Tajik language

Tajik
тоҷикӣ, تاجیکی‎, tojikī
Tojikī (one of the local names for Tajiki-Persian) in Tajik Cyrillic italicized script (Tajik alphabet style) Tojikipic.png
Spoken in
Total speakers approximately 4,380,000 (1991)
Language family Indo-European
Writing system Cyrillic, Latin, Perso-Arabic
Official status
Official language in Tajikistan Tajikistan
Regulated by No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1 tg
ISO 639-2 tgk
ISO 639-3 tgk
Linguasphere
Persian language

Regional and social varieties:

Grammar:

  • Standard New Persian
  • Central Asian Persian

Language features:

  • Vocabulary
    • Nouns
    • Verbs
  • Phonology

Writing systems:

  • Perso-Arabic script
  • Cyrillic alphabet
  • Romanized Persian alphabet

Tajik, Tajik Persian, or Tajiki[1], (sometimes written Tadjik or Tadzhik; тоҷикӣ, تاجیکی‎, tojikī [tɔːdʒɪˈkiː]) is a variety of Persian[2] spoken in Central Asia. Historically Tajiks called their language "Zaboni Forsi" (Persian language), the term "Zaboni Tojiki" (Tajik language) was introduced in the 20th century by the Soviets. Most speakers of Tajik live in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Tajik is the official language of Tajikistan.

The language has diverged from Persian as spoken in Afghanistan and Iran, as a result of political borders, geographical isolation, the standardisation process, and the influence of Russian and neighbouring Turkic languages. The standard language is based on the north-western dialects of Tajik (region of old major city of Samarkand), which have been somewhat influenced by the neighbouring Uzbek 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 of Central Asia.

Contents

Geographical distribution

The most important historically Tajik/Persian-speaking cities of Central Asia, Samarqand and Bukhara, are in present-day Uzbekistan. In Uzbekistan Tajiks are the largest part of the population of the ancient cities of Bukhara and Samarqand, and are found in large numbers in the Surxondaryo Province in the south and along Uzbekistan's eastern border with Tajikistan.

Official statistics in Uzbekistan state that the Tajik community comprises 5% of the nation's total population[3]. However, these numbers do not include ethnic Tajiks who, for a variety of reasons, choose to identify themselves as Uzbeks in population census forms.[4] During the Soviet "Uzbekization" supervised by Sharof Rashidov, the head of the Uzbek Communist Party, Tajiks had to choose either stay in Uzbekistan and get registered as Uzbek in their passports or leave the republic for the less developed agricultural and mountainous Tajikistan.[5] Subjective expert estimates suggest that Tajiks may make up 15 to 25 percent of Uzbekistan's population.[6][7]

Tajiks constitute 80% of Tajikistan's population, and Persian dominates in most parts of the country. Some Tajiks in Badakhshan in southeastern Tajikistan, where the Pamiri languages are the native languages of most residents, are bilingual-speakers. 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 as Kabul, Mazar, Kunduz, Ghazni and Herat. Tajiks constitute between 25% and 30% of the total population of the country. In Afghanistan, the dialects spoken by ethnic Tajiks are written using the Perso-Arabic script and referred to as Dari, along with the Persian dialects of other groups in Afghanistan such as the Hazara and Aimaq. 50% of the Afghan citizens are native speakers of Dari. A large Tajik-speaking diaspora exists due to the instability that has plagued Central Asia in recent years, with significant numbers of Tajiks found in Russia, Kazakhstan, and beyond.

Dialects

Tajik dialects can be approximately split into the following groups:

  1. Northern dialects (Northern Tajikistan, southern parts of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan).
  2. Central dialects (dialects of Mastchoh, Aini, Hissor and, parts of Varzob).
  3. Southern dialects (dialects of Qarotegin, Kulob, dialects of Badakhshan, etc.)
  4. Southeastern dialects (dialects of Panj and Darvoz).

The dialects used among the native Bukharian Jews of Central Asia are known as Bukhori, and belong to the northern dialect grouping. They are chiefly distinguished by the inclusion of Hebrew terms, principally religious vocabulary, and a historical use of the Hebrew alphabet. Despite these differences, Bukhori is readily intelligible to other Tajik-speakers, particularly speakers of northern dialects.

