The Uzbek language has been written in various scripts: Latin, Cyrillic and Arabic. The language traditionally used Arabic script, but the official Uzbek government under the Soviet Union started to use Cyrillic in 1940, which is when widespread literacy campaigns were initiated by the Soviet government across the Union. In Uzbekistan, the Latin script was officially reintroduced, along with Cyrillic, in 1992, and a full transition to Latin script is awaiting implementation. In neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, people use Cyrillic. In the Xinjiang region of China, some Uzbek speakers write using Cyrillic, others with an alphabet based on the Uyghur Arabic alphabet. Uzbeks of Afghanistan also write the language using Arabic script, and the Arabic Uzbek alphabet is taught at some schools in the country.

History

Arabic script

Like all Turkic languages in Central Asia and its literary predecessor Chagatai, Uzbek was written in various forms of the Arabic script historically. Following the Russian revolution and Soviet takeover of Russian Turkestan, in January 1921, a reformed Arabic orthography designed by the Jadidists was adopted, which replaced the harakat marks used for short vowels with a fully alphabetic system that indicated every vowel and removed all letters that occurred only in Arabic loanwords and did not have a distinct phonetic value. It had six vowels and twenty-three consonants. Notably, unlike the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets that followed, it did not contain a letter to represent /f/, due to the argument that it was always assimilated to /p/ in the orthophony. Some had also proposed that there be no letter to represent /h/, due to many dialects assimilating it to /x/, but this was not implemented in the end.^[1]

The Arabic script is still used for writing Uzbek in Afghanistan and by Afghan-Uzbek diaspora elsewhere. In the early 21st century, with the publication of dictionaries^[2][3] and literature by Afghan-Uzbek scholars, as well as the adaptation of Uzbek Arabic script by domestic as well as international news outlets (such as BBC News Uzbek Afghanistan, Link), the Arabic script has undergone a process of documentation and standardization.

Latin script

In 1929, as part of comprehensive programs to "educate" (politically influence) Uzbek people, who for the first time now had their own cartographically delineated (administrative) region, Uzbek writing in the Uzbek SSR was switched to Latin script. The latinization of Uzbek was carried out in the context of latinization of all languages in the Soviet Union.^[4] The new Latin script also brought about the letter f to represent /f/ and distinction of back and front vowels, adding a number of new characters for them.

In 1934, the script underwent another reform, which reverted the addition of back-front vowel distinctions.^[1] The letters Ө ө, Y y, Ь ь were removed from the alphabet.

Cyrillic script

In 1940, Uzbek was switched to the Cyrillic script under Joseph Stalin:

The Uzbek Cyrillic alphabet contains all the letters of the Russian alphabet, apart from Щ and Ы, plus four extra ones, namely Ў, Қ, Ғ and Ҳ. These four letters are considered as separate letters and not letter variants. They come in alphabetical order at the end, after the letter Я.

The letters Ц and Ь are not used in Uzbek native words, but are included in the alphabet for writing loanwords, e. g. кальций (calcium). However, Щ and Ы are not included, so they are replaced by ШЧ and И in loanwords and names from Russian, e. g. the Russian surnames Щедрин (Shchedrin) and Быков (Bykov) are rendered Шчедрин and Биков in Uzbek Cyrillic.

Modern Latin alphabet

Until 1992, Uzbek in the USSR continued to be written using a Cyrillic alphabet almost exclusively, 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. In 1993, President of Uzbekistan at the time Islam Karimov proposed a new Uzbek alphabet with ⟨c⟩ /ts/, ⟨ç⟩, ⟨ğ⟩, ⟨ɉ⟩, ⟨ñ⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨ş⟩, until it was replaced with the current 1995 alphabet. The letter J with stroke is said to have been the equivalent of Cyrillic letter Zhje.^[5]

Education in many areas of Uzbekistan is in the Latin script, and in 2001 the Latin script began to be used on coins. Since 2004, some official websites have switched over to using the Latin script when writing in Uzbek.^[6] Most street signs are also in the new Latin script. The main national TV channel of Uzbekistan, Oʻzbekiston Telekanali (owned by MTRK), has also switched to the Latin script when writing in Uzbek, although news programs are still broadcast in Cyrillic script (compare with another TV channel owned by the same company, Yoshlar, broadcasts news programs in Latin script). Additionally, in Afghanistan Uzbek continues to be written in the Arabic script.

