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Uzbek Language
The Uzbek language is an Altaic language and is part of the South-eastern (Central Asian) or Karluk group of Turkic languages. Modern Uzbek bears the closest resemblance to Uyghur, slightly less so to Kazakh, Turkmen, and more distantly, to Turkish and Mongol. Modern Uzbek is written in wide variety of scripts including Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic. After the independence of Uzbekistan from the former Soviet Union, the government decided to replace the Cyrillic script with a Latin alphabet.
Modern Uzbek has also absorbed a considerable vocabulary and - to a much lesser degree - certain grammatical elements from non-Turkic languages, most of all from Persian as well as Arabic and Russian among others.
LANGUAGE DIALECTS
1. The Turkic people who live on the territory of modern Uzbekistan have several dialects. For example, the people of Fergana, Tashkent, Bukhara and Samarkand use the central-Uzbek dialect while the population of Khiva, Urgench, Khanka and other towns and rural localities of Khorezm speak the Southern-Khorezm dialect. And there are some tribes who have their own dialects.
In Middle Ages the Arabic language and alphabet were introduced in Central Asia. It played the same important role in the East as Latin did in Europe. The Central Asian Turkic languages were gradually supplanted by Arabic. This lasted during centuries. The Arabic language was used in religion, official writing and the Persian language was functioning as the language of poetry, though common people practiced Turkic dialects in their everyday life.
SUPERIORITY OF LANGUAGES
2. When Sultan-Husayn was reformulating the legacy of Timur, there was a resurgence of Turkic culture at his court. The principal exponent of this revival was Mir Ali-Sher, whose treatise on Turkish and Persian is a carefully crafted exercise in cultural reorientation. He completed it in 1499, a little more than a year before his death.
Mir Ali-Sher's "Muhakamad al-Iughatayan" (Judgement of two languages) is divided into two parts. In the first part he tried to prove that Turkish is a superior literary language to Persian, while in the second part be analyzed his own works (in glowing terms) to show that his championing of Turkish is based on a thorough knowledge of both languages.
Mir Ali-Sher's arguments are not only intended to demonstrate the merits of Turkish over Persian but by extension to show the cultural and ethnic superiority of the Turks, who formed the military elite of the dynasty. For instance, he wrote: "It is well known that Turkish is a more intelligent, more understandable, and more creative language than Persian, while Persian is more refined and profound than Turkish for the purpose of thought and science. That-this is so is apparent from the rectitude, honesty k and generosity of the Turks and the arts, sciences and philosophy of the Persians".
TURKISH VOCABULARY, PERSIAN FORM?
3. Mir Ali-Sher was the first who worked out the foundations of Turkish vocabulary. He said: "It is richer than its Persian counterpart and consequently a more - interesting and complex language". Ironically all of the arguments are phrased within the conventional idioms of Persian literature. Both the grammar and presentation of "The Muhakamad-al-lughatayan", as well as his other works written in Turkish, are entirely dependent on Persian forms, their structure as well as their details: they are Turkish in vocabulary only. For instance, his quintet of poems Hayrat al-abrar (Farhad and Shirin), Sab'A-I Sayyare (Seven planets), Sadd-i Iscandar (Story of Iskandar), Layli and Majnun.
CHANGES IN THE ALPHABET
4. Quite a few attempts were made before and after the Revolution of 1917 to reform the Arabic alphabet in order to meet the requirements of the Uzbek language. Finally, in December 1, 1929 the Arabic alphabet was replaced by a new one, based on Latin graphic.
In 1940, the Cyrillic script was introduced into the Uzbek language. Certainly as the result of all these reforms the language corpus changed greatly. Script and orthography changes demand great uniformity which is of special importance in written communication.
All changes in the Uzbek language were closely connected with the changes in the country: political, economic, social and cultural. Languages in Central Asia and other parts of the former Soviet Union were experiencing these changes. Today Uzbekistan is coming back to the Latin alphabet.
