Uzbek language

Uzbek (Oʻzbekcha, Ўзбекча or Oʻzbek tili, Ўзбек тили) is a Turkic language that is the first official and only declared national language of Uzbekistan. The language of Uzbeks is spoken by 44 million people around the world (L1+L2), having some 34 million speakers in Uzbekistan, 4.5 million in Afghanistan,[4] 1.65 million in Pakistan[5] and around 5 million in the rest of Central Asia, making it the second-most widely spoken Turkic language after Turkish.

Uzbek
Oʻzbekcha, oʻzbek tili, Ўзбекча, ўзбек тили, اۉزبېکچه, اۉزبېک تیلی
Uzbek in Latin, Arabic Nastaliq, and Cyrillic scripts.
Native to	Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Xinjiang
Ethnicity	Uzbeks
Native speakers	44 million (L1+L2) (2021)[1]
Language family	Turkic Common Turkic Karluk[2] Uzbek
Early forms	Karakhanid Khorezmian Chagatai
Writing system	Latin Cyrillic Perso-Arabic[lower-alpha 1] Uzbek Braille (Uzbek alphabets)
Official status
Official language in	Uzbekistan Organization of Turkic States Afghanistan
Recognised minority language in	Afghanistan[lower-alpha 2] Tajikistan Kazakhstan Turkmenistan Kyrgyzstan
Language codes
ISO 639-1	uz
ISO 639-2	uzb
ISO 639-3	uzb – inclusive code Individual codes: uzn – Northern uzs – Southern
Glottolog	uzbe1247
Linguasphere	44-AAB-da, db
Dark blue = majority; light blue = minority
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Uzbek belongs to the Eastern Turkic or Karluk branch of the Turkic language family. External influences include Arabic, Persian and Russian.[6] One of the most noticeable distinctions of Uzbek from other Turkic languages is the rounding of the vowel /ɑ/ to /ɔ/, a feature that was influenced by Persian. Unlike other Turkic languages, vowel harmony is nigh-completely lost in mod modern Standard Uzbek, though it is (albeit somewhat less strictly) still observed in its dialects, as well as its sister Karluk language Uyghur.

In February 2021, the Uzbek government announced that Uzbekistan plans to fully transition the Uzbek language from the Cyrillic script to a Latin-based alphabet by 1 January 2023.[7][8] Similar deadlines had been extended several times.[9]