Is Tajik different than Farsi?

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I'm in Tajikistan at the moment, have spent 8 months learning basic Tajik, also called Tajiki.  Because my original study was in the literary form of the language, many Tajiks say that I speak better Farsi than Tajik.  But I  don't speak Farsi!   I can understand a little of what Iranians say, but they have a completely different accent and use different vocabulary even from literary Tajik.  Then there is Dari in Afghanistan.   Many people say these are all one language, Persian, but in my experience they're really not.  In Tajik, the bigger difference seems to be between literary Tajik, which is similar to both Farsi and Dari to the point that many Tajiks call them once language, and the street dialects of Tajik, which are sometimes unintelligible from the literary.

Yorumlar

Ngdawa profile picture NgdawaMarch 2012
From my experience the Tajiki, Farsi and Dari languages are very similar, just like Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. In written these languages looks pretty much the same and if you know one of the languages, you understand all of them - written. When it comes to the speech, especially Danish is more different than Norwegian and Swedish, but you still understand it. I reckon it's the same as for Tajiki, Farsi and Dari.

For example:
The phrase "Good morning" is 'Subh ba khayr' in Tajiki, right? In Dari you say 'Sobh bakhayr' and in Farsi you say 'Sobh bekheyr'. Not to be comfused though, "Good evening" in Dari is 'Shab bakhayr' and in Farsi 'Shab bekheyr', but 'Shab ba khayr' in Tajiki means "Good night", am I right? "Good nigh" in Dari and Farsi is though 'Shab-etaan khoosh' vs. 'Shab-e shomaa khosh'.

You can see that there are many similarities between these three languages. You can also compare the days of the week's names:
[Dari-Farsi-Tajiki, Mon-Sun]:
Dushamba-Doshambe-Dushanbe
Seshamba-Seshambe-Seshanbe
Chahaarshamba-Chaarshambe-Chorshanbe
Panjshamba-Panjshambe-Panjshanbe
Jom'a-Jom'e-Jum'a
Shamba-Shambe-Shanbe
Yakshamba-Yekshambe-Yakshanbe

If ou just are observant you will, with just learning Tajiki, also be able to understand Farsi and Dari. It's all up to your imagination to compare and try to figure out what it all can mean the Dari or Farsi speakers are saying.

Some day I hope to get to Tajikistan as well