The Sarikoli language (also Sariqoli, Selekur, Sarikul, Sariqul, Sariköli) is a member of the Pamir subgroup of the Southeastern Iranian languages spoken by the Pamiris of Xinjiang, China. It is officially referred to in China as the "Tajik language", although it is different from the related Iranian language spoken in Tajikistan, which is considered a dialect of Persian.

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Sarikoli
تۇجىك زىڤ / سەرىقۇلى زىڤ[1] Tujik ziv / Sarikhuli ziv Тоҷик зив
Native to	China
Region	Pamir (Taxkorgan County)
Ethnicity	Sarikolis
Native speakers	16,000 (2000)[2]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Eastern Shugni–Yazgulami Shughnani Sarikoli
Writing system	Uyghur Arabic alphabet (unofficial)[3]
Official status
Official language in	China
Language codes
ISO 639-3	srh
Glottolog	sari1246
ELP	Sarikoli
Linguasphere	58-ABD-eb
Xinjiang Province. Light blue are areas where Sarikoli is spoken.
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Sarikoli is officially referred to as "Tajik" (Chinese: 塔吉克语, Tǎjíkèyǔ) in China.^[4] However, it is not closely related to Tajik (a form of Persian) as spoken in Tajikistan because Sarikoli is an Eastern Iranian language, closely related to other Pamir languages largely spoken in the Badakshan regions of Tajikistan and Afghanistan, whereas the Western Iranian Farsi-Dari-Tajik is a polycentric language of a related but distinctly and historically different type. Both of these types of language and dialect clusters have been geographically separated by great distances and mountainous terrain over the course of long periods of time during which many differences of pronunciation, wording and xenolinguistic borrowings or retention of older forms or word choices accumulated over time.^[5] It is also referred to as Tashkorghani,^[6] after the ancient capital of the Sarikoli kingdom -- now the Tashkurgan (or Taxkorgan) Tajik Autonomous County in Xinjiang, China. However, the usage of the term Tashkorghani is not widespread among scholars.^{[citation needed]}

The earliest written accounts in English are from the 1870s which generally use the name "Sarikoli" to refer to the language, but some written accounts since that time may use a different pronunciation derived from transcribing Chinese phonetics of the term into English as "Selekur(i)".^[7] Modern Chinese researchers often mention Sarikoli and Tajik names in their papers.^[8][3]

This section does not cite any sources. (February 2022)

The number of speakers is around 35,000; most reside in the Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County in Southern Xinjiang Province, China. The Chinese name for the Sarikoli language, as well as the usage of Sarikol as a toponym, is Sàléikuòlèyǔ (萨雷阔勒语). Speakers in China typically use Chinese and Uyghur to communicate with people of other ethnic groups in the area. The rest are found in parts of the Pakistani-administered Kashmir, closely touching the Pakistan-Chinese international borders in the north east.

The language has no official written form. Linguist Gao Erqiang, publishing in China, used IPA to transcribe the sounds of Sarikoli in his book and dictionary,^[1] while Tatiana N. Pakhalina, publishing in Russia, used an alphabet similar to that of the Wakhi language in hers.^[9][10] The majority of Sarikoli-speakers attend schools using Uyghur as the medium of instruction.^{[citation needed]}

Although to a large extent the Sarikoli lexicon is quite close to those of other Eastern Iranian languages, there are a large number are words unique to Sarikoli and the closely related Shughni that are not found in other Eastern Iranian languages like Wakhi, Pashto or Avestan.

The following text is a paragraph from Gao Erqiang's "Tajik-Chinese Dictionary" (1996), talking about the significance of the development of a writing system for the language of Tajiks of Xinjiang, both in Chinese and Sarikoli. The Sarikoli text is written in the "Pinyin" developed by Gao Erqiang for use in the dictionary. Below, the text is also transcribed in an equivalent Uyghur-Arabic alphabet.^[1]