Uzbek language

In the language itself, Uzbek is oʻzbek tili or oʻzbekcha. In Cyrillic, it is ўзбек тили or ўзбекча. In Arabic script, اۉزبېک تیلی‎ and اۉزبېکچه‎.

Turkic speakers probably settled the Amu Darya, Syr Darya and Zarafshan river basins from at least 600–700 CE, gradually ousting or assimilating the speakers of Eastern Iranian languages who previously inhabited Sogdia, Bactria and Khwarezm. The first Turkic dynasty in the region was that of the Kara-Khanid Khanate in the 9th–12th centuries,[5] who were a confederation of Karluks, Chigils, Yaghma and other tribes.[6]

Uzbek can be considered the direct descendant or a later form of Chagatai, the language of great Turkic Central Asian literary development in the realm of Chagatai Khan, Timur (Tamerlane), and the Timurid dynasty[7] (including the early Mughal rulers of India). The language was championed by Ali-Shir Nava'i in the 15th and 16th centuries. Nava'i was the greatest representative of Chagatai language literature.[8][9] He significantly contributed to the development of the Chagatai language and its direct descendant Uzbek and is widely considered to be the founder of Uzbek literature.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Ultimately based on the Karluk variant of the Turkic languages, Chagatai contained large numbers of Persian and Arabic loanwords. By the 19th century it was rarely used for literary composition, but disappeared only in the early 20th century.

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 variety spoken by descendants of those who arrived in Transoxiana with Muhammad Shaybani in the 16th century, who lived mainly around Bukhara and Samarkand, although the Turkic spoken in Tashkent was also vowel-harmonised. It can be called old Uzbek and it's considered to be related to that specific group of people.
• "Sart" was a Karluk dialect spoken by the older settled Turkic populations of the region in the Fergana Valley and the Qashqadaryo Region, and in some parts of what is now the Samarqand Region; it contained a heavier admixture of Persian and Arabic, and did not have vowel harmony. It became the standard Uzbek language and the official dialect of Uzbekistan.

In Khanate of Khiva, Sarts spoke a highly Oghuz Turkified form of Karluk 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.

However, the standard written language that was chosen for the new republic in 1924, despite the protests of Uzbek Bolsheviks such as Fayzulla Khodzhayev, was not pre-revolutionary "Uzbek" but the "Sart" language of the Samarkand region. Edward A. Allworth argued that this "badly distorted the literary history of the region" and was used to give authors such as the 15th-century author Ali-Shir Nava'i an Uzbek identity.[17] All three dialects continue to exist within modern spoken Uzbek.

A 1911 text in the Uyghur Arabic alphabet

Uzbek has been written in a variety of scripts throughout history:

• Pre-1928: the Arabic-based Yaña imlâ alphabet by literates, approximately 3.7% of Uzbeks at the time.[18]
  • 1880s: Russian missionaries attempted to use Cyrillic for Uzbek.[18]
• 1928–1940: the Latin-based Yañalif used officially.
• 1940–1992: the Cyrillic script used officially.
• Since 1992: a Yañalif-based Latin script is official in Uzbekistan.

Despite the official status of the Latin script in Uzbekistan, the use of Cyrillic is still widespread, especially in advertisements and signs. In newspapers, scripts may be mixed, with headlines in Latin and articles in Cyrillic.[19] The Arabic script is no longer used in Uzbekistan except symbolically in limited texts[19] or for the academic studies of Chagatai (Old Uzbek).[18]

In the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, where there is an Uzbek minority, Arabic is still used.

In Afghanistan, the traditional Arabic orthography is still used.

Estimates of the number of speakers of Uzbek vary widely, from 25 up to 30 million. Ethnologue estimates put the number of native speakers at 27 million across all the recognized dialects. The Swedish national encyclopedia, Nationalencyklopedin, estimates the number of native speakers to be 30 million,[21] and the CIA World Factbook estimates 25 million. Other sources estimate the number of speakers of Uzbek to be 21 million in Uzbekistan,[22] 3.4 million in Afghanistan,[23] 900,000 in Tajikistan,[24] 800,000 in Kyrgyzstan,[25] 500,000 in Kazakhstan,[26] 300,000 in Turkmenistan,[27] and 300,000 in Russia.[28]

The influence of Islam, and by extension, Arabic, is evident in Uzbek loanwords. There is also a residual influence of Russian, from the time when Uzbeks were under the rule of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Most importantly, Uzbek vocabulary, phraseology and pronunciation has been heavily influenced by Persian through its historic roots. Uzbek has been significantly influenced by Persian and it also influenced Tajik (a variety of Persian).[29] Of the Turkic languages, Uzbek is perhaps the one most strongly influenced by Persian.[30]

Uzbek can be roughly divided into three dialect groups. The Karluk dialects, centered on Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, and the Ferghana Valley, are the basis for the standard Uzbek language. This dialect group shows the most influence of Persian vocabulary, particularly in the historically Persian cities of Bukhara and Samarkand. The Kipchak dialect, spoken from the Surxondaryo region through north-central Uzbekistan into Karakalpakstan, show significant influence from the Kipchak Turkic languages, particularly in the mutation of [j] to [ʑ] as in Kazakh and Kyrgyz. The Oghuz dialect, spoken mainly in Khorezm along the Turkmenistan border, is notable for the mutation of word-initial [k] to [g].

• Chagatai language[40]
• Southern Uzbek language

Uzbek edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikibooks has more on the topic of: Uzbek language

Wikivoyage has a phrasebook for Uzbek.

Converters

• Uzbek Cyrillic–Latin converter
• Uzbek Cyrillic-Latin text and website converter
• Uzbek Latin-Cyrillic text and website converter

Dictionaries

• Dictionary of the Uzbek Language Volume I (А—Р) (Tashkent, 1981)
• Dictionary of the Uzbek Language, Volume II (С—Ҳ) (Tashkent, 1981)
• English-Uzbek and Uzbek-English online dictionary
• English-Uzbek and Uzbek-English online dictionary
• Russian-Uzbek and Uzbek-Russian online dictionary
• Uzbek<>Turkish dictionary (Pamukkale University)
• Ole Olufsen: "A Vocabulary of the Dialect of Bokhara" (København 1905)

Grammar and orthography

• Introduction to the Uzbek Language, Mark Dickens
• Principal Orthographic Rules For The Uzbek Language, translation of Uzbekistan Cabinet of Minister's Resolution No. 339, of August 24, 1995
• Uzbek alphabet, Omniglot

Learning/teaching materials

• Ona tili uz, a website about Uzbek
• Uzbek language materials, Uz-Translations