Where Tajik is spoken
Tajik is spoken in 6 countries: Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and 2 more. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.
| Country | Share of population | Estimated speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Tajikistan | 100% | 10,394,100 |
| Pakistan | 0.3% | 832,801 |
| Afghanistan | Not given | Not given |
| China | Not given | Not given |
| Kyrgyzstan | Not given | Not given |
| Uzbekistan | Not given | Not given |
Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.
On the map, Tajik is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Tajik.
How many people speak Tajik?
Wikidata gives about 14 million speakers (Ethnologue, 2018). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.
Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.
Where Tajik sits in the language family tree
Glottolog classifies Tajik as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Indo-Iranian
- Iranian-Nuristani
- Iranian
- Southwestern Iranian
- Middle-Modern Persian
- Modern Southwestern Iranian
- Farsic-Caucasian Tat
- Farsic
- Eastern Farsic
- Tajikic
- Tajik
Related languages
Other languages in the Tajikic group:
- Bukharic (60,000 speakers)
More about Tajik
- Read about Tajik on Wikipedia
- Indo-European languages map
- Languages spoken in Tajikistan
- All languages, A to Z
Codes: ISO 639-3 tgk, Glottolog taji1245. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.
Questions about Tajik
Where is Tajik spoken?
Tajik is spoken in Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and 2 more. Unicode CLDR puts it at 100% of the population of Tajikistan, which is about 10,394,100 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.
How many people speak Tajik?
Wikidata gives about 14 million speakers (Ethnologue, 2018). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.
Which language family is Tajik in?
Glottolog places Tajik in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Iranian-Nuristani, Iranian, Southwestern Iranian, Middle-Modern Persian, Modern Southwestern Iranian, Farsic-Caucasian Tat, Farsic, Eastern Farsic and Tajikic.