SHARED INTERESTS
5. The very first change (i.e. the reform of the Arabic) is unique in the degree to which it was planned by members of the indigenous Central Asian intelligentsia with little help of interference from Russian linguists and government officials in Moscow. For this reason it cannot be analyzed as a "Soviet" (i.e. Communist Party directed) language change. Rather it must be viewed as language planning conducted by a small group of members of the Central Asian intelligentsia who were at the time collaborating with Moscow in their shared interests to implement change in Central Asia. (W. Fierman)
THE UZBEK DIALECTS
6. Many dialects, particularly the urban dialects, have lost much of their palatal harmony. According to some turcologists, this is because the dialects of some cities in Uzbekistan, such as Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara, have become "iranized" (influenced by Persian and Tajik).
In addition to harmony, Uzbek dialects are also distinguished as "Yoqchi" or "Joqchi". This concerns the pronunciation of such words as yigit. In some dialects in certain position /y/ becomes /j/; thus yigit may be pronounced /jigit/. The /j/ is pronounced in Kazakh, as well as in Kipchak dialects of Uzbek.
There are, of course, other features which distinguish Uzbek dialects one from another. Those presented above, however, provide the necessary background to understand the debates about the Uzbek alphabet and orthography in the 1920s and 1930s.
INTERNATIONAL VOCABULARY
7. Some scientists share the opinion that international words are those words which are borrowed from Latin, German, French and other languages and exist in several languages. The others say that international words are limited to one language only (Latin or Greek). Still words of identical origin that occur in several languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from one ultimate source are called international words" (l.V. Arnold).
Many new words were introduced into the Uzbek vocabulary because new concepts and ideas were introduced into the life of the Uzbeks. Many original Uzbek words developed new meanings, which never existed in their semantic structures. For example in the old Jays the Uzbek word "ishchi" was used in the meaning of "unskilled workman", the worker who was busy with earthwork. The same refers to the word "mehnat". This word denoted very hard, back breaking toil and had the synonym of such words as "gham" (sorrow) and "qayghu" (grief). Today these two words have completely changed their meanings. Vocabulary development is closely bound to the political and economical situation in the country.
IDIOMATIC UZBEK
8. Like in many languages in the Uzbek language there is the most picturesque, colourful and expressive part of the vocabulary which is called idiomatic. This part of the vocabulary reflects the vivid and amusing aspects from the life of the Uzbek people, its customs and the traditions, prejudices from the past days, peculiarities of the nations mentality and wisdom. So the idiomatic language expresses a great variety of strange and grotesque ideas which seem quite amusing to the representatives of another nations especially to Europeans.
Certainly many of them are characterized by a double sense: the transferred meaning and the current meaning of the idiomatic expression are coined. Sometimes the actual meaning of the idiomatic expression has nothing to do with the image created in the idiom: to run away with an empty cart (aravani quruq olib qochmoq) , describes somebody's actions which do not bring any result, the boasting about something without evident result; suppose if anybody wants to make harm to somebody he begins to eat this person's head (birovni boshini emoq), the state of happiness and joy is associated with your head in the sky (boshi osmonga etdi).
DON'T DROP WOOD FROM THE ROOF
9. Idioms constitute the colloquial part of the vocabulary. That's why mostly they are used in the spoken language. This certainly creates much difficulty to know in which situation it is better to use the idiomatic expression. If you are angry with somebody or want to reprimand this person you express your feeling in Uzbek by breaking nuts on his head.
To say unintentionally a quite indiscreet or tactless thing that shocks and offends people the English usually "drop a brick" while the Uzbeks drop wood from the roof. The English "pull the wool over somebody's eyes (deceive or trick one) while the Uzbeks paint somebody's eyes.
PROVERBES AND SAYINGS
10. Another peculiar feature of communication in Uzbek is the abundant use of proverbs and sayings. They reflect the character of the nation, its collective experience, wisdom and psychology.
Traditionally in all languages proverbs have a didactic character, they moralize, give advice, warning and criticism.
In English and Uzbek there are various images and linguistic units that express one and the same notion: East or West, home is best Oz uying olan toshaging. A cracked bowl can never sound well singan kosa orniga kelmas. A rolling stone gathers no moss qimirlagan qir oshar.
Source: Uzbekistan and Uzbeks by L.T. Bobokhonova, C.D.Bekturganova
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