Languages
Native
Tajik
84%
Secondary languages
Uzbek
12%
Russian
28%
Language Samples
Салом, чӣ ҳол доред?
Salom, chī hol dored?
Hello, how are you?
Ман хуб ҳастам, ташаккур.
Man xub hastam, tashakkur.
I am very well, thanks.
Як, ду, се, чор, панҷ, шаш, ҳафт, ҳашт, нӯҳ, даҳ.
Yak, du, se, chor, panj, shash, haft, hasht, nūh, dah.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Linguistic History
Tajik is essentially the eastern dialect of Persian, written in a modified Cyrillic alphabet rather than the Perso-Arabic script used in Iran and Afghanistan. Classical Persian literature — Rumi, Rudaki, Omar Khayyám — is shared cultural heritage; Rudaki himself was born in present-day Tajikistan and is considered the father of Persian poetry. The language was forced into Cyrillic script during the Soviet era, first replacing the Arabic script in 1928, then switching to Latin in 1939, then Cyrillic in 1940 — three script changes in twelve years. After independence in 1991, Tajikistan retained Cyrillic, making it the only Persian-speaking country that does not use a Persian-based script for its official writing.
Similar Languages
Persian (Farsi)
85%
Dari
80%
Uzbek
25%
Media
Monument to Ismoil Somoni in Dushanbe — the national symbol of Tajik statehood
Photo: Шухрат Саъдиев · CC BY-SA 4.0
Did You Know
01
Tajik and Iranian Persian are mutually intelligible — a Tajik speaker and a Tehran speaker can hold a conversation with little difficulty, despite living thousands of kilometres apart.
02
The Tajik alphabet uses 35 Cyrillic letters plus 5 extra characters for sounds not found in Russian.
03
Tajikistan is the only Persian-speaking country where Persian is written in Cyrillic rather than a Persian-based script — a legacy of Soviet language policy.
04
The national poet Rudaki (858–941 AD), widely regarded as the father of Persian literature, was born near Panjakent in modern Tajikistan.