Some remarks on the pronunciation of Russian loanwords in Tajik

Tajik, as opposed to Fārsi and Dari, remained for a century strongly influenced by Russian. As a consequence, its lexicon abounds with borrowings from that language. The article deals with the problem of their pronunciation – are characteristic features of Russian phonology and phonetics preserved in these loanwords? Having analyzed a number of examples one notices that the pronunciation of such words is far from consistent and the idea of a fidelity level may be introduced to explain and classify the differences. This fidelity level depends on various factors, e.g. the education of a native-speaker.