Yaghnobi Language

The Yaghnobi language is a living East Iranian language (the other living members being Pashto, Ossetic and the Pamir languages). Yaghnobi is spoken in the upper valley of the Yaghnob River in the Zarafshan area of Tajikistan by the Yaghnobi people. It is considered to be a direct descendant of Sogdian and has often been called Neo-Sogdian in academic literature.

There are some 12,500 Yaghnobi speakers. They are divided into several communities. The principal group lives in the Zafarobod area. There are also re-settlers in the Yaghnob valley. Some communities live in the villages of Zumand and Kůkteppa and in Dushanbe or in its vicinity.

Most Yaghnobi speakers are bilingual in the West Iranian Tajik. Yaghnobi is mostly used for daily family communication, while Tajik is used by Yaghnobi speakers for business and formal transactions. A single Russian ethnographer was told by nearby Tajiks—long hostile to the Yaghnobis, who were late to adopt Islam—that the Yaghnobis used their language as a "secret" mode of communication to confuse the Tajiks; this account led to the belief by some (especially those reliant solely on Russian sources) that Yaghnobi or some derivative of it was used as a code for nefarious purposes.

There are two main dialects, a western and an eastern one. These dialects differ primarily in phonetics. For example, historical *θ corresponds to t in the western dialects and s in the eastern, e.g. met - mes 'day' from Sogdian mēθ . Western ay corresponds to eastern e, e.g. wayš - weš 'grass' from Sogdian wayš or wēš . The early Sogdian group θr (later ṣ̌) is reflected as sar in the east but tir in the west, e.g. saráy - tiráy 'three' from Sogdian θrē/θray or ṣ̌ē/ṣ̌ay <δry>. t/s and ay/e are not the only features recognised as relevant to distinguish those two dialects, there are also some differences in verbal endings and in the lexicon. In between these two main dialects there is a transitional dialect. It shares some features of the western language and some features of the eastern one.