Tajik language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the national language of Tajikistan. For the language of the Pamir family spoken near the Tajikistan border in Xinjiang and officially referred to in China as "Tajik", see Sarikoli.
| Tajik тоҷикӣ, تاجیکی, tojikī |
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| Spoken in: | Tajikistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia (Asia), Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan | |
| Total speakers: | approximately 4,380,000 (1991) | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Iranian Southwestern Iranian Persian Tajik |
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| Writing system: | Cyrillic, Latin, Perso-Arabic | |
| Official status | ||
| Official language of: | Tajikistan | |
| Regulated by: | no official regulation | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | tg | |
| ISO 639-2: | tgk | |
| ISO/FDIS 639-3: | tgk
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History
Writing systems |
The Tajik language (sometimes written Tadjik or Tadzhik; тоҷикӣ, تاجیکی, tojikí [tɔːdʒɪˈki]) 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.
Tajiki is a dialect 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. 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.
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[edit] Geographical distribution
The most important Tajik-speaking cities of Central Asia, Samarkand and Bukhara, are in present-day Uzbekistan. 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.
[edit] 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 Mastchah, Aini, Hissar and, parts of Varzab).
- Southern dialects (dialects of Karategin, Kulab, Tajik dialects of Badakhshan, etc.)
- South-eastern dialects (dialects of Pianj and Darvaz).
[edit] Phonology
[edit] Vowels
Tajik has a six vowel system. Vowels can be either long or short.
| Tajik vowels | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Central | Back | |
| High | и, ӣ /i/ | у /u/ | |
| Mid | е, э /e/ | ў /ø/ | о /o/ |
| Low | а /æ/ | ||
[edit] Consonants
There are 23 consonants in standard Tajik.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Grammar
The word order of Tajiki Persian is Subject-Object-Verb.
[edit] 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 xurus '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. There is no definite article, but indefinite article exists in the form of number one "yak" and "-e", the first positioned before the noun and the second joining the noun as a suffix, although the direct object is marked by a suffix.
[edit] 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 |
[edit] 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.
[edit] Writing system
Tajiki Persian 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 Persian script.
[edit] History
[edit] Examples
[edit] Political aspects
[edit] See also
- Tajik alphabet
- Iranology
- Academy of Persian Language and Literature
- Persian language
- Dari (Afghanistan)
- Bukhori
- Iranian people
- Tajiks
- Afghan people
[edit] External links
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