Tajik language
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (December 2010) |
| Tajik | |
|---|---|
| тоҷикӣ, Template:Rtl-lang, toçikī | |
 Toçikī in the Tajik alphabet | |
| Native to | Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan |
Native speakers | (4.5 million cited ca. 1991)[1] |
| Cyrillic, Latin, Persian, Tajik Braille | |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  Tajikistan |
Recognised minority language in | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | tg |
| ISO 639-2 | tgk |
| ISO 639-3 | tgk |
| Glottolog | taji1245 |
Tajik, Tajik Persian, or Tajiki,[2] (sometimes written Tadjik or Tadzhik; тоҷикӣ, Template:Rtl-lang, toçikī [tɔːdʒɪˈkiː]) is a variety of modern Persian[3] spoken in Central Asia. Most speakers of Tajik live in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Tajik is the official language of Tajikistan. In Afghanistan, where Tajiks make up a large part of the population, the dialect is less influenced by Turkic languages and is called Dari.
The dialect has diverged from Persian as spoken in Afghanistan and Iran due to political borders, geographical isolation, the standardization process, and the influence of Russian and neighboring Turkic languages. The standard language is based on the northwestern dialects of Tajik (region of old major city of Samarqand), which have been somewhat influenced by the neighboring 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.
Geographical distribution
The most important historically Tajik/Persian-speaking cities of Central Asia – Samarqand and Buxoro – are in present-day Uzbekistan. Ethnic Tajiks are still majority in these ancient cities. Tajiks are also found in large numbers in the Surxondaryo Province in the south and along Uzbekistan's eastern border with Tajikistan. Tajik is still widely spoken in Samarqand and Buxoro today, as Tajiks account for perhaps 70% of the total population ofSamarqand and have been estimated to make up as much as 90% of Buxoro.[4][5]
Official statistics in Uzbekistan state that the Tajik community comprises 5% of the nation's total population.[6] However, these numbers do not include ethnic Tajiks who, for a variety of reasons, choose to identify themselves as Uzbeks in population census forms.[7] During the Soviet "Uzbekization" supervised by Sharof 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.[8] The "Uzbekization" movement ended in 1924.[9] Native Tajiks living in the nation of Uzbekistan have reportedly estimated that Tajiks make up 25-30% of the nation's population.[4]
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. 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 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. 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 in order to gain employment in Russia.[10]
Dialects
Tajik dialects can be approximately split into the following groups:
- Northern dialects (Northern Tajikistan, Buxoro, Samarqand, Derbend, Kyrgyzstan, and the Varzob valley region of Dushanbe).[11]
- Central dialects (dialects of the upper Zeravshan Valley).[11]
- Southern dialects (South and East of Dushanbe, Kulob, and the Kerategin region of Tajikistan ).[11]
- Southeastern dialects (dialects of the Darvoz region and the Oxus near Rushan ).[11]
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 is a [iː].
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | и /i/ |
у /u/ | |
| Mid | е /eː/ |
ӯ1 /ɵː/ |
о2 /ɔː/ |
| Open | а /æ/ |
- The central vowel is replaced in the central and southern dialects by /u/.[13]
- The open back vowel has varyingly been described as mid-back,[14][15] [ɒ],[16] [ɔ],[17] and [ɔː].[18] It is analogous to standard Persian â/ﺁ (long a).
Consonants
The Tajik language contains 24 consonants and 16 of them are identical, except for their voicing, these contrastive pairs are: [б/п] [в/ф] [д/т] [з/с] [ж/ш] [ҷ/ч] [г/к] [ғ/х].[12] The table below lists the consonant phonemes in standard, literary Tajik. Letters from the Tajik Cyrillic alphabet are given first, followed by IPA transcription.
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | м /m/ |
н /n/ |
|||||
| Stop | п б /p/ /b/ |
т д /t/ /d/ |
ч ҷ /tʃ/ /dʒ/ |
к г /k/ /ɡ/ |
қ /q/ |
ъ /ʔ/ | |
| Fricative | ф в /f/ /v/ |
с з /s/ /z/ |
ш ж /ʃ/ /ʒ/ |
х ғ /χ/ /ʁ/ |
ҳ /h/ | ||
| Trill | р /r/ |
||||||
| Approximant | л /l/ |
й /j/ |
Word stress
Word stress generally falls on the first syllable in finite verb forms and on the last syllable in nouns and noun-like words.[12] 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 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.[19] 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 cliticized form of the verb =acт =ast 'to be'.[20]
Ман мактуб навишта истода-ам man maktub navishta istoda=am I letter write PRS.PROG=be.1sg 'I am writing a letter.'
