Not many learners of Persian have realised that modern Persian, in fact, currently has two official alphabets – the Perso-Arabic one many are familiar with, and the Cyrillic, used to write Tajik. The debate on whether Tajik is a separate language from Persian is a socio-political one and has drawn much controversy both within Tajikistan as well as the Tajik-speaking areas of Uzbekistan, and among linguists worldwide. What withstands this debate, however, is the fact that the official, literary register of Tajik is no different from that of Iranian Persian and Afghan Persian (Dari), save for some particular stylistic preferences. From this point of view, Tajik Persian should not be considered to be a different language from Iranian Persian and Afghan Persian, not to mention that before the Soviet Union, Persian speakers in Central Asia had always referred to their language as فارسی / Farsi.

It is beneficial, therefore, for learners of Persian to also familiarise themselves with the Cyrillic alphabet – the current official alphabet of Tajik Persian, in order to access the rich literary tradition, scholarship, and media resources published in Tajikistan. The good news is that, because the Cyrillic alphabet was invented based on the Greek alphabet, from which the Latin alphabet – one of the most widely employed writing systems globally – was developed, it will not take anyone familiar with the Latin alphabet a long time to master. Moreover, because Tajik Cyrillic writes every sound and the spelling is largely phonetical, it helps learners, especially at beginner’s and lower-intermediate levels, grasp faster the pronunciation of certain words, obscured by the consonant-based Perso-Arabic script. Students who wish to read classical Persian poetry but still lack an instinctive feeling for the metrical system (عروض / ʿarūz) will also benefit immensely from reading poetry collections published in Tajik Cyrillic, which presents sounds and syllables in a more obvious fashion. Fluent speakers of Persian who are literate in either script will also benefit from this little guide to learn the other script, which will greatly facilitate cross-border communication.

Modern Persian speakers in the post-Soviet space have used, in total, three official writing systems. Prior to 1929, the Perso-Arabic script was the only alphabet traditionally learnt and used by those who could read and write, like in the rest of the Persian-speaking world still now. The official establishment of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic (Tajik SSR) in 1929 brought about a change of the official script from the traditional Perso-Arabic script to a Latin alphabet system, which had already been drafted in 1928. However, some books and newspapers were still published in the Perso-Arabic script, as most of the literate citizens needed time to adjust to the change. The Cyrillic alphabet began to be used in the 1930s, and became official in 1940, with which came also a ban on the use of the Perso-Arabic script.

The Standard Tajik Cyrillic alphabet is slightly modified from the Russian Cyrillic alphabet and has 35 letters. The letters follow the order in Russian; letters with diacritics follow the ones from which they are derived. The correspondences between the Tajik Cyrillic and the Perso-Arabic alphabets are as follows: