Tajik language

Tajik (sometimes written Tadjik; , , tojikí ) is a descendant of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. It is an Indo-European language, more specifically part of the Iranian language group. Speakers of Tajik live mostly in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and western Pakistan (the "Tajik" language spoken by approximately 30,000 people near the Tajikistan border in China is in fact a quite different Pamir language also called Sarikoli). Tajik is the official language of Tajikistan.

Tajik is an offspring of the Persian language, and belongs - along with Afghanistan's Dari - to the Eastern dialects of Persian. Historically, it was considered the local dialect of Persian spoken by the Tajik ethnic group in Central Asia. The language has diverged somewhat from Persian as spoken in Afghanistan and Iran, because of political borders and the influence of Russian, although a transcribed Tajik text is easily understood by a native Persian speaker of either Iran or Afghanistan.

The standard language is based on the north-western dialects of Tajik, which have been influenced by the neighbouring Uzbek language as a result of geographical proximity.

Geographical distribution

The most important Tajik-speaking cities of Central Asia, Samarkand and Bukhara, are in present-day Uzbekistan. There have been claims that the speakers of the language have been oppressed by the Uzbekistan's government, and were forced to speak in Uzbek in public, or otherwise would be fined.

In western Pakistan there are between 500,000 and upwards of a million ethnic Tajiks, most of whom are Afghan refugees in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. There are also many thousands who are native to the Northern Areas, Pakistan region such as Chitral (near Jalalabad, Afghanistan) and Hunza overall (specifically there is a large population of native Wakhi who are often called "Mountain Tajiks" who inhabit the area as well.

In China, Tajik has no official written form. Most Chinese "Tajik" speakers actually speak the Sariqul (or Sariköli) language, which, though called "Tajik", is no more closely related to Tajik than the other Pamir languages, and use Uyghur and Chinese to communicate with people of other nationalities in the area.

Dialects

The dialects of Tajik can be approximately split into the following groups:

Northern dialects (Northern Tajikistan, southern parts of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan).
Central dialects (dialects of Matcha, Aini, Gissar and, parts of Varzob).
Southern dialects (dialects of Karategin, Kuliab, Tajik dialects of Badakhshan, etc.)
South-eastern dialects (dialects of Pianj and Darvaz).

Phonology

Vowels

Tajik has a six vowel system. Vowels can be either long or short.

/i/, /e/, /æ/, /u/, /o/, /a/

Tajik vowels
	Front	Central	Back
High	и, ӣ		у
Mid	е, э	ў	о
Low		а

Consonants

There are 23 consonants in standard Tajik.

Word stress

Word stress generally falls on the ultimate syllable. Examples of where stress does not fall on the last syllable are: ба'ле (meaning "yes") and зе'ро (meaning "because"). Stress also does not fall on enclitics, nor on the marker of the direct object.

Grammar

The word order of Tajik is Subject-Object-Verb.

Nouns

Nouns are not marked for grammatical gender, although they are marked for number. Gender is usually distinguished by a change of word, as in English, e.g. мурғ 'fowl' and xurujs 'rooster'. Alternatively the modifiers 'нар' for male or 'мода' for female can be pre or post-posed to the noun, e.g. хар-и нар 'male donkey' and хар-и мода 'female donkey'.

Two forms of number exist in Tajik, singular and plural. The plural is marked by either the suffix -ҳо or -он, although Arabic loan words may use Arabic forms. The article does not exist, although the direct object is marked by a suffix.

Prepositions

Simple prepositions
Persian	English
аз	from, through, across
бо	with
бар	on, upon, onto
ба	to
бе	without
дар	at, in
чун	like, as
то	up to, as far as, until

Vocabulary

Most loan words in Tajik come from Russian as a result of the position of Tajikistan within the Soviet Union. Vocabulary also comes from the geographically proximate Uzbek language.

Writing system

Tajik is currently for the most part written in the Cyrillic alphabet, although has been written in both the Latin alphabet and the Arabic alphabet in certain parts of its history. In the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, the use of the Latin script began in 1928, and was later replaced in the 1930s by the Cyrillic script. In Afghanistan, Tajiks continued to use the Arabic script.

History

Examples

Political aspects

External links

Southwestern Iranian languages | Languages of China | Languages of Tajikistan | Languages of Uzbekistan | Tajik language

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