Tajik alphabet

Tajik alphabets
Алифбои тоҷикӣ
الفبای تاجیکی
Alifboyi tojikiy
אלפבאי תאג׳יכי
The coat of arms of the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic c. 1929, displaying examples of written Tajik in the Latin and Persian alphabets alongside Russian.
Script type
Alphabet
Period
c. 7th century CE – present
LanguagesTajik, Bukharian
Related scripts
Parent systems
ISO 15924
ISO 15924Cyrl (220), ​Cyrillic
Unicode
Unicode alias
Cyrillic

The Tajik language has been written in three alphabets over the course of its history: the original Persian alphabet, a briefly used Roman-based orthography, and—more recently—a Cyrillic-based alphabet that is currently the official script in the Republic of Tajikistan.

The use of a specific alphabet generally corresponds with stages in history, with Arabic being used first for most of the time, followed by Latin, as a result of the Soviet takeover, for a short period and then Cyrillic, which remains the most widely used alphabet in Tajikistan. The Bukhori dialect spoken by Bukharan Jews traditionally used the Hebrew alphabet, but today is written using the Cyrillic variant.