Tajiki Persian

Tajik
тоҷикӣ (tojikī)
"Tojikī" written in Cyrillic script and Persian (Nasta'liq script)
Native to	Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan
Native speakers	8.4 million (2015 census – 2015)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Iranian Southwestern Iranian Persian Tajik
Writing system	Cyrillic, Latin, Persian (historically), Tajik Braille
Official status
Official language in	Tajikistan
Recognised minority language in	Kyrgyzstan Kazakhstan Pakistan
Language codes
ISO 639-1	tg
ISO 639-2
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	taji1245
Linguasphere	58-AAC-ci
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Tajik or Tajiki (Tajik: забо́ни тоҷикӣ́, zaboni tojikī, [zaˈbɔni tɔd͡ʒiˈki], also called Tajiki Persian (Tajik: форси́и тоҷикӣ́, forsii tojikī, [fɔrˈsiji tɔd͡ʒiˈki])) is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It is closely related to Dari Persian. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Tajik has been considered by a number of writers and researchers to be a variety of Persian (Halimov 1974: 30–31, Oafforov 1979: 33). The popularity of this conception of Tajik as a variety of Persian was such that, during the period in which Tajik intellectuals were trying to establish Tajik as a language separate from Persian, Sadriddin Ayni, who was a prominent intellectual and educator, had to make a statement that Tajik was not a bastardized dialect of Persian. The issue of whether Tajik and Persian are to be considered two dialects of a single language or two discrete languages has political sides to it (see Perry 1996). Today Tajik is recognized as a West-Iranian language.

Tajik is the official language of Tajikistan. In Afghanistan (where Tajiks make up a large part of the population), this language is less influenced by Turkic languages, is called Dari, and has co-official language status. Tajik 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.