Tajik Alphabet

Tajik has been written in three scripts in one century: in the Persian form of the Arabic script until 1928, in a Latin alphabet from 1928, and in Cyrillic since 1940. Six of its Cyrillic letters, Ғ Ӣ Қ Ӯ Ҳ Ҷ, are Tajik's own and write the sounds and distinctions of the language. A spelling reform in 1998 dropped Ц, Щ, Ы and Ь; Ц, Щ and Ы mainly occurred in Russian loanwords, while Ь also marked yotation in Tajik words, so today's alphabet has 35 letters.

In Tajik alphabetical order the letters are: А Б В Г Ғ Д Е Ё Ж З И Ӣ Й К Қ Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ӯ Ф Х Ҳ Ч Ҷ Ш Ъ Э Ю Я. Each special letter follows the letter it is built on: Ғ after Г, Ӣ after И, Қ after К, Ӯ after У, Ҳ after Х and Ҷ after Ч. Э writes a plain e at the start of a word, as in Эрон (Iran), while Е, Ё, Ю and Я start with a y sound there.

Tajik punctuation uses guillemets « » for quotations, „ “ for quotes inside quotes, a long dash — for dialogue, and № before numbers. Tajik spelling is not a perfect phonetic transcription, but it writes vowels more explicitly than the Persian script of Iran and Afghanistan, which usually leaves short vowels unmarked.

The six Tajik letters and their sounds

Ҷ ҷ is the j of English "jam", while Ч ч is the ch of "chair", and the pair keeps words apart: чой is tea, ҷой is a place. Ҷ is also the letter in the language's own name, тоҷикӣ, and in Тоҷикистон. Қ қ is a k made deep in the throat, as in қалам (pen), and Ғ ғ is a soft, throaty g, close to a French r, as in боғ (garden). Persian in Iran pronounces these two sounds alike in most words; Tajik keeps them apart.

Ҳ ҳ is a plain English h, as in ҳафт (seven), while Х х is the rough ch of Scottish "loch", as in хона (house) and хуб (good). Ӯ ӯ is a vowel of its own, a rounded sound between о and у, in everyday words such as кӯҳ (mountain), рӯз (day), дӯст (friend) and Наврӯз.

Ӣ ӣ is a stressed i, mostly at the end of a word: the ending -ӣ makes adjectives and names of languages and peoples, as in тоҷикӣ (Tajik) and эронӣ (Iranian). The unstressed -и that links a noun to the word describing it is written with a plain и, so забони тоҷикӣ, "the Tajik language", shows both. The hard sign Ъ ъ represents a glottal stop in words from Arabic, as in шеър (poem) and маъно (meaning).

How to type Tajik letters on a keyboard

Windows includes a Tajik keyboard layout: add the Tajik language under Settings › Time & language › Language & region. It keeps the Russian layout and puts Ғ Ӣ Қ Ӯ Ҳ Ҷ on keys that Tajik does not need. Linux has the XKB layout "Tajik". On a phone, choose Tajik in a keyboard app such as Gboard, or copy the letters from this page.

Without a Tajik layout, Microsoft Word types any letter from its code followed by Alt+X: 0493 ғ, 04E3 ӣ, 049B қ, 04EF ӯ, 04B3 ҳ, 04B7 ҷ (for capitals: 0492 Ғ, 04E2 Ӣ, 049A Қ, 04EE Ӯ, 04B2 Ҳ, 04B6 Ҷ). On a Mac, the Character Viewer (Control+Command+Space) finds them by name, such as "che with descender" or "u with macron". In HTML, write ғ for ғ, ӣ for ӣ, қ for қ, ӯ for ӯ, ҳ for ҳ and ҷ for ҷ.

Watch the look-alikes, because search, spell-checking and sorting treat them as different characters: Tajik uses Ӯ (u with macron), not Ў (short u, used in Uzbek Cyrillic and Belarusian); Ӣ, not Й; Қ (ka with descender), not Bashkir Ҡ or Ӄ; and Ҷ (che with descender), not Khakas Ӌ or Ҹ. Texts typed on Russian keyboards sometimes stand in и for ӣ, у for ӯ, х for ҳ or ч for ҷ, which turns ҷой (place) into чой (tea).

Where Tajik is spoken: Tajik, Persian and Dari

Tajik is the state language of Tajikistan, where Unicode's CLDR estimates about 10 million speakers; Russian is also widely used there. Tajik is spoken as well in Uzbekistan, notably in the old cities of Samarkand and Bukhara, and by the many Tajiks who live and work in Russia. Amounts are written in Tajik somoni; Unicode CLDR uses «сом.» as its Tajik currency symbol: 100 сомонӣ or 100 сом.

Tajik is a variety of Persian. Iranians call their language Farsi and Afghans call theirs Dari, and both write it in the Persian form of the Arabic script; Tajiks write theirs in Cyrillic, with a vocabulary that has absorbed more Russian and Uzbek words. Speakers of the three understand each other well, and the classical poets, Rudaki, Ferdowsi, Rumi, Saadi and Hafez, belong to all of them. For the other scripts and neighbours see the Persian, Tajik (Arabic script), Uzbek, Uzbek (Cyrillic), Pashto and Russian collections; for 🇹🇯 and the country's emoji see Tajikistan.