A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK

Phraseological units form an important part of the lexical system of a language because they convey conventional meanings that are often shaped by cultural experience and cannot always be inferred from individual words. This article compares selected phraseological units in English and Uzbek, focusing on semantic correspondence, figurative imagery, cultural specificity, and translation. A qualitative contrastive approach is used to examine illustrative examples from both languages. The comparison shows that expressions may share a communicative meaning while differing in lexical structure and imagery. It also demonstrates why literal translation can produce unnatural or misleading results. Depending on the context, translators may use an established equivalent, a functionally similar expression, or a concise paraphrase. The article discusses the relevance of phraseological competence to translation practice and foreign-language teaching. Since the examples are illustrative rather than corpus-derived, the analysis is exploratory and points to the need for further research using larger, systematically collected data.