Tomasz Gacek

During the period of Russian and Soviet domination over Tajikistan there was extensive Russian influence on the Tajik language, which is attested, among other features, by the great number of lexical borrowings. Interestingly, in the case of most of these forms Russian served only as a vehicular language and many are internationalisms, often known well to speakers of various European languages. These words were russianised on their introduction into Russian, before being transmitted on to other languages of Russia / the Soviet Union, Tajik being an example. Thus they often reveal specific Russian features in their morphology, phonology or semantics. The present article deals with a tendency noticeable in the Tajik of today, namely to remove these specific Russian features.

The present article deals with the Tajik language used in modern public inscriptions (sign-boards, sign-posts, billboard advertisements, political banners, etc.) documented in about 400 photographs taken in Tajikistan by various individuals in recent years. Some sociolinguistic problems are discussed (especially in the case of multilingual inscriptions) as well as morphology, vocabulary, word-formation and syntax of the texts in question.

The present article deals with the Tajik language used in modern public inscriptions (sign-boards, sign-posts, billboard advertisements, political banners, etc.) documented in about 400 photographs taken in Tajikistan by various individuals in recent years. Some sociolinguistic problems are discussed (especially in the case of multilingual inscriptions) as well as morphology, vocabulary, word-formation and syntax of the texts in question.

The present article deals with the Tajik language used in modern public inscriptions (sign-boards, sign-posts, billboard advertisements, political banners, etc.) documented in about 400 photographs taken in Tajikistan by various individuals in recent years. Some sociolinguistic problems are discussed (especially in the case of multilingual inscriptions) as well as morphology, vocabulary, word-formation and syntax of the texts in question.

Tajik, as opposed to Fārsi and Dari, remained for a century strongly influenced by Russian. As a consequence, its lexicon abounds with borrowings from that language. The article deals with the problem of their pronunciation – are characteristic features of Russian phonology and phonetics preserved in these loanwords? Having analyzed a number of examples one notices that the pronunciation of such words is far from consistent and the idea of a fidelity level may be introduced to explain and classify the differences. This fidelity level depends on various factors, e.g. the education of a native-speaker.