Uzbek

Uzbek (ISO 639-1: uz) is a Turkic language spoken mainly in Uzbekistan, where the language is accorded the ‘state language’ status (Figure 1). Outside Uzbekistan, ethnic Uzbek populations are scattered across and beyond Central Asia in such countries as Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, China, and Saudi Arabia (Balcı, 2004; Yakup, 2020:411). Many Uzbeks in the diaspora speak one or more languages in addition to Uzbek for interethnic communication (Naby, 1984:11). Some ethnic Uzbek communities are reportedly being linguistically assimilated to ethnic groups that are dominant in their countries or regions (Shalinsky, 1979:12–13; Fevzi, 2013:256; Yıldırım, 2019:64). It is therefore unclear exactly what proportion of ethnic Uzbeks retain Uzbek as their first language today. In the case of ethnic Uzbeks in Xinjiang in China, gauging the extent of linguistic assimilation can be difficult because of the limited range of contrasting features that exist between their variety of Uzbek and Uyghur, the interethnic language of Xinjiang, with which it is generally mutually intelligible (Cheng & Abudureheman, 1987:1–2). The varieties of Uzbek spoken in Afghanistan and China have developed autonomously from those spoken within the borders of the former Soviet Union, and hence differ from the present-day standard Uzbek of Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic, most notably in lexica but also in phonology, morphology, and syntax (Jarring, 1938; Abdullaev, 1979: Reichl, 1983; Cheng & Abudureheman, 1987; Hayitov et al., 1992:36; Gültekin, 2010).