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Uzbek language

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Uzbek
Oʻzbek, Ўзбек, اوزبیک
Native toUzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Russia, China
Native speakers
26 million (2007)[1]
Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic
(Uzbek alphabets)
Official status
Official language in
 Uzbekistan
Language codes
ISO 639-1uz
ISO 639-2uzb
ISO 639-3uzb – inclusive code
Individual codes:
uzn – Northern Uzbek
uzs – Southern Uzbek
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Uzbek (oʻzbek tili or oʻzbekcha in Latin script; ўзбек тили or ўзбекча in Cyrillic script; اوزبیک تیلی or اوزبیکچه in Arabic script) is a Turkic language and the official language of Uzbekistan. It has anywhere between 20 and 26 million native speakers and is spoken by the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia. Uzbek belongs to the Eastern Turkic, or Karluk, language group of the Altaic language family.[2] The Uzbek language gets its lexicon and grammar mostly from Turkic languages. Other influences rose from Persian, Arabic and Russian. One of the most distinguishing aspects of Uzbek from other Turkic languages is its rounding of the vowel /a/ to /ɒ/ or /ɔ/, a feature that was influenced by Persian.

History

File:Navoiozbek.jpg
A monument of Alī Shīr Navā’ī in Tashkent. He championed Chagatay language which formed the basis of modern Uzbek.

Turkic speakers have probably settled in the Amu-Darya, Syr-Darya and Zeravshan river basins since at least AD 600–700, gradually ousting or assimilating the speakers of Eastern Iranian languages who previously inhabited Soghdiana, Bactria and Chorasmia. The first Turkic dynasty in the region was that of the Karakhanids in the 9th–12th centuries AD,[3] who were a confederation of Karluks (Qarluq), Chigil, Yaghma and other tribes.[4]

Uzbek 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[5] (including the early Mughal rulers of India). The language was championed by Mir Ali-Shir Nava'i in the 15th and 16th centuries. Nava'i was the greatest representative of Chagatai language literature.[6][7] He significantly contributed to the development of the Chagatay language and its direct descendant Uzbek and is widely considered to be the founder of Uzbek literature.[8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Ultimately based on the Qarluq variant of the Turkic languages, Chagatay 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 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 what is now the Samarkand Province; it contained a heavier admixture of Persian and Arabic, and did not 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, was not pre-revolutionary "Uzbek" but the "Sart" language of the Samarkand region. All three dialects continue to exist within modern, spoken Uzbek.

Number of speakers

Estimates of the number of speakers of Uzbek vary widely. The Swedish encyclopedia Nationalencyklopedin estimates the number of native speakers to be 26 million,[15] and the CIA World Factbook estimates 25 million (21 million in Uzbekistan,[16] 1.4 million in Afghanistan,[17] 900,000 in Tajikistan,[18] 800,000 in Kyrgyzstan,[19] 500,000 in Kazakhstan,[20] 300,000 in Turkmenistan,[21] and 300,000 in Russia[22]).

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 rule. Uzbek vocabulary has also been heavily influenced by the neighboring Modern Persian dialects of Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

Dialects

The Uzbek language has many dialects, varying widely from region to region. However, there is a commonly understood dialect which is used in mass media and in most printed material. Among the best known dialects are the Tashkent dialect, Afghan dialect, the Ferghana dialect, the Khorezm dialect, the Chimkent-Turkestan dialect, and the Surkhandarya dialect.

Writing systems

A page in Uzbek language Arabic script printed in Tashkant 1911

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.[23]

In 1940, Uzbek was switched to Cyrillic script under Joseph Stalin. Until 1992, Uzbek continued to be written using a Cyrillic alphabet almost everywhere, 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 Uzbekistan is in the Latin script, and in 2001 the Latin script began to be used for coins. Since 2004 some official websites have switched over to using the Latin script when writing in Uzbek.[24] Most street signs are also in the new Latin script. The main national TV channel of Uzbekistan, O‘zbekiston telekanali, has also switched to the Latin script when writing in Uzbek.

In the Xinjiang province of China, Uzbek has no official orthography. Some speakers write using the Cyrillic script, while others write using the Uyghur Arabic script.

When the Uzbek language is written using the Latin script, either the single opening quotation mark (‘) (U+2018) or the ʻokina (ʻ) (U+02BB) is used to write the letters Oʻ (Cyrillic Ў) and Gʻ (Cyrillic Ғ). It has not been officially specified which character should be used to form these letters. While some websites including the Uzbek Wikipedia use the ʻokina,[25] others including some Uzbek governmental websites such as the Governmental Portal of the Republic of Uzbekistan use the single opening quotation mark.[24] However, currently most Uzbek websites use the straight apostrophe without bothering to find the necessary symbols.

What is clear is that a character that resembles curved quotes should be used. In other words, it should be a character that looks like a small figure six raised above the baseline (6) but then solid, i.e., with the counters filled. In many typefaces, this shape is the same as that of an inverted (upside down) comma.

