Wikipedia: Языки Таджикистана

The article is a Russian-language Wikipedia entry titled “Languages of Tajikistan” (Языки Таджикистана). The article reports that Tajik is the state and official language of Tajikistan and that Russian is recognised by the Constitution of the Republic of Tajikistan as the language of inter-ethnic communication. The article reports that Tajik — regarded by many linguists as a subvariant or ethnolect of Persian — is the native language of more than 80% of the population, spoken by about 3,340,000 people (around 75% of the population); and that Uzbeks, making up about 20% of the population, speak Uzbek (about 873,000 speakers per the 2010 census). The article reports that according to the 2010 census Uzbeks accounted for 12.2% of the population of Tajikistan, or 926,000 people. The article reports that about 25% of the population is fluent in Russian and about 60% speak it at an intermediate level; that urban residents (roughly 30% of the country) generally speak good Russian; that Russian is a compulsory school subject; and that in many state and private organisations Russian remains the main working language, with proficiency influencing hiring in private companies. The article reports other notable languages: Kyrgyz (about 64,000 speakers) and Persian (about 50,000 speakers), with fewer than 2% of the population speaking other foreign languages. The article describes regional distribution: Tajik dialects predominate north of the former Soviet border except in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (ГБАО), where Pamiri languages predominate beyond the Vanj valley along the Panj River; Uzbek enclaves are significant in the north and west up to the Dushanbe–Kulob line. The article reports on Pamiri languages, spoken along the Bartang, Ghund, Pamir, Shahdara and Yazgulyam valleys, with Sarykol and Wakhi speakers also in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China. The article reports on the Central Asian Arabic dialect as endangered, historically spoken by Arab communities around Samarkand, Bukhara, Kashkadarya, Surkhandarya and Khatlon region. The article reports on the Judeo-Tajik (Bukhori) dialect spoken by Bukharan Jews, with about 30,000 speakers in the USSR before mass emigration to Israel in 1972–73, and roughly 50,000 speakers in Israel, 10,000 remaining in Central Asia today. The article cites Aminov et al. “Language Use and Language Policy in Central Asia” (2010), Edelman (1999) on Iranian languages, Dodikhudoeva (2004) in Iran and the Caucasus, Liddicoat (2019) in the Routledge International Handbook, Nagzibekova (2008), and Khushkadamova (2019) as sources.