Uzbek · Oʻzbekcha

About Uzbek

Language family

Turkic, Karluk branch

Where it's spoken

Uzbekistan, with communities in Afghanistan and Tajikistan

Speakers

roughly 35–45 million speakers, the most spoken Karluk Turkic language

Uzbek belongs to the Karluk branch of Turkic languages, closest to Uyghur, and historically absorbed heavy Persian vocabulary and literary influence from centuries of shared urban culture in Silk Road cities like Samarkand and Bukhara. It has officially used a Latin-based script since the 1990s as part of post-Soviet de-Russification, though Cyrillic remains common in daily practice. Modern Uzbek descends in part from Chagatai, the classical literary Turkic language of Central Asia used for centuries across a much wider region than Uzbekistan's current borders.