The modifier letter apostrophe (ʼ) (tutuq belgisi) is used to mark the phonetic glottal stop when it is put immediately before a vowel in borrowed words, as in sanʼat (art). The modifier letter apostrophe is also used to mark a long vowel when placed immediately after a vowel, as in maʼno (meaning).[26] Currently most typists do not bother with the differentiation between the ʻokina/single opening quotation mark and modifier letter apostrophe as their keyboard layouts likely accommodate only the straight apostrophe.

Below is a table of Uzbek Cyrillic and Latin alphabets with represented sounds.[27]

Latin Cyrillic IPA English Approximation
A a А а /a, æ/ chai, but
B b Б б /b/ bat
D d Д д /d̪/ den
E e Е е / Э э /e/[N 1] sleigh
F f Ф ф /ɸ/ fish
G g Г г /ɡ/ go
H h Ҳ ҳ /h/ hoe
I i И и /i, ɨ/ me
J j Ж ж /dʒ/ joke
K k К к /k/ cold
L l Л л /l/ list
M m М м /m/ man
N n Н н /n/ next
O o О о /ɒ, o/ hot, go (Received Pronunciation)
P p П п /p/ pin
Q q Қ қ /q/ like a "k" but further back in the mouth
R r Р р /r/ (trilled) rat
S s С с /s/ sick
T t Т т /t̪/ toe
U u У у /ɘ, ɤ, ø/ fur
V v В в /v, w/ van
X x Х х /χ/ "ch" as in German "Bach" or Scottish "loch"
Y y Й й /j/ yes
Z z З з /z/ zebra
Oʻ oʻ Ў ў /u; ə/ put (also represents a second vowel in some dialects, similar to the mid-central vowel)
Gʻ gʻ Ғ ғ /ɣ/ like a French "r"
Sh sh Ш ш /ʃ/ shoe
Ch ch Ч ч /tʃ/ chew
ʼ ъ /ʔ/ Both "ʼ" (tutuq belgisi) and "ъ" (ayirish belgisi) are used either (1) to mark the phonetic glottal stop when put immediately before a vowel or (2) to mark a long vowel when placed immediately after a vowel
Yo yo Ё ё /jo/ yo
Yu yu Ю ю /ju/ you
Ya ya Я я /ja/ yawn
S s / Ts ts Ц ц /ts/ lets
Notes
  1. ^ Cyrillic "Е е" at the beginning of a word and after a vowel is "Ye ye" in Latin.

Text sample

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Uzbek in Latin script Uzbek in Cyrillic script Uzbek in Arabic script English
Barcha odamlar erkin, qadr-qimmat va huquqlarda teng boʻlib tugʻiladilar. Ular aql va vijdon sohibidirlar va bir-birlari ila birodarlarcha muomala qilishlari zarur. Барча одамлар эркин, қадр-қиммат ва ҳуқуқларда тенг бўлиб туғиладилар. Улар ақл ва виждон соҳибидирлар ва бир-бирлари ила биродарларча муомала қилишлари зарур.
برچه آدملر ایرکین، قدر-قیمت و حقوقلرده تنگ بولیب توغیله دیلر. اولر عقل و وجدان صاحبیدیلر و بیر-بیرلری ایله برادرلرچه معامله قیلیشلری ضرور.
 All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Uzbek Uyghur Turkish English
Uning akasi bu yil universitetni bitirdi. Uning akisi bu yil uniwërsitëtni püttürdi. Onun kardeşi bu yıl üniversiteyi bitirdi. His brother graduated from University this year.
Uning yuzi qizardi. Uning yüzi qizardi. Onun yüzü kızardı. He blushed.
Men har haftada ikki soat dars olaman. Men her heptide ikki saet ders alimen(oquymen). Ben her hafta iki saat ders alıyorum. I have two hours of lessons every week.
Bu mamlakatning aholisi baxtiyordir. Bu memliketning ahalisi bextiyardur. Bu memleketin ahalisi bahtiyardır. The people of this country are happy.
Bu ishni men muddatidan oldin bajardim. Bu ishni men mudditidin aldin(burun) bijirdim. Bu işi müddeti dolmadan başardım. I completed this work before the set time.

See also

References

  1. ^ Nationalencyklopedin "Världens 100 största språk 2007" The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007
  2. ^ Fierman, William. "Uzbekistan." Microsoft Student 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008
  3. ^ "Sources of Uzbek language [[:Template:Ref-ru]]". Retrieved 5 January 2013. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
  4. ^ Golden, Peter. B. (1990), "Chapter 13 - The Karakhanids and Early Islam", in Sinor, Denis (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521243041
  5. ^ Allworth, Edward (1994). Central Asia: 130 Years of Russian Dominance, a Historical Overview. Duke University Press. p. 72. ISBN 0-8223-1521-1. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  6. ^ Robert McHenry, ed. (1993). "Navā'ī, (Mir) 'Alī Shīr". Encyclopædia Britannica (in English). Vol. 8 (15th ed.). Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. p. 563. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  7. ^ Subtelny, M. E. (1993). "Mīr 'Alī Shīr Nawā'ī". In C. E. Bosworth, E. Van Donzel, W. P. Heinrichs, Ch. Pellat (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Islam (in English). Vol. VII. Leiden—New York: E. J. Brill. pp. 90–93. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month= and |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link) CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  8. ^ Valitova, A. A. (1974). "Alisher Navoi". In A. M. Prokhorov (ed.). Great Soviet Encyclopedia (in Russian). Vol. 17 (3rd ed.). Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia. pp. 194–195. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month= and |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  9. ^ A. M. Prokhorov, ed. (1997). "Navoi, Nizamiddin Mir Alisher". Great Encyclopedic Dictionary (in Russian) (2nd ed.). Saint Petersburg: Great Russian Encyclopedia. p. 777. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month= and |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  10. ^ "Alisher Navoi". Writers Festival. Retrieved 26 January 2012.
  11. ^ Maxim Isaev (7 July 2009). "Uzbekistan - The monuments of classical writers of oriental literature are removed in Samarqand". Ferghana News. Retrieved 26 January 2012.
  12. ^ Kamola Akilova. "Alisher Navoi and his epoch in the context of Uzbekistan art culture development [sic]". San'at Magazine. Retrieved 28 January 2012.
  13. ^ "Uzbek Culture". UzHotels. Retrieved 27 January 2012.
  14. ^ "Alisher Navoi - The Crown of Literature [[:Template:Ref-uz]]". Kitob.uz Children's Digital Library. Retrieved 8 February 2012. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
  15. ^ "Världens 100 största språk 2007" ("The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007"), Nationalencyklopedin
  16. ^ "Uzbekistan". CIA. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  17. ^ "Languages of Afghanistan". Ethnologue. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  18. ^ "Languages of Tajikistan". Ethnologue. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  19. ^ "Ethnic Makeup of the Population [[:Template:Ref-ru]]" (PDF). National Statistics Committee of the Kyrgyz Republic. Retrieved 7 December 2012. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
  20. ^ "National Census 2009 [[:Template:Ref-ru]]" (PDF). Statistics Agency of Kazakhstan. Retrieved 7 December 2010. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
  21. ^ "Languages of Turkmenistan". Ethnologue. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  22. ^ "National Census 2010 [[:Template:Ref-ru]]". Federal State Statistics Service. Retrieved 7 December 2012. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
  23. ^ Fierman, William (1991). Language Planning and National Development: The Uzbek. Walter de Gruyter. p. 75. ISBN 3-11-012454-8. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  24. ^ a b "The Governmental Portal of the Republic of Uzbekistan". Retrieved 6 December 2012.
  25. ^ "Main Page of Uzlib [[:Template:Ref-uz]]". Retrieved 7 December 2012. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
  26. ^ "Principal Orthographic Rules For The Uzbek Language", the Uzbekistan Cabinet of Minister's Resolution No. 339. Adopted on August 24, 1995. Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
  27. ^ "The New Uzbek Latin Alphabet" (PDF). Oxuscom. Retrieved 7 December 2012.

Sources

  • Jahangir Mamatov, Michael Horlick, and Karamat Kadirova. A Comprehensive Uzbek-English Dictionary (eds.) Hyattsville, Maryland, 2 vol., 2011.
  • Lars Johanson. "The History of Turkic." In Lars Johanson & Éva Ágnes Csató (eds) The Turkic Languages. London, New York: Rouiden & London, 1934, pp. 175–6.
  • Yuri Bregel. "The Sarts in the Khanate of Khiva" Journal of Asian History Vol.12., 1978, pp. 146–9.
  • András J. E. Bodrogligeti. Modern Literary Uzbek – A Manual for Intensive Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced Courses. Munich, Lincom, 2 vols., 2002.
  • William Fierman. Language planning and national development. The Uzbek experience. Berlin etc., de Gruyter, 1991.
  • Khayrulla Ismatulla. Modern literary Uzbek. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1995.
  • Karl A. Krippes. Uzbek–English dictionary. Kensington, Dunwoody, 1996.
  • Republic of Uzbekistan, Ministry of Higher and Middle Eductation. Lotin yozuviga asoslangan o‘zbek alifbosi va imlosi (Latin writing based Uzbek alphabet and orthography), Tashkent Finance Institute: Tashkent, 2004.
  • Andrée F. Sjoberg. Uzbek Structural Grammar. The Hague, 1963.
  • A. Shermatov. "A New Stage in the Development of Uzbek Dialectology" in Essays on Uzbek History, Culture and Language. Ed. Bakhtiyar A. Nazarov & Denis Sinor. Bloomington, Indiana, 1993, pp. 101–9.
  • Natalie Waterson (ed.) Uzbek–English dictionary. Oxford etc., Oxford University Press, 1980.
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