Tajik or Tajiki (Tajik: забо́ни тоҷикӣ́, [zaˈbɔːni tɔːd͡ʒiˈki], also called Tajiki Persian (Tajik: форси́и тоҷикӣ́, [fɔːrˈsiji tɔːd͡ʒiˈki]) is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It is closely related to Dari Persian. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Tajik has been considered by a number of writers and researchers to be a variety of Persian (Halimov 1974: 30–31, Oafforov 1979: 33). The popularity of this conception of Tajik as a (less prestigious) variety of Persian was such that, during the period in which Tajik intellectuals were trying to establish Tajik as a language separate from Persian, Sadriddin Ayni, who was a prominent intellectual and educator, had to make a statement that Tajik was not a bastardized dialect of Persian. The issue of whether T