Learning Tajiki

I've been studying Tajiki for six months now, although I'm not sure I've gotten anywhere at all. Tajiki presents several difficulties for me that other languages haven't, and my studying methods have been different, as well. I'm thinking about this a lot right now, as I just conducted a training in Tajiki (although I don't know how much I trained and how much I confused), and to prepare for it I asked several sources to help me translate and convey the correct message. They all gave me different answers.

Tajiki draws vocabulary from several languages: Arabic, Farsi and Turkic/Uzbek mainly, but the word for anything technical is Russian, because of the Russian and Soviet influence from the late 19th century until now. I can't think of any examples right now for synonyms in all four languages, but, for example, the word 'condition' could be one of the following:

vaz' (Arabic)

vaz'iyat (Arabic)

hol (Persian)

holat (Persian)

khel (Persian)

This is fine, we have synonyms in every language, but it makes comprehension difficult when speaking with those who are unfamiliar with my level of understanding. In addition to the official, dictionary words, there are tons of slang words thrown in to mean the same thing. The slang used depends on the geographic origin of the speaker. There is a different dialect in Sughd region, Khatlon, Dushanbe, and the Pamir (where many speak a completely seperate, though Persian, language). The result is that, unless someone speaks in literary Tajiki (nobody does), with correct syntax (ditto), using the synonym I know (Murphy's Law), I will be thrown off by something in the sentence. If the average sentence contains 3 or 4 key words that modify the meaning dramatically, the chances of my understanding are low. In reality, I only completely undersstand when individuals make a concentrated effort to communicate with me--although I catch much of what's going on otherwise, it's not enough to give answers or make decisions.

When studying Armenian, while there were definitely plenty of synonyms, the roots of words were usually unchanging, and grammatical forms had fairly set constructions. So,

happy-urakh : sad-tkhur

happiness-urakhutyun : sadness-tkhrutyun

happily-urakhutyamb : sadly-tkhrutyamb

And any word that contains 'urakh' automatically means something about happy. In Tajiki, however, the ending 'i' or 'y' changes the word from a noun to an adjective--although if you don't know the word already, you don't know if it's an adjective or a noun. Further, another, additional 'i' can be added to either an adjective or a noun, in which case it makes the noun either an adjective or possessive, and an adjective becomes a noun--but you have to have known that it was an adjective otherwise you might mistake it for a possessive noun. The context gives clues, but there's a lot of decoding going on while trying to listen to the rest of the sentence.

Part of this confusion arises from the fact that Tajiki used to be written in Farsi/Arabic script, and then was changed to Latin letters by the Soviets (because they implied 'modernisation'), and then to Cyrillic by Stalin because serving in the army was easier if people could read the Russian instructions on, say, a tank. In the transition, decisions were made on which letters would 'replace' the old script. There is no 'double i' ending in Farsi script.

Aside from the synonyms from different languages and confusing 'i's, creating further mental mayhem is the fact that many technical terms are now being shifted to Tajiki/Persian words from Russian. Anything that involved science or higher education in the sciences was taught in Russian, or used many Russian loan words. The only authority on how these should be translated into new Tajiki words is a government body that releases new words every once in a while. The only way people find out about them is by listening to state television, where anchors are often obviously speaking a language that is new to them, as well.

So, when I ask my three tutors, "How do you say, the 'target group' of a study?" I get 3 different answers. Someone at work tells me the way they say it in Russian, because they don't know what the Tajik is. I prepared the training in English, translated it to Tajiki, then got my tutors' advice, then changed everything when the Project HOPE translator proofread it, then changed the technical terms that we had directly translated from Russian into the official, 'new' translation with the help of a technical monitoring officer who was up to date on these things (but doesn't speak English so I couldn't work with him from the start).

I'm nearing the end of my language study grant, and I'm glad that I won't be running around the city anymore trying to get from lessons to work to lessons. I'm also glad that I'll be able to just focus on picking up vocabulary and syntax from conversations with Tajiks, instead of being too exhausted from lessons to engage people. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I'll miss the opportunity to have someone to answer all my questions for 3 hours. I think I have picked up quite a bit of the language, after all, and I'm confident that I can get around just fine here, or in other Persian speaking areas. I have to take a test at the end of the language grant period, and it will be interesting to see how I am graded, and how that compares to other Persian learners here. I feel as though I'm at the same level I was after 4-5 months of Peace Corps--which is good, since I had the benefit of a host family and full immersion there, whereas here my immersion is watching local TV.

So, now on to Russian!

Update: I wrote this about 3 weeks ago, and since then we traveled to Romit, a small village on the Kofarnihon River to the east of Dushanbe, and I had the chance to speak with the national park ranger there. We had a normal converstaion, I understood him clearly! He spoke 'clean' Tajiki, that is, the Tajiki I know, so that I didn't need anyone to translate to either English or literary Tajiki. It was nice to have happened upon a location where my language skills came in handy--finally!