian equivalents, adding to the difficulty in intelligibility between Tajik and other forms ofPersian.
In the table below,Persian refers to the standard language of Iran, which differs somewhat from theDari Persian of Afghanistan. Two other Iranian languages,Pashto andKurdish (Kurmanji), have also been included for comparative purposes.
Tajik ASSR 1929 coat of arms with Tajik language in Perso-Arabic script:جمهوريت اجتماعی شوروى مختار تاجيكستان, Current script: Ҷумҳурият Иҷтимоӣ Шӯравӣ Мухтор Тоҷикистон
In Tajikistan and other countries of the formerSoviet Union, Tajik Persian is currently written in theCyrillic script, although it was written in theLatin script beginning in 1928 and theArabic alphabet prior to 1928. In theTajik Soviet Socialist Republic, the use of the Latin script was later replaced in 1939 by the Cyrillic script.[46] 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.[47]
According to many scholars, the New Persian language (which subsequently evolved into the Persian forms spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan) developed inTransoxiana andKhorasan, in what are today parts of Afghanistan, Iran,Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. While the New Persian language was descended primarily fromMiddle Persian, it also incorporated substantial elements of otherIranian languages of ancient Central Asia, such asSogdian.
Following theIslamic conquest of Iran and most of Central Asia in the 8th century AD,Arabic for a time became the court language andPersian and other Iranian languages were relegated to the private sphere. In the 9th century AD, following the rise of theSamanids, whose state was centered around the cities ofBukhoro (Buxoro),Samarqand andHerat and covered much of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and northeastern Iran, New Persian emerged as the court language and swiftly displaced Arabic.
New Persian became the lingua franca of Central Asia for centuries, although it eventually lost ground to theChaghatai language in much of its former domains as a growing number ofTurkic tribes moved into the region from the east. Since the 16th century AD, Tajik has come under increasing pressure from neighbouringTurkic languages. Once spoken in areas ofTurkmenistan, such asMerv, Tajik is today virtually non-existent in that country.Uzbek has also largely replaced Tajik in most areas of modern Uzbekistan – theRussian Empire in particular implementedTurkification among Tajiks in Ferghana and Samarqand, replacing the dominant language in those areas with Uzbek.[48] Nevertheless, Tajik persisted in pockets, notably in Samarqand, Bukhoro andSurxondaryo Region, as well as in much of what is today Tajikistan.
The creation of theTajik Soviet Socialist Republic within theSoviet Union in 1929 helped to safeguard the future of Tajik, as it became an official language of the republic alongsideRussian. Still, substantial numbers of Tajik speakers remained outside the borders of the republic, mostly in the neighbouringUzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, which created a source of tension betweenTajiks andUzbeks. Neither Samarqand nor Bukhoro was included in the nascent Tajik SSR, despite their immense historical importance in Tajik history. After the creation of the Tajik SSR, a large number of ethnic Tajiks from the Uzbek SSR 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 SSR 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, as well as governmental orientation toward a "Persianisation" of the language have brought closer Tajik and the other Persian dialects.
^Studies 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).
^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.
^Ben Walter,Gendering Human Security in Afghanistan in a Time of Western Intervention (Routledge 2017), p. 51: for more details, see the article onTajik people.
^In 1990 the Russian language was declared as the official language ofUSSR and the constituent republics had rights to declare additional state languages within their jurisdictions. See Article 4 of theLaw on Languages of Nations of USSR.Archived 2016-05-08 at theWayback Machine(in Russian)
^B. Rezvani: "Ethno-territorial conflict and coexistence in the Caucasus, Central Asia andFereydan. Appendix 4: Tajik population in Uzbekistan" ([1]). Dissertation. Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences,University of Amsterdam. 2013
^Paul 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
^"Afghanistan v. Languages".Ch. M. Kieffer.Encyclopædia Iranica, online ed. Retrieved10 December 2010.Persian (2) is the language most spoken in Afghanistan. The native tongue of twenty-five percent of the population ...
^Standard Tajik phonology by Shinji Ido, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 2023
^Ido, Shinji. 2014. Illustrations of the IPA: Bukharan Tajik. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 44. 87–102. Cambridge University Press.
^Windfuhr, Gernot. Persian Grammar: History and State of Its Study. De Gruyter, 1979. Trends in Linguistics. State-Of-The-Art Reports.
^Marashi, Mehdi; Jazayery, Mohammad Ali (1994).Persian Studies in North America: Studies in Honor of Mohammad Ali Jazayery. Bethesda, MD: Iranbooks.ISBN9780936347356.[page needed]
^Windfuhr, Gernot. "Persian and Tajik." The Iranian Languages. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009. 420.
^Windfuhr, Gernot. "Persian and Tajik." The Iranian Languages. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009. 423.
Korotow, Michael (2004).Tadschikisch Wort für Wort. Bielefeld: Reise Know-How Verlag Peter Rump.ISBN3-89416-347-X.
Khojayori, Nasrullo; Thompson, Mikael (2009).Tajiki Reference Grammar for Beginners. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.ISBN978-1-58901-269-1.
Lazard, G. (1956). "Caractères distinctifs de la langue tadjik".Bulletin de la Société Linguistique de Paris.52:117–186.
Lazard, G. (1989). "Le Persan". In Schmitt, Rüdiger (ed.).Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden.
Perry, J. R. (2005).A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar. Boston: Brill.ISBN90-04-14323-8.
Marashi, Mehdi, ed. (January 1994).Persian studies in North America: Studies in honor of Mohammad Ali Jazayery. Bethesda, MD: Iranbooks.ISBN978-0-936347-35-6.
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