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 | |
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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] |
Early forms | |
Official status | |
Official language in | |
Recognised minority language in | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 | uz |
ISO 639-2 | uzb |
ISO 639-3 | uzb – inclusive codeIndividual codes: uzn – Northernuzs – Southern |
Glottolog | uzbe1247 |
Linguasphere | 44-AAB-da, db |
![]() Dark blue = majority; light blue = minority | |
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]