Uzbek

About Uzbek

Uzbek is the official language of Uzbekistan and is spoken by about 27 million people, including communities in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. It is a Turkic language, related to Turkish, Kazakh and Uyghur.

Uzbekistan officially uses a Latin alphabet, but the older Cyrillic alphabet is still common on signs and in print, and Uzbeks in Afghanistan write in Arabic script. In the Latin spelling, sh and ch sound as in English, oʻ is a rounded o and gʻ is a soft throaty g. Use siz for a polite "you" and sen with close friends.

FamilyTurkic, Karluk
Speakersabout 27 million (2015)
Official inUzbekistan
ScriptLatin alphabet, Cyrillic, Arabic script in Afghanistan
Codesuz (ISO 639-1), uzb (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Ethnologue (2015), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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