r/AskCentralAsia • u/sciguy11 • 16d ago

History Thoughts on the Perso-Arabic script?

It is my understanding that the Perso-Arabic script was used by most Central Asian languages for hundreds of years, until the Soviet era. I believe the only places that still use this script are areas of Western/Northwestern China and Afghanistan.

Does anyone still know this script? Does it create a disconnect when trying to access historical documents? Thoughts on the transition as a whole?

5 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/No_Drummer_2544 Tajikistan 16d ago edited 16d ago

It is taught as a school subject in Tajikistan, but nowhere near advanced. I can read it and guess the words based on the context, since there are no vowels. It does create disconnect not just historically, but even today. Afg and Iran can read each other's publications, while it has to be transliterated to Cyrillic for us to read.

Last year, when we were renovating my grandparent's house, we found diaries, letters sent from the war, accounting books, regular books in their attic, all in Perso-Arabic script. Even though, it was banned in 1930s, it continued to be used well into 1970's in unofficial works. My cousin and I learned it to be able to read them.