Tajik language
Tajik is a variant 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 . 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.
Encyclopedia
Tajik is a variant 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 . 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 and Hunza overall
In
China, Tajik has no official written form. Most Chinese "Tajik" speakers actually speak the
Sariqul 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 .
- Central dialects .
- Southern dialects
- South-eastern dialects .
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 | ?, | | ? |
| Mid | ?, ? | ? | ? |
| Low | | ? | |
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: ??'?? and ??'?? . 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. ???? 'fowl' and xurujs 'rooster'. Alternatively the modifiers '???' for male or '????' for female can be pre or post-posed to the noun, e.g. ???-? ??? 'male donkey' and ???-? ???? 'female donkey'.
Two forms of number exist in Tajik, singular and plural. The plural is marked by either the suffix -?? or -??, 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 |
|---|
| ?? | from, through, across |
| ?? | with |
| ??? | on, upon, onto |
| ?? | to |
| ?? | without |
| ??? | at, in |
| ??? | like, as |
| ?? | up to, as far as, until |
Vocabulary
Most modern 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 close Uzbek language and, as is usual in
Islamic countries, from
Arabic.
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 Persian 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 Perso-Arabic script.
History
Examples
Political aspects
See also
External links
