Learn Uzbek

O'zbek

Turkic → Karluk

35 million speakers

Latin script

Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan

Uzbek is the official language of Uzbekistan and the most widely spoken Karluk Turkic language. It is descended from Chagatai — the literary Turkic of the Timurid courts in Samarkand and Bukhara — and the great poet Alisher Navoi (1441–1501) is its founding classical voice. Uniquely among Turkic languages, Uzbek has lost most of its vowel harmony through millennia of contact with Persian and Tajik, giving it a distinct melody compared to Turkish or Kazakh.

Language Facts

FamilyTurkic → Karluk

Native speakers35 million

Writing systemLatin alphabet (since 1993)

CountriesUzbekistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan

Learning Tips

→Uzbek lacks vowel harmony — suffixes don't change their vowels based on the root, unlike most Turkic languages
→Persian loanwords dominate formal, literary, and religious vocabulary; knowing Farsi gives a huge head start
→Both Latin (official since 1993) and Cyrillic are in active daily use — expect to encounter both
→Very close to Uyghur; the two languages are partially mutually intelligible, especially in written form