Things to know about Uzbek
Uzbek is a member of the Turkic language family. It is primarily spoken in Uzbekistan, although there are also sizable communities of Uzbek speakers in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan.
Using Uzbek Lessons with the Cyrillic Alphabet
Uzbek has used several different alphabets over the course of its history. Prior to 1924, it was written in an Arabic script. Afterwards, until 1940, it was written in a version of the Latin alphabet. From that point, it switched to a version of the Cyrillic alphabet, similar but not identical to that of Russian. That Cyrillic alphabet is still widely used, despite movements to return to the Latin alphabet. Uzbek text is written from left to right, the same as English.
To type Uzbek Cyrillic characters:
- Position your cursor somewhere where you can type, and verify that the virtual keyboard layout is set to Uzbek.
- Locate the character you want on the virtual keyboard, then click on it or press the corresponding key on your physical keyboard. Capital letters and certain punctuation marks, such as the question mark, are available by holding down the Shift key. One additional character is available by clicking
beside the virtual keyboard.
- If you need to type a diacritic mark over an Uzbek character, type the character, then select the version with the diacritic from the list of possibilities which appears.
See Typing special scripts for details.
Using Uzbek Lessons with the Latin alphabet
Some Uzbek lessons in this application may use the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic Uzbek characters. You can use these lessons to help you master vocabulary and pronunciation before tackling a new writing system, and to familiarize yourself with the Latin alphabet spellings used by some Uzbek speakers. Uzbek written with the Latin alphabet does not require any special characters.