Everything about Uzbek Language totally explained
Uzbek (
O‘zbek tili in
Latin script,
Ўзбек тили in
Cyrillic script; أۇزبېك ﺗﻴﻠی in
Arabic script) is a
Turkic language and the official language of
Uzbekistan. It has about 23.5 million native speakers, and it's spoken by the
Uzbeks in
Uzbekistan and elsewhere in
Central Asia. Uzbek belongs to the
Qarluq family of Turkic languages, and consequently its
lexicon and
grammar are most closely linked to the
Uyghur language, while other influences rose from
Persian,
Arabic and
Russian.
History
Turkic speakers have probably settled in the
Amu-Darya,
Syr-Darya and
Zeravshan river basins since at least AD600-700, gradually ousting the speakers of
Indo-Iranian languages who previously inhabited
Soghdiana,
Bactria and
Chorasmia, or else changing their linguistic habits. The first Turkic dynasty in the region was that of the
Karakhanids in the 9th- 12th centuries AD, who were a Qarluq tribe.
Uzbek is a language which can be considered the direct descendant or a latter form of
Chagatay, the language of great
Turkic Central Asian literary development in the realm of
Chagatai Khan,
Timur (Tamerlane), and the Timurids. The language was championed by Mir
Ali-Sher Nawa'i in the 15th and 16th centuries. Ultimately based on the
Qarluq variant of the Turkic languages, it contained large numbers of Persian and Arabic loan-words. By the 19th century it was rarely used for literary composition.
The term "Uzbek" as applied to language has meant different things at different times. Prior to 1921 "Uzbek" and "
Sart" were considered to be different dialects; "Uzbek" was a vowel-harmonised
Kipchak dialect spoken by descendants of those who arrived in Transoxiana with
Shaybani Khan in the 16th century, who lived mainly around
Bukhara and
Samarkand, although the Turkic spoken in Tashkent was also vowel-harmonised; "Sart" was a Qarluq dialect spoken by the older settled Turkic populations of the region in the
Ferghana Valley and the
Kashka-Darya region, and in some parts of the Samarkand
Oblast; it contained a heavier admixture of Persian and Arabic, and didn't use vowel-harmony. In Khiva Sarts spoke a form of highly
Persianised Oghuz Turkic. After 1921 the Soviet regime abolished the term
Sart as derogatory, and decreed that henceforth the entire settled Turkic population of Turkestan would be known as
Uzbeks, even though many had no Uzbek tribal heritage. The standard written language that was chosen for the new republic in 1924, however, despite the protests of Uzbek Bolsheviks such as
Faizullah Khojaev, wasn't pre-revolutionary "Uzbek" but the "Sart" language of the Samarkand region. All three dialects continue to exist within modern, spoken Uzbek.
Number of speakers
In the
CIS countries, there are about 24.7 million people who speak dialects of Uzbek. In Uzbekistan, 21 million people speak Uzbek as their native language. There are about 1.2 million speakers in Tajikistan, 1 million in Afghanistan, 550,096 in Kyrgyzstan, 332,017 in Kazakhstan, and 317,333 in Turkmenistan. According to the 1990 census, about 3,000 people in
Xinjiang (China) speak Uzbek.
Loan words
The influence of
Islam, and by extension,
Arabic, is evident in Uzbek, as well as the residual influence of Russian, from the time when Uzbekistan was under
tsarist and
Soviet domination. Most of the Arabic words have found their way into Uzbek through Persian. Uzbek shares much Persian and Arabic vocabulary with neighboring languages such as
Persian,
Tajik and
Dari.
Dialects
The Uzbek language has many
dialects, varying widely from region to region. However, there's a commonly understood dialect which is used in mass media and in most printed material. Some linguists consider the language spoken in northern Afghanistan by ethnic Uzbeks to be a dialect of Uzbek.
Writing systems
» *See the article in Russian Wikipedia on
Uzbek writing systems
Before
1928, the Uzbek language, like most Central Asian languages, was written in various forms of the Arabic script (
Yana imla) by the literate population. Between 1928 and 1940, as part of comprehensive programs to educate (and politically influence) Uzbek people, who for the first time now had their own cartographically delineated (administrative) region, Uzbek writing was switched to Latin script (
Yanalif; a proposal for the latinization of
Yana imla was already developed in 1924). The latinization of Uzbek was carried out in the context of latinization of all Turkic languages, and wouldn't have happened if other Turkic languages were not latinized.
In
1940, Uzbek was forcefully switched to Cyrillic script under
Joseph Stalin. Until
1992, Uzbek almost everywhere continued to be written using the
Cyrillic alphabet, but now in Uzbekistan the
Latin script has been officially re-introduced, although the use of Cyrillic is still widespread. The deadline in Uzbekistan for making this transition has been repeatedly changed. The latest deadline was 2005, but was shifted once again to provide a few more years.
Already education in many areas of in Uzbekistan is in the Latin script, and in 2001 the Latin script began being used for currency Since 2004 official websites have switched over to using the Latin script when writing in Uzbek. Most street signs are also in the new Latin script.
In the
Xinjiang province of China, Uzbek has no official orthography. Some speakers write using the Cyrillic script, others write using the
Uyghur script--as that's the language they've gone to school in.
Table of Uzbek Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, and represented sounds
| Latin |
Cyrillic |
|
| A a |
А а |
/a, æ/ |
| B b |
Б б |
/b/ |
| D d |
Д д |
/d̪/ |
| E e |
Е е, Э э |
/e/ |
| F f |
Ф ф |
/ɸ/ |
| G g |
Г г |
/g/ |
| H h |
Ҳ ҳ |
/h/ |
| I i |
И и |
/i, ɨ/ |
| J j |
Ж ж |
/dʒ/ |
| K k |
К к |
/k/ |
| L l |
Л л |
/l/ |
| M m |
М м |
/m/ |
| N n |
Н н |
/n/ |
| O o |
О о |
/ɒ, o/ |
| P p |
П п |
/p/ |
| Q q |
Қ қ |
/q/ |
| R r |
Р р |
/r/ |
| S s |
С с |
/s/ |
| T t |
Т т |
/t̪/ |
| U u |
У у |
/u, y/ |
| V v |
В в |
/w/ |
| X x |
Х х |
/χ/ |
| Y y |
Й й |
/j/ |
| Z z |
З з |
/z/ |
| O’ o’ |
Ў ў |
/ɤ̟/ |
| G’ g’ |
Ғ ғ |
/ʁ/ |
| Sh sh |
Ш ш |
/ʃ/ |
| Ch ch |
Ч ч |
/tʃ/ |
| ' |
ъ |
/ʔ/ |
Text sample
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Further Information
Get more info on 'Uzbek Language'.
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