тилло

тилло: gold

Ман нуқра ва тилло надорам; лекин он чи дорам, ба ту медиҳам.
I don’t have silver or gold; but what I do have, I will give to you.
Дар Тоҷикистон зиёда аз даҳ корхона ба истеҳсоли тилло машғуланд.
In Tajikistan more than ten factories are involved in the production of gold.

Bonus:
Some other metals –
нуқра: silver
оҳан: iron
биринҷӣ: bronze
пӯлод: steel
мис: copper
алюминий: aluminium

3 thoughts on “тилло”

  1. >> биринҷӣ: bronze
    <> aluminium: алюминий
    <<

    This one’s a (Russian) noun, even though it looks like a Russian adjectival form. Personally, I think the correct Tajik spelling should be “алуминий” …

    It’s like the word “плюс”: this is the Russian spelling, but in Tajik, this spelling would be read as /п-л-й-у-с/, and that’s simply NOT how it’s pronounced; it should be spelled as it’s said : “плус”.

    However, there’s a great fear, or reluctance, or who-knows-what when it comes to re-spelling Russian words – it’s as if Russian is untouchable, sacrosanct, or as some have said, “the queen of languages” (and it won’t bow to any other minion-language).

    Rant over. Bye!

    1. Thanks for the comments, David.
      The thing about all languages is that they change and adapt. Just as English has adopted words from other languages, Tajik has also adopted words from Russian. A lot of these words are included in the Фарҳанги Тафсирии Забони Тоҷикӣ, and even though people will refer to these Russian loan words as “Russian words” they are Tajik words in the sense that they are used and accepted by the majority of Tajik people when they are speaking Tajik.

      It will be interesting to see over time how many of these words are changed, either in their spelling or to a new word entirely. As far as I can tell from reading recent articles on the internet currently алюминий is the commonly accepted Tajik word for aluminium. It is the word that people use, and the way it is spelled here is the way that it is also pronounced. There are a few recent articles that use the word арзиз for aluminium, and I also found an article stating that арзиз should definitely not be used for aluminium.

  2. [Кеу: р. = Russian loanword; ф. = Farsi/Persian variant]

    Other metals:
    lead: сурб
    zinc: руҳ
    aluminium: алуминиюм (ф.)
    tin: олово (р.)

    Alloys:
    steel: пӯлод
    brass: латун (р.)
    solder: припой (р.), colloq. олово (р.)

    To find the names of more metals and other elements, most bookshops in Dushanbe stock the Periodic Table in Tajik (note that about 90% of the names of the elements are simply the Russian names).

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