The Yaghnobi language is a living Northeastern Iranian language (the only other living member being Ossetic). Yaghnobi is spoken in the upper valley of the Yaghnob River in the Zarafshan area of Tajikistan by the Yaghnobi people. It is considered to be a direct descendant of Sogdian and has often been called Neo-Sogdian in academic literature.

There are some 12,500 Yaghnobi speakers. They are divided into several communities. The principal group lives in the Zafarobod area. There are also re-settlers in the Yaghnob valley. Some communities live in the villages of Zumand and Kůkteppa and in Dushanbe or in its vicinity.

Most Yaghnobi speakers are bilingual in Tajik. Yaghnobi is mostly used for daily family communication, while Tajik is used by Yaghnobi speakers for business and formal transactions. The fact that a single Russian ethnographer was told by nearby Tajiks - long hostile to the Yaghnobis, who were late to adopt Islam - that the Yaghnobis used their language as a "secret" mode of communication to confuse the Tajiks has led to the belief by some (especially those reliant solely on Russian sources) that Yaghnobi or some derivative of it was used as a code for nefarious purposes.

There are two main dialects, a western and an eastern one. These dialects differ primarily in phonetics. For example, to historical *θ corresponds t in the western dialects and s in the eastern, e.g. met - mes 'day' from Sogdian mēθ . To western ay corresponds eastern e, e.g. wayš - weš 'grass' from Sogdian wayš or wēš . The early Sogdian group θr (later š) is reflected as sar in the east but tir in the west, e.g. saráy - tiráy 'three' from Sogdian θrē/θray or šē/šay <δry>. t/s and ay/e are not the only features recognised as relevant to distinguish those two dialects, there are also some differences in verbal endings and in the lexicon. In between these two main dialects there is a transitional dialect. It shares some features of the western language and some features of the eastern one.

Writing

Yaghnobi was a scriptless language until 1990s, but according to some ethnographers the Yaghnobis used a modified form of the Arabic alphabet. Nowadays the language is transcribed by scholars using a modified Latin alphabet, with the following symbols:

a (á), ā (ā́), b, č, d, e (é), f, g, γ, h, ẖ, i (í), ī (ī́), ǰ, k, q, l, m (m̃), n (ñ), o (ó), p, r, s, š, t, u (ú), ū (ū́), ʏ (ʏ́), v, w (u̯), x, x°, y, z, ž, ع

In recent times Sayfiddīn Mīrzozoda form the Tajik Academy of Sciences uses a modified Tajik alphabet for writing Yaghnobi. This alphabet is quite unsuitable for Yaghnobi - it does not distinguish short and long vowels, the difference v/w or does not mark stress etc. Yaghnobi alphabet follows with Latin equivalents given in parenthesis:

А а (a) Б б (b) В в (v, w) Г г (g) Ғ ғ (γ) Д д (d) Е е (e/ye) Ё ё (yo) Ж ж (ž) З з (z) И и (i, ī) Ӣ ӣ (i, ī) й (y) К к (k) Қ қ (q) Л л (l) М м (m) Н н (n) О о (o) П п (p) Р р (r) С с (s) Т т (t) У у (u, ū, ʏ) Ӯ ӯ (ū, ʏ) Ф ф (f) Х х (x) Хв хв (x°) Ҳ ҳ (h, ẖ) Ч ч (č) Ҷ ҷ (ǰ) Ш ш (š) Ъ ъ (ع) Э э (e) Ю ю (yu, yū, yʏ) Я я (ya)

Notes to the Cyrillic alphabet:

1) Letter й does not have capital form, it never appears at the beginning of a word. Words beginning with ya-, yo- and yu-/yū-/yʏ- are written as я-, ё- and ю-; in a similar way are these combinations written in the middle of the word, f.ex. viyóra is виёра [vɪ̆ˈjɔ:ra].

2) The usage of letters ӣ and ӯ is not exactly known, it appears, that those letters can be used to distinguish two similar sounding words by orthography (f.ex. иранка and ӣранка, рупак and рӯпак). Maybe letter ӣ is also used as a stress marker as it is also in Tajik. Letter ӯ can also be used in Tajik loanwords to indicate a Tajik vowel /ů/ [ɵː], but it can have some other usage that is not known yet.

3) In older texts Yaghnobi alphabet did not use letters Ъ ъ and Э э - instead of Tajik ъ is used Yaghnobi letter ’ and Yaghnobi е covered both Tajik е and э for value /e/; in later notation those letters were integrated into the alphabet - so the older writing етк was changed into этк to represent pronunciation [ˈe:tkʰ] (and not [ˈje:tkʰ]), older writing ша’мак was chaged to шаъмак [ʃʲæʕˈmak].

4) Letter combinations /yi/ and /ye/ are written as е and йи, but those combinations appear rarely in Yaghnobi. Yaghnobi letter и never has value /yi/ as it can have in Tajik. Letter е has two values - in word-initial position and after a vowel it is pronounced [je:], in position after a consonant it means [e:] - еб [je:b] × мен [me:n], please note that /ye/ is rare in Yaghnobi - it can be found only in Tajik or Russian loans, the example еб is the only one recorded example with /ye/ in Yaghnobi, this word itself is a Tajik loanword.

5) Russian letters Ц ц, Щ щ, Ы ы and Ь ь, that can be used in Tajik loans from Russian are not used in Yaghnobi - the Russian words are written as they are pronounced by the Yaghnobi speakers, not as they are written originally in Russian (f.ex. aeroplane is самолет/самолёт in Russian, written самолёт in Tajik and pronounced [səmʌˈʎot] in Russian and similar in Tajik, in Yaghnobi it is written as самалиёт respecting Yaghnobi pronunciation [samalɪˈjo:tʰ] or [samajlˈo:tʰ]; word concert is borrowed to Yaghnobi from Russian концерт [kʌnˈʦe̠rt] in form кансерт [kʰanˈse:rtʰ]).

6) By consultation with Sayfiddīn Mīrzozoda distinction between sonds /v/ and /w/ is needed to be established - for the sound /v/ letter в will be used but for /w/ another letter should be adopted. By the agreement letter Ў ў would be the best choice - it appears almost in all fonts useful for writing Tajik, also its appearance similar to /y/ Й й seams to be systematic by phonetic representation of those sounds - both /y/ and /w/ are approx­imants. Also for representation of /x°/ letter combination Хў хў should be used. In some texts Mīrzozoda used Latin letter w in Cyrillic texts, this notation was unfortunately inconsistent. Yet no texts using Ў ў were published, this is only a proposal for better representation of Yaghnobi phonology in its own alphabet.

Sounds

Vowels

short: i [i-ɪ-e], a [a(-æ)], u [(y-)u-ʊ-o] (all short vowels might be reduced approximately to [ə] in pretonic positions)

long: ī [i:], e [ɛ:(-e:)], ā [a:], o [(ɒ:-)ɔ:(-o:-u:)], ū [u:], ʏ [(u:-)y:(-i:)]

diphthongs: ay [ai̯] (ay in native words appears only in the western dialects, in the eastern it changes to e, ay can also appear in the eastern dialect, but by different etymology), oy [ɔ:i̯], uy [ʊi̯], ūy [u:i̯], ʏy [y:i̯], iy [ɪi̯]; ow [ɔ:u̯], aw [au̯]