Language Research

Tajikistan is a multi-lingual country. Tajiki, a language of Iranian roots, is the most widely spoken. During the Soviet period, Russian was the lingua franca amongst the various ethnic groups in Tajikistan and Central Asia. While many of the ethnic Russians have fled Tajikistan during the last decade, the Russian language is still spoken by much of the native population. There are also a large number of Uzbeki speakers in Tajikistan, especially in the Leninabad Province and in the southwestern part of the country. To the east there are several Iranian based languages, named the Pamir languages that differ from Tajiki.

Tajik, like the other Central Asian languages, underwent a two-stage alphabet reform by order of the Soviet regime. First, the Arabic alphabet was abandoned in 1929 in favor of the Latin. Then, in 1940 Moscow declared Cyrillic the official alphabet of the Tajik language.