Central Asian Arabic is a variety of
Arabic spoken in
Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan and currently facing extinction. It was once spoken among
Central Asia's numerous settled and nomadic
Arab communities, which inhabited areas in
Samarqand,
Bukhara,
Qashqadarya,
Surkhandarya (present-day Uzbekistan), and
Khatlon (present-day Tajikistan), as well as
Afghanistan. The first wave of Arabs migrated to this region in the 8th century during the
Muslim conquests and was later joined by groups of Arabs from
Balkh and
Andkhoy (present-day Afghanistan). Due to heavy
Islamic influences, Arabic quickly became the common language of science and literature of the epoch. Most Central Asian Arabs lived in isolated communities and did not favour
intermarriages with the local population. This factor helped their language survive in a multilingual milieu until the 20th century. By the 1880s many Arab pastoralists had migrated to northern Afghanistan from what is now Uzbekistan and Tajikistan following the
Russian conquest of Central Asia. These Arabs nowadays speak no Arabic having adapted to
Dari and Uzbek. With the establishment of the
Soviet rule in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, Arab communities faced major linguistic and identity changes having had to abandon nomadic lifestyles and gradually mixing with
Uzbeks,
Tajiks and
Turkmen. According to the
1959 census, only 34% of Arabs, mostly elderly, spoke their language at a native level. Others reported
Uzbek or
Tajik as their mothertongue. Nowadays Central Asian Arabic (heavily influenced by the local languages in phonetics, vocabulary and syntax) is spoken in 5 villages of Surkhandarya, Qashqadarya and Bukhara. In Uzbekistan, there are at least two dialects of Central Asian Arabic: Bukharian (influenced by Tajik) and Qashqadaryavi (influeced by
Turkic languages). These dialects are not
mutually intelligible. In Tajikistan, Central Asian Arabic is spoken by 35.7% of the country's Arab population having been largely replaced by Tajik.
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Tajiki Arabic is a version of the Arabic language spoken in Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
The language is: Tajiki Arabic
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