In Classical 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.[21]
من کنم کار دارم man kon-am kār dār-am I do-1sg.PRS work have-1sg.PRS 'I am working.'
Nouns
Nouns are not marked for grammatical 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 or -он (with contextual variants -ён and -гон), 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. When a noun is used as a direct object, it is marked by the suffix '-ро' (-ro), e.g. Рустамро задам (Rustam-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 modern Persian and Tajik have maintained this suffix on indirect objects, as seen in the following example: (Худоро шукр - "Thank God"). Modern Persian does not use the direct object marker as a suffix on the noun, but this direct object marker is a stand-alone morpheme in the Modern Persian Farsi language.[12]
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 'thin,' 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. 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 the Soviet policy of modernization and the necessary subordination of all languages to Russian for the achievement of a Communist state.[22] 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 | ماه māh |
نو now |
مادر mādar |
خواهر xāhar |
شب šab |
بینی bīnī |
سه se |
سياه siyāh |
قرمز, سرخ qermez, sorx |
زرد zard |
سبز sabz |
گرگ 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 |
| Armenian | ամիս amis |
նոր nor |
մայր mayr |
քույր k'uyr |
գիշեր gišer |
քիթ k'it' |
երեք yerek' |
սև sev |
կարմիր karmir |
դեղին deġin |
կանաչ kanač |
գայլ gayl |
| Urdu | مہینہ məhīna |
نئے nəye |
مادر mādər |
بہن bêhn |
شب šəb |
ناک nāk |
تین tīn |
سیاہ syah |
سرخ surx |
زرد zərd |
سبز səbz |
بھیڑیا bheṛiyā |
| Latin | mēnsis | novus | māter | soror | nox | nasus | trēs | āter, Niger | ruber | flāvus, gilvus | viridis | lupus |
| Spanish | mes | nuevo | madre | hermana | noche | nariz | tres | negro | rojo | amarillo | verde | lobo |
| Greek | μήνας minas |
νέος neos |
μητέρα mitera |
αδελφή adhelfi |
νύχτα nihta |
μύτη miti |
τρία tria |
μαύρος mavros |
κόκκινος kokkinos |
κίτρινος kitrinos |
πράσινος prasinos |
λύκος likos |
| Russian | месяц mesyats |
новый noviy |
мать mat' |
сестра sestra |
ночь noch |
нос nos |
три tri |
чёрный chorniy |
красный, рыжий krasniy, ryzhiy |
жёлтый zholtiy |
зелёный zelyoniy |
волк volk |
| Serbo-Croatian | m(j)esec |
nov |
mater |
sestra |
noć |
nos |
tri tri |
crn |
crven |
žut |
zelen |
vuk |
| Lithuanian | mėnuo |
naujas |
motina |
sesuo |
naktis |
nosis |
trys |
juoda |
raudona |
geltona |
žalia |
vilkas |
| Hindi | महीना mahīnā |
नया nayā |
माँ māṃ |
बहन bahan |
रात rāt |
नाक nāk |
तीन tīn |
काला kālā |
लाल lāl |
पीला pīlā |
हरा harā |
भेड़िया bheṛiyā |
Writing system
In Tajikistan and other countries of the former Soviet Union, Tajik Persian is currently written in Cyrillic script, although it was written in the Latin script beginning in 1928, and the Arabic alphabet prior to 1928. In the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, the use of the Latin script was later replaced in 1939 by the Cyrillic script.[23] 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.[24] In an interview to Iranian news media in 2008, Tajikistan's deputy culture minister said Tajikistan would study the issue of switching its Tajik alphabet from Cyrillic to Perso-Arabic script used in Iran and Afghanistan when the government feels that "the Tajik people become familiar with the Persian alphabet".[25]
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 was centered around the cities of Bukhoro (Buxoro), Samarqand and Herat, and covered much of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and northeastern Iran, 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, Tajik has come under increasing pressure from neighboring Turkic languages. Once spoken in areas of Turkmenistan, such as Merv, Tajik is today virtually non-existent in that country. Uzbek has also largely replaced Tajik in most areas of modern Uzbekistan. Nevertheless, Tajik persisted in pockets, 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. In 2009, Tajikistan adopted a law that removes Russian as the "language for interethnic communication."[26]
See also
- Academy of Persian Language and Literature
- Bukhori
- Dari (Persian)
- Iranian people
- Iranian Studies
- List of Persian poets and authors
- List of Tajik singers
- Persian language
- Tajik alphabet
- Tajik Wikipedia
- Tajiks
Notes
- ^ Tajik at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
- ^ http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=tgk
- ^ Lazard, G. 1989
- ^ a b Richard Foltz, "The Tajiks of Uzbekistan", Central Asian Survey, 15(2), 213-216 (1996).
- ^ http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/1999/369.htm
- ^ Uzbekistan. The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency (December 13, 2007). Retrieved on 2007-12-26.
- ^ See for example the Country report on Uzbekistan, released by the United States Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor here.
- ^ Rahim Masov, The History of the Clumsy Delimitation, Irfon Publ. House, Dushanbe, 1991 Template:Ru icon. English translation: The History of a National Catastrophe, transl. Iraj Bashiri, 1996.
- ^ http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/bashiri/Masov/MasovHistoryNationalCatastrophe.pdf
- ^ http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2013/07/201372393525174524.html
- ^ a b c d Windfuhr, Gernot. "Persian and Tajik." The Iranian Languages. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009. 421
- ^ a b c d Khojayori, Nasrullo, and Mikael Thompson. Tajiki Reference Grammar for Beginners. Washington, DC: Georgetown UP, 2009.
- ^ A Beginners' Guide to Tajiki by Azim Baizoyev and John Hayward, Routledge, London and New York, 2003, p. 3
- ^ Lazard, G. 1956
- ^ Perry, J. R. (2005)
- ^ Nakanishi, Akira, Writing Systems of the World
- ^ Ido, S. (2005)
- ^ Korotkow, M. (2004)
- ^ Perry, J. R. 2005
- ^ Ido, Shinji. Tajik. Muenchen: Lincom Europa, 2005.
- ^ Windfuhr, Gernot. Persian Grammar: History and State of Its Study. De Gruyter, 1979. Trends in Linguistics. State-Of-The-Art Reports.
- ^ Marashi, Mehdi, and Mohammad Ali Jazayery. Persian Studies in North America: Studies in Honor of Mohammad Ali Jazayery. Bethesda, MD: Iran, 1994.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "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.
- ^ Tajikistan Drops Russian As Official Language
References
- Ido, S. (2005) Tajik ISBN 3-89586-316-5
- Korotow, M. (2004) Tadschikisch Wort für Wort. Kauderwelsch ISBN 3-89416-347-X
- Lazard, G. (1956) "Caractères distinctifs de la langue tadjik". Bulletin de la Société Linguistique de Paris. 52. pp. 117–186
- Lazard, G. "Le Persan". Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden. 1989.
- Windfuhr, G. (1987) in Comrie, B. (ed.) "Persian". The World's Major Languages. pp. 523–546
- Perry, J. R. (2005) A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar (Boston : Brill) ISBN 90-04-14323-8
- Rastorgueva, V. (1963) A Short Sketch of Tajik Grammar (Netherlands : Mouton) ISBN 0-933070-28-4
- Назарзода, С. – Сангинов, А. – Каримов, С. – Султон, М. Ҳ. (2008) Фарҳанги тафсирии забони тоҷикӣ (иборат аз ду ҷилд). Ҷилди I. А – Н. Ҷилди II. О – Я. (Душанбе).
- Khojayori, Nasrullo, and Mikael Thompson. Tajiki Reference Grammar for Beginners. Washington, DC: Georgetown UP, 2009. ISBN 978-1-58901-269-1
- Windfuhr, Gernot. "Persian and Tajik." The Iranian Languages. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7007-1131-4
- Windfuhr, Gernot. Persian Grammar: History and State of Its Study. De Gruyter, 1979. Trends in Linguistics. State-Of-The-Art Reports. ISBN 978-9027977748
- Marashi, Mehdi, and Mohammad Ali Jazayery. Persian Studies in North America: Studies in Honor of Mohammad Ali Jazayery. Bethesda, MD: Iran, 1994. ISBN 978-0936347356
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