Uzbek language

Uzbek is a Karluk Turkic language and serves as both the official and national language of Uzbekistan. It replaced Chagatai—a Karluk language historically referred to by its speakers as Türki or Türkçe—as the country’s literary language during the 1920s. More than 36 million people worldwide speak Southern Uzbek or Standard Uzbek as their first language, according to Ethnologue, which ranks Uzbek as the second most widely spoken Turkic language, behind only Turkish. Beyond native speakers, many Tajiks, Kazakhs, and Russians living in Uzbekistan use Uzbek as a second language.

The language has two main variants: Northern Uzbek (often simply called “Uzbek”), spoken in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and China; and Southern Uzbek, used in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Both variants contain numerous dialects. Uzbek and Uyghur are sister languages, together forming the Karluk (or Southeastern) branch of Turkic.

External influences on Uzbek come from Persian, Russian, and Arabic. A key feature setting Uzbek apart from other Turkic languages is the rounding of the vowel /ɑ/ to /ɒ/, a change driven by Persian contact. Unlike most Turkic languages, modern Standard Uzbek has almost completely lost vowel harmony—again due to prolonged contact with Persian—though some dialects still preserve it to a small degree, as does its sister language Uyghur. Different dialects show varying levels of influence from Kipchak and Oghuz Turkic (especially in grammar) and Persian (especially in phonology), giving literary Uzbek the character of a mixed language.

In February 2021, the Uzbek government announced a plan to fully switch the Uzbek writing system from Cyrillic to a Latin-based alphabet by January 1, 2023. Similar deadlines had been extended multiple times before, and as of 2024, most institutions continue to use both scripts.

**Classification**

Uzbek belongs to the western branch of the Karluk group within the Turkic language family; Uyghur is its eastern counterpart. Karluk is considered a dialect continuum. Northern Uzbek is the variety most easily understood by the largest number of Turkic speakers overall (excluding Siberian Turkic languages), despite its heavy Persian influence. The high mutual intelligibility among certain Turkic languages allows Uzbek speakers to understand various more distantly related Turkic languages with relative ease.

**Number of speakers**

As the most widely spoken indigenous language in Central Asia, Uzbek is also used by smaller ethnic groups within Uzbekistan and in neighboring countries. Outside Uzbekistan, the language is spoken by other ethnic communities. The popularity of Uzbek media—such as Uzbekfilm and RizanovaUz—has grown across post-Soviet states, especially in Central Asia. Because Uzbek is the dominant language in Kyrgyzstan’s Osh Region (and the mother tongue of Osh city), as well as in much of eastern, southern, and southeastern Kyrgyzstan (including Jalal-Abad Region), many ethnic Kyrgyz are exposed to Uzbek, and some speak it fluently. A similar situation occurs in other Central Asian republics: Kazakhstan’s Turkistan region, northern Turkmenistan’s Daşoguz Welaýat, and Tajikistan’s Sughd region and other areas.

Uzbek holds a special status in countries that are common destinations for Uzbekistani emigrants. Besides Uzbekistan and other Central Asian republics, ethnic Uzbeks most often seek work in the Russian Federation, though many are seasonal workers whose numbers fluctuate. According to Russian government statistics, in 2021 there were 4.5 million workers from Uzbekistan, 2.4 million from Tajikistan, and 920,000 from Kyrgyzstan in Russia, with roughly 5 million being ethnic Uzbeks.

Estimates of native Uzbek speakers vary widely, from 35 to 40 million. Ethnologue puts the figure at 33 million across all recognized dialects. Sweden’s Nationalencyklopedin estimates 38 million native speakers, while the CIA World Factbook gives 30 million. Other sources report 34 million speakers in Uzbekistan, 4.5 million in Afghanistan, 1.63 million in Pakistan, 1.5 million in Tajikistan, about 1 million in Kyrgyzstan, 600,000 in Kazakhstan, 600,000 in Turkmenistan, and 300,000 in Russia. Uzbek is taught at more than fifty higher education institutions worldwide.

**Etymology**

Historically, the name “Uzbek” referred to a completely different language of Kipchak origin, one lexically, phonetically, and grammatically similar to Kazakh. This earlier language was distinct from the region’s indigenous language, known as Turki, until Western scholars renamed it Chagatai due to its origins in the Chagatai Khanate. Today, the ethnonym “Uzbek” simply means “a language spoken by the Uzbeks.”

**History**

Turkic speakers likely settled the Amu Darya, Syr Darya, and Zarafshon river basins from around 600–650 AD, gradually displacing or assimilating the Eastern Iranian speakers who had previously inhabited Sogdia, Bactria, and Khwarazm. The first Turkic dynasty in the area was the Kara-Khanid Khanate (9th–12th centuries), a confederation of Karluks, Chigils, Yagma, and other tribes. Uzbek (along with Uyghur) is considered the direct descendant of Chagatai, the language of major Turkic Central Asian literary development under Chagatai Khan, Timur (Tamerlane), and their successors.