Tajik Radio Tajik Radios 1.0

The dialect has diverged from Persian as spoken in Afghanistan and Iran, as a result of political borders, geographical isolation, the standardization process, and the influence of Russian and neighboring Turkic languages. The standard language is based on the north-western dialects of Tajik (region of old major city of Samarkand), 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.

The most important historically Tajik/Persian-speaking cities of Central Asia, Samarqand and Bukhara, are in present-day Uzbekistan. In Uzbekistan Tajiks are the largest part of the population of the ancient cities of Bukhara and Samarqand, and are found in large numbers in the Surxondaryo Province in the south and along Uzbekistan's eastern border with Tajikistan.

Official statistics in Uzbekistan state that the Tajik community comprises 5% of the nation's total population. However, these numbers do not include ethnic Tajiks who, for a variety of reasons, choose to identify themselves as Uzbeks in population census forms. During the Soviet "Uzbekization"[when?] supervised by Sharof Rashidov, the head of the Uzbek Communist Party, Tajiks had to choose either stay in Uzbekistan and get registered as Uzbek in their passports or leave the republic for the less developed agricultural and mountainous Tajikistan. Subjective expert estimates suggest that Tajiks may make up 15 to 25 percent of Uzbekistan's population.

Tajiks constitute 80% of Tajikistan's population, and Persian dominates in most parts of the country. Some Tajiks in Badakhshan in southeastern Tajikistan, where the Pamiri languages are the native languages of most residents, are bilingual-speakers. Tajiks are the dominant ethnic group in Northern Afghanistan as well, and are also the majority group in scattered pockets elsewhere in the country, particularly urban areas such as Kabul, Mazar, Kunduz, Ghazni and Herat. Tajiks constitute between 25% and 30% of the total population of the country. In Afghanistan, the dialects spoken by ethnic Tajiks are written using the Perso-Arabic script and referred to as Dari, along with the Persian dialects of other groups in Afghanistan such as the Hazara and Aimaq. 50% of Afghan citizens are native speakers of Dari. A large Tajik-speaking diaspora exists due to the instability that has plagued Central Asia in recent years, with significant numbers of Tajiks found in Russia, Kazakhstan, and beyond.
Dialects

Tajik dialects can be approximately split into the following groups:

Northern dialects (Northern Tajikistan, southern parts of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan).
Central dialects (dialects of Mastchoh, Aini, Hissor and, parts of Varzob).
Southern dialects (dialects of Qarotegin, Kulob, dialects of Badakhshan, etc.)
Southeastern dialects (dialects of Panj and Darvoz).

The dialects used among the native Bukharian Jews of Central Asia are known as Bukhori, and belong to the northern dialect grouping. They are chiefly distinguished by the inclusion of Hebrew terms, principally religious vocabulary, and a historical use of the Hebrew alphabet. Despite these differences, Bukhori is readily intelligible to other Tajik-speakers.

Tajik Persian, or Tajiki,[1] (sometimes written Tadjik or Tadzhik; тоҷикӣ, تاجیکی‎, tojikī [tɔːdʒɪˈkiː]