Uzbek, the second most widely spoken Turkic language (*), is the official language of Uzbekistan. It is also spoken in eastern Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, northwest China and northern Afghanistan.

The main influences on Uzbek include the Persian language, while Arabic and Russian words also make up a large part of the Uzbek vocabulary.

Until 1927, the language was written in Perso-Arabic. However, it then adopted its own alphabet, known as “Uzbek Cyrillic”, which contains most of the letters of the Russian alphabet. Today, Uzbek also uses a Latin alphabet. 

The originality of Uzbek lies in the fact that its main dialects do not feature “vowel harmony” (**), a distinctive feature of most other Turkic languages.

Notes:

(*) Turkish language: group of languages spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia, from Eastern and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia and West Asia.

(**) Vowel harmony: (linguistic) constraint that imposes the use of vowels of the same type within a word, most often anterior vowels (articulated at the front of the mouth) and posterior vowels (articulated at the back).