Tajik Arabic Alphabet

Tajik is the Persian of Central Asia. Rudaki, the 10th-century poet whom Tajiks call the father of their literature, wrote in the Perso-Arabic script, and the script remained the main one for Tajik writing until the Soviet reforms: Tajik switched to a Latin alphabet in 1928 and to Cyrillic in 1940. In Tajikistan Cyrillic has been the everyday alphabet ever since (ғ ӣ қ ӯ ҳ ҷ, in the Tajik collection), but the older script never disappeared. It is the script of the classical poetry Tajiks learn by heart, and after independence schools in Tajikistan added lessons in it.

South of the border the old script is simply the normal one. Tajiks in Afghanistan, one of the country's largest peoples, speak the variety called Dari there and write it in exactly this alphabet, as do Persian-speaking Tajiks in Pakistan. So the Tajik Arabic alphabet is the Persian alphabet: same letters, same order, written right to left and joined up, with no capital letters. Copy the plain letters from the grid and the font will choose the right initial, middle or final shape.

"Tajik vs Persian" and "Tajik vs Dari" are questions about speech, not script. Tajik, Dari and the Persian of Iran are varieties of one language and are largely mutually intelligible; Tajik has more Russian and Uzbek loanwords, and Tajik and Dari keep two old vowels, ē and ō, that Iranian Persian has merged into ī and ū. In the Arabic script that difference vanishes: شیر is шер (lion) and шир (milk) in Tajik, and روز is рӯз (day), just as in any Persian book.

Tajik Cyrillic to Arabic script: which letter is which

Most consonants have one partner: б ب, п پ, д د, р ر, ж ژ, ш ش, ф ف, х خ, л ل, м م, н ن, к ک, г گ. The six special Tajik Cyrillic letters map as follows: ҷ is ج (ҷон جان, soul), ч is چ (чой چای, tea), қ is ق (қалам قلم, pen), ғ is غ (боғ باغ, garden), ҳ is ح or ه (ҳамсоя همسایه, neighbour; Муҳаммад محمد), ӯ is و (кӯҳ کوه, mountain) and ӣ is ی (тоҷикӣ تاجیکی, Tajik).

Where Cyrillic has one letter, Arabic script often has several, because Tajik kept the Arabic spelling of its Arabic loanwords. Cyrillic с can be س, ث or ص; з can be ز, ذ, ض or ظ; т can be ت or ط. The letter ъ usually stands for ع or the hamza ء: маъно معنی (meaning), ҷамъ جمع (sum). There is no rule to derive these from the sound; readers learn the spelling of each word, which is why automatic Cyrillic-to-Arabic converters still make mistakes.

The vowels work differently. Tajik о, the long ā of Persian, is written ا, or آ at the start of a word: об آب (water), нон نان (bread). Tajik у and ӯ are و, and и, ӣ and е are ی inside a word. The short Tajik а, и and у are usually not written at all, except that a final -а is written with a silent ه: хона خانه (house), Душанбе دوشنبه (Dushanbe, also the word for Monday).

Vowel marks, hamza and the ezafe

When a short vowel must be shown, Persian script adds a mark: zabar َ for a, zer ِ for i and pesh ُ for u. Sukun ْ marks a consonant with no vowel after it, tashdid ّ doubles a consonant (Муҳаммад مُحَمَّد), and tanvin ً writes the -an of Arabic adverbs such as ҳатман حتماً (certainly). They appear in children's books, poetry editions, dictionaries and the Quran, rarely in everyday writing.

The hamza forms come with Arabic loanwords: آ for ā at the start of a word, أ, ؤ and ئ for the glottal stop inside words like масъул مسئول (responsible), and a bare ء. The izofat, the linking -и that Tajik Cyrillic writes out (китоби ман, my book), is normally invisible in Arabic script, کتاب من, or shown with a zer; after a final silent ه it can be written ۀ: خانۀ من, хонаи ман, my house.

Tajik punctuation, numbers and currency signs

Text in the Perso-Arabic script uses the turned comma ،, the turned semicolon ؛ and the mirrored question mark ؟; the full stop and exclamation mark are the ordinary . and !. Quotations go in guillemets, «…», which Tajik Cyrillic uses as well.

Numbers use the Persian digits ۰ ۱ ۲ ۳ ۴ ۵ ۶ ۷ ۸ ۹, the set used in Afghanistan and Iran, written left to right even inside right-to-left text: the year 2026 is ۲۰۲۶. Their ۴ ۵ ۶ differ in shape from the Arabic ٤ ٥ ٦, so choose this set for Tajik and Dari text. The percent sign is ٪, the decimal separator ٫ and the thousands separator ٬.

Pakistan's rupee is written ₨ or Rs, and Afghanistan's afghani has its own sign, ؋, an Arabic-script letter shape usually placed after the number (۵۰۰ ؋). Tajikistan's currency, the somoni, named after the Samanid ruler Ismoil Somoni, has no Unicode sign; prices are written with the abbreviation смн or TJS.

How to type Tajik in Arabic script

Use a Persian keyboard layout: Windows, macOS, Android and iOS all include one, and it has every letter on this page, the punctuation ، ؛ ؟ « » and the Persian digits. The Tajik keyboard layouts on these systems are Cyrillic, so for the Arabic script choose Persian. Check that ی and ک come out as the Persian characters (U+06CC and U+06A9), not the Arabic ي and ك, which look the same in the middle of a word but break search and spell-checking.

In Microsoft Word type a code and press Alt+X: 067E gives پ, 0686 gives چ, 0698 gives ژ, 06AF gives گ, 06A9 gives ک, 06CC gives ی and 060B gives ؋. In HTML use numeric references such as پ, and mark the text dir="rtl" lang="tg-Arab" so it runs right to left. Persian also needs the half-space, the zero-width non-joiner U+200C, to keep parts of a word unjoined: کتاب‌ها, китобҳо, books. The quickest way to get a letter is to click it on this page.

Where Tajik is written in Arabic script

CLDR estimates about 830,000 speakers of Tajik in Arabic script and places them all in Pakistan 🇵🇰, where many Persian-speaking Tajiks from Afghanistan live. Many more people write the same language in the same letters under the name Dari in Afghanistan 🇦🇫, and Tajikistan 🇹🇯, where Tajik is written in Cyrillic, teaches the script as part of its heritage.

The letters are shared with the Persian collection, and the same language in Cyrillic has the Tajik collection. Uzbek in Arabic script, written by Uzbeks of Afghanistan, builds on this alphabet too. The Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan collections gather each country's flags, food and holiday emoji.