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Tajikistan in Central Asia is campaigning against what the authorities describe as 'incomprehensible' words. Journalists who use them have been threatened with fines. After the Soviets created the Republic of Tajikistan in the 1920s, the Farsi spoken there became known as Tajik and was written in the Russian cyrillic script. A Russian influence was preferred to Persian or Arabic, in an effort to make the language distinct. It's a battle that's still being fought, according to Dariush Rajabian of 大象传媒 Persian, who's from the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe.

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5 minutes