Tajik, Tajik Persian, or Tajiki, (sometimes written Tadjik or Tadzhik; , , ) is a variety of modern Persian spoken in Central Asia. Most speakers of Tajik live in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Tajik is the official language of Tajikistan. In Afghanistan, where Tajiks make up a large part of the population, the dialect is less influenced by Turkic languages and is called Dari. The dialect has diverged from Persian as spoken in Afghanistan and Iran due to political borders, geographical isolation, the standardization process, and the influence of Russian and neighboring Turkic languages. The standard language is based on the northwestern dialects of Tajik (region of old major city of Samarqand), 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.
