Shughni people live in both
Afghanistan and
Tajikistan. For the past 100 years, each country has had diverging literary traditions and orthographic standards. On either side of the border, Shughni literaturists, being previously an unwritten language, has relied heavily on the existing orthographic standards and conventions in coming up with an orthography for Shughni language. In
Tajikistan,
Persian alphabet was discarded in 1928, being replaced by Latin alphabet, and 11 years afterwards in 1939, Latin alphabet being replaced by
Cyrillic alphabet. Tajik Cyrillic alphabet is of course based on Russian orthography, and similar to that of Uzbek language in neighboring
Uzbekistan. Thus, the alphabets developed in Tajikistan for Shughni language, have been Cyrillic and Latin. In Afghanistan,
Dari (Afghan Persian), with the well-established
Persian script, is the literary language of the nation.
Pashto language too, with its own
alphabet, derived from Persian, but with unique features and conventions, is the co-official language of Afghanistan. Thus, the Shughni orthography being developed by literaturists in Afghanistan has been derived from Persian, and borrowing letters from Pashto as needed.
Historical development The question of whether the
Shughni people possessed an ancient writing system is disputed. The only recorded mention of a possible ancient Shughni script comes from the Chinese traveler
Xuanzang in the 7th century CE. In his work
Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, he mentions a country called
Shiqini, which researchers identify with
Shughnan. According to Xuanzang, the writing system of Shiqini was similar to that of the
Tocharians, probably referring to the
Bactrian alphabet. From the second half of the 19th century, attempts were made to adapt the
Arabic script for Shughni. Some poetry (e.g., by the poet
Mullo Lochin, 1860–1920) and medical or historical works (e.g., by
Shohzoda Muhammad) were written in it, but the practice never became widespread. During the same period, Shughni began to attract scholarly attention. The first Shughni grammar was compiled by the English researcher
Robert Shaw in 1877, using a Latin-based transcription with diacritics. In 1883, the Russian scholar
D. L. Ivanov produced the first Shughni dictionary; his manuscripts used Cyrillic with additional Latin letters, while the published version employed the
Anders Johan Sjögren's Cyrillic alphabet. In the early 20th century, further publications on Shughni appeared, though the language itself remained largely unwritten.
Latin alphabet The Latin-based writing system used for the Shughni language comprises 39 letters, combining standard Latin characters with diacritical marks and several letters adopted from the Greek alphabet. Although this alphabet has never been officially standardized, it has been widely employed in academic articles and linguistic studies devoted to the Shughni language and related Pamir languages:
Persian alphabet The process of compiling a Persian derived alphabet for Shughni has been a long and iterative one, over a period starting from 2004, with the publication of the first book on phonology and orthography of Shughni language by Khair Mohammad Haidari. This was followed by a 2011 publication by Dr. Nur Ali Dost from
Montreal-based "Sohravardi Foundation for Iranian Studies"., a 2011 compilation by Mazhab Shah Zahoori and two other by Alishah Sabbar and Calgary-based Dr. Khush Nazar Parmerzad. This led to controversy, correspondence, and collaboration between Shughni literaturists and academics, who over the following years, agreed upon specific set of consonants, and a specific standardized way of representing vowels. The Afghan government has officially adopted Shughni orthography as well, and the
Ministry of Education has created textbooks to be used in
Badakhshan Province.
Letters Below table demonstrates the 44-letter Persian-derived Shughni alphabet.
Vowels Shughni language consists of 10 vowels. There are 3 short vowels, which have 3 corresponding long vowels, and there are 4 additional long vowels. One of the topics of controversy in the process of compiling and standardizing Shughni orthography, was how to express all 9 of the vowels. In this process, letters from Pashto and Urdu have been borrowed ( and ), a new letter has been created () and due to a lack of the sound [h], the letter
he () has been repurposed from a consonant
grapheme to a vowel one. == Syntax ==