Phonology

Vowels

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. The Tajik Cyrillic alphabet also contains the letter, Ӣ ӣ, which has been transcribed in IPA as [i] with an off glide of the semivowel, [j].[8]

Tajik vowels
Front Central Back
Close и
/i/		 у
/u/
Mid е
/eː/		 ӯ
/ɤː/		 о1
/ɔː/
Open а
/a/
  1. The open back vowel has varyingly been described as [o] (actually mid-back)[9][10], [ɒ][11], [ɔ][12], and [ɔː][13]

Consonants

The table below lists the consonant phonemes in standard, literary Tajik. Letters from the Tajik Cyrillic alphabet are given first, followed by IPA transcription.

Bilabial/Labio-dental Dental/
Alveolar		 Post-
alveolar		 Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
Nasal м
/m/		 н
/n/
Plosive п б
/p/ /b/		 т д
/t/ /d/		 к г
/k/ /ɡ/		 қ
/q/		 ъ
/ʔ/
Fricative ф в
/f/ /v/		 с з
/s/ /z/		 ш ж
/ʃ/ /ʒ/		 х ғ
/x/ /ʁ/		 ҳ
/h/
Affricate ч ҷ
/tʃ/ /dʒ/
Trill р
/r/
Approximant л
/l/		 й
/j/

Word stress

Word stress generally falls on the ultimate syllable. Examples of where stress does not fall on the last syllable are: бале (bale, meaning "yes") and зеро (zero, meaning "because"). Stress also does not fall on enclitics, nor on the marker of the direct object.

Grammar

The word order of Tajiki Persian is Subject-Object-Verb. Tajik Persian grammar is almost identical to the classical Persian grammar (and the grammar of modern varieties such as Iranian Persian), although there are notable differences[14].

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 (murgh) 'fowl' and хурус (khurus) 'rooster'. Alternatively the modifiers 'нар' (nar) for male or 'мода' (moda) for female can be pre or post-posed to the noun, e.g. хари нар (xari nar) 'male donkey' and хари мода (xari moda) '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 the indefinite article exists in the form of number 'one' як (yak) and '-е' (-e), the first positioned before the noun and the second joining the noun as a suffix, although the direct object is marked by the suffix '-ро' (-ro), e.g. Рустамро задам (Rustam-ro zadam), 'I hit Rustam.'

Prepositions

Simple prepositions
Tajik 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

Tajiki is conservative in its vocabulary, retaining numerous terms that have long since fallen into disuse in Iran and Afghanistan, such as арзиз (arziz), meaning 'tin,' and фарбеҳ (farbeh), meaning 'fat.' 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. 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. Many of the coined terms for modern items such as гармкунак (garmkunak), meaning 'heater' and чангкашак (changkashak), meaning 'vacuum cleaner' differ from their Afghan and Iranian equivalents, adding to the difficulty in intelligibility between Tajiki and other forms of Persian.

In the table below, Persian refers to the standard language of Iran, which differs somewhat from the Dari Persian of Afghanistan. Another Iranian language, Pashto, has also been included for comparative purposes.

Tajik моҳ
(mōh)		 нав
(naw)		 модар
(mōdar)		 хоҳар
(xͮōhar)		 шаб
(šab)		 бинӣ
(bīnī)		 се
(se)		 сиёҳ
(siyōh)		 сурх
(surx)		 зард
(zard)		 сабз
(sabz)		 гург
(gurg)
Other Iranian languages
Persian māh now mādar xāhar šab bīnī se siyāh sorx zard sabz gorg
Pashto myāsht nəwai mōr khōr shpa pōza dre tōr sur zyarr shin, zarghun lewə
Other Indo-European languages
English month new mother sister night nose three black red yellow green wolf
Latin mēnsis novus māter soror nox nasus trēs āter, niger ruber flāvus, gilvus viridis lupus
Greek μήνας
minas		 νέος
neos		 μητέρα
mitera		 αδελφή
adhelfi		 νύχτα
nihta		 μύτη
miti		 τρία
tria		 μαύρος
mavros		 κόκκινος
kokkinos		 κίτρινος
kitrinos		 πράσσινος
prassinos		 λύκος
likos

Writing system

In Tajikistan and other countries of the former Soviet Union, Tajik Persian is currently written in the Cyrillic alphabet, although it was written in both the Latin alphabet in 1930s, and the Persian alphabet before 1920s. In the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, the use of the Latin script began in 1928, and was later replaced in the late 1930s by the Cyrillic script. In an interview to Iranian news media in May 2008, Tajikistan's deputy culture minister said Tajikistan would study the issue of switching its Tajik alphabet from Cyrillic to Persian script used in Iran and Afghanistan when the government feels that "the Tajik people became familiar with the Persian alphabet".[15]

History

According to many scholars, the New Persian language (which subsequently evolved into the Persian forms spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan) developed in Transoxiana and Khorasan, in what are today parts of Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. While the New Persian language was descended primarily from Middle Persian, it also incorporated substantial elements of other Iranian languages of ancient Central Asia, such as Sogdian.

Following the Arab conquest of Iran and most of Central Asia in the 8th century AD, Arabic for a time became the court language, and Persian and other Iranian languages were relegated to the private sphere. In the 9th century AD, following the rise of the Samanids, whose state covered much of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and northeastern Iran and was centered around the cities of Bukhoro (Bukhara), Samarqand and Herat, New Persian emerged as the court language and swiftly displaced Arabic. Arabic influence continued to show itself in the form of the Perso-Arabic script used to write the language (replaced in Tajik by Latin and then Cyrillic in the 20th century) and a large number of Arabic loanwords.

New Persian became the lingua franca of Central Asia for centuries, although it eventually lost ground to the Chaghatai language in much of its former domains as a growing number of Turkic tribes moved into the region from the east. Since the 16th century AD, Tajiki has come under increasing pressure from neighboring Turkic languages, particularly Uzbek, which has largely replaced it in most areas of what is now Uzbekistan. Once spoken in areas of Turkmenistan, such as Merv, Tajik is today virtually non-existent in that country. Nevertheless, Tajik persisted in pockets of what is now Uzbekistan, notably in Samarqand, Bukhoro and Surxondaryo Province, as well as in much of what is today Tajikistan.

The creation of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union in 1929 helped to safeguard the future of Tajik, as it became an official language of the republic alongside Russian. Still, substantial numbers of Tajik-speakers remained outside the borders of the republic, mostly in the neighboring Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, which created a source of tension between Tajiks and Uzbeks. Neither Samarqand nor Bukhoro was included in the nascent Tajik S.S.R., despite their immense historical importance in Tajik history. After the creation of the Tajik S.S.R., a large number of ethnic Tajiks from the Uzbek S.S.R. 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 S.S.R. 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, is also having an effect on the development of the language.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=tgk
  2. ↑ Lazard, G. 1989
  3. ↑ Uzbekistan. The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency (December 13, 2007). Retrieved on 2007-12-26.
  4. ↑ See for example the Country report on Uzbekistan, released by the United States Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor here.
  5. ↑ Rahim Masov, The History of the Clumsy Delimitation, Irfon Publ. House, Dushanbe, 1991 (Russian). English translation: The History of a National Catastrophe, transl. Iraj Bashiri, 1996.
  6. ↑ Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (February 23, 2000). "Uzbekistan". Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 1999. U.S. Department of State. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/1999/369.htm. Retrieved 2007-12-19. 
  7. ↑ Richard Foltz, "The Tajiks of Uzbekistan", Central Asian Survey, 15(2), 213-216 (1996).
  8. ↑ Omniglot.com page for Tajik
  9. ↑ Lazard, G. 1956
  10. ↑ Perry, J. R. (2005)
  11. ↑ Nakanishi, Akira, Writing Systems of the World
  12. ↑ Ido, S. (2005)
  13. ↑ Korotkow, M. (2004)
  14. ↑ Perry, J. R. 2005
  15. ↑ "Tajikistan may consider using Persian script when the conditions are met", interview of Tajikistan's Deputy Culture Minister with Iranian News Agency, 2 May 2008.

References

External links

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