In 2018, the Uzbek government launched another reform effort for the Uzbek Latin alphabet. The new proposal called for replacing some digraphs with diacritical signs.^[7] In March 2021, the proposed changes were put up for public discussion and debate. They called for replacing Ch ch, Sh sh, Gʻ gʻ, Oʻ oʻ with Ç ç, Ş ş, Ḡ ḡ, Ō ō (and, in loans, Ts ts with C c).^[8][9] This would largely reverse the 1995 reform and bring the orthography closer to those of Turkish, Turkmen, Karakalpak, Kazakh (2018 version) and Azerbaijani.^[10] This was met with mixed reactions from the citizens. The proposal was put up again for discussion in May of the same year, this time with a deadline of 1 November 2021.^[11]

In February 2021, the Uzbek government announced that Uzbekistan plans to fully transition the Uzbek language from the Cyrillic script to a Latin-based alphabet by 1 January 2023.^[12][13] Similar deadlines had been extended several times.^[14]

Generally the younger generation prefers to use the Latin alphabet, while the older generation, who grew up in the Soviet era, prefers the Cyrillic alphabet. The Latin alphabet is mainly used in business and tourism, and the Cyrillic alphabet is mainly used in official government documents.^[15]

According to a report in 2023, Uzbek publishing houses still mostly used the Cyrillic alphabet.^[16]

In September 2023, linguists proposed another project for reform of the Uzbek alphabet. Thus, in the new alphabet it is proposed to modify four letters: Ў/ў, Ғ/ғ, Ч/ч, & Ш/ш respectively to Õ/õ, Ğ/ğ, C/c, Ş/ş. This is the third attempt to reform the Uzbek alphabet since 2018.^[17]

Alphabetical order

The current (1995) Uzbek Latin alphabet has 29 letters:

The symbol ⟨‘⟩ does not constitute a separate letter.

Correspondence chart

Below is a table of Uzbek Cyrillic and Latin alphabets with represented sounds.^[18][19]

The Cyrillic letters Ё ё, Ю ю, Я я correspond to the sound combinations yo, yu, ya.

The Cyrillic letters Ц ц and ь (capital Ь occurs only in all-capitals writing) are used only in loanwords. In the modern Uzbek Latin alphabet ц becomes ts after vowels, s otherwise; ь is omitted (except ье, ьи, ьо, that become ye, yi, yo).

The letters c and w, missing from the Uzbek alphabet, are named tse and dubl-ve respectively. In mathematics, x, y, z are named iks, igrek, zet.

Notes

Distinct characters

When the Uzbek language is written using the Latin script, the letters Oʻ (Cyrillic Ў) and Gʻ (Cyrillic Ғ) are properly rendered^{[citation needed]} using the character U+02BB ʻ MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA,^[21] which is also known as the ʻokina. However, since this character is absent from most keyboard layouts (except for the Hawaiian keyboard in Windows 8, or above, computers) and many fonts, most Uzbek websites – including some operated by the Uzbek government^[6] – use either U+2018 ‘ LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK or U+0027 ' APOSTROPHE to represent these letters.

The character U+02BC ʼ MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE (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).^[22] Since this character is also absent from most keyboard layouts, many Uzbek websites use U+2019 ’ RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK or U+0027 ' APOSTROPHE instead.

Currently most typists do not bother with the differentiation between the modifier letter turned comma and modifier letter apostrophe as their keyboard layouts likely accommodate only the straight apostrophe.

Sample of the scripts

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: