Uzbek Language

Uzbek is a Turkic language that is the official language of Uzbekistan. The language of Uzbeks, it is spoken by some 30 million native speakers in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia making it the second-most widely spoken Turkic language after Turkish.

Uzbek belongs to the Eastern Turkic or Karluk, branch of the Turkic language family. External influences include Arabic, Persian and Russian. One of the most noticeable distinctions of Uzbek from other Turkic languages is the rounding of the vowel /ɑ/ to /ɒ/, a feature that was influenced by Persian. Standard Uzbek is also notable for its complete loss of vowel harmony, a characteristic Turkic feature.

In the language itself, Uzbek is oʻzbek tili or oʻzbekcha. In Cyrillic, it is ўзбек тили or ўзбекча. In Arabic script, اوزبیک تیلی‎ and اوزبیکچه‎.

Turkic speakers stared settling the Amu Darya, Syr Darya and Zarafshan river basins from 600–700 CE, gradually ousting or assimilating the speakers of Eastern Iranian languages who previously inhabited Sogdia, Bactria and Khwarezm. 

The first Turkic dynasty in the region was that of the Kara-Khanid Khanate in the 9th–12th centuries, who were a confederation of Karluks, Chigils, Yaghma and other tribes. Their language became a literary language of the region after the Mongol conquests, when the Chagatai Khanate was established and the region became Turkified in language and culture. The region was conquered by the Uzbeks under Muhammad Shaybani in 1500 who founded the Khanate of Bukhara. The Uzbeks were tribes from the Kipchak, a northwesterly branch of Turkic peoples. Like most Kipchaks they were nomads who herded livestock across the steppe and spoke Kipchak. The existing more numerous settled Turkic populations (sarts) however spoke a persianized Turkic dialect known as Karluk, 

The term Uzbek as applied to language has as such meant different things at different times. Prior to 1921 "Uzbek" and "Sart" were considered to be different dialects:

• "Uzbek" was a vowel-harmonised Kipchak variety spoken by descendants of those who arrived in Transoxiana with Muhammad Shaybani in the 16th century, who lived mainly around Bukhara and Samarkand, although the Turkic spoken in Tashkent was also vowel-harmonised. It can be called old Uzbek and it's considered to be related to that specific group of people.
• "Sart" was from the Karluk branch spoken by the older settled Turkic populations of the region in the Fergana Valley and the Qashqadaryo Region, and in some parts of what is now the Samarqand Region; it contained a heavier admixture of Persian and Arabic, and did not have vowel harmony. It became the standard Uzbek language and the official dialect of Uzbekistan. 
• In the Khanate of Khiva, sarts spoke a highly Oghuz Turkified form of Karluk Turkic. 

After 1921 the Soviet Union abolished the term Sart as derogatory, and decreed that henceforth the entire settled Turkic population of Turkestan would be known as Uzbeks. The standard written language that was chosen for the new republic in 1924 was the "Sart" language of the Samarkand region.  All three dialects continue to exist within modern spoken Uzbek.

Uzbek has been written in a variety of scripts throughout history:

• Pre-1928: the Arabic-based Yaña imlâ alphabet 
• 1880s: Russian started use Cyrillic for Uzbek.
• 1928–1940: the Latin-based Yañalif used officially.
• 1940–1992: the Cyrillic script used officially.
• Since 1992: a Yañalif-based Latin script is official in Uzbekistan.

Despite the official status of the Latin script in Uzbekistan, the use of Cyrillic is still widespread, especially in advertisements and signs. In newspapers, scripts may be mixed, with headlines in Latin and articles in Cyrillic.The Arabic script is no longer used in Uzbekistan except symbolically in limited texts or for the academic studies of Chagatai (Old Uzbek).

In the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, where there is an Uzbek minority, Arabic is still used.

In Afghanistan, the traditional Arabic orthography is still used.

Karakalpak is spoken by Karakalpak. It is divided into two dialects, Northeastern Karakalpak and Southeastern Karakalpak. It developed alongside neighboring Kazakh and Uzbek language being markedly influenced by both. Typologically, Karakalpak belongs to the Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages, thus being closely related to and partially mutually intelligible to Kazakh and to speakers of old Uzbek.

Main Source:Wikipedia

BBC Recipe for Uzbek Plov

“Plov”, also known as “Osh” is the main dish of all the Central Asian countries. It is rich, filling and very tasty if prepared right. The main ingredients are carrots, onions, rice, oil and meat. It is cooked traditionally in a Kazan but you may use a cast iron Qazon Oven (or if not available a cast iron dutch oven or similar). 

There are many different recipes however a classic Plov is made as follows.

Recipe for Uzbek Plov (osh) for 10 people.- Ingredients:

• 1 kg moderately fat lamb or beef
• 1 kg medium grain rice (paella type)
• 200-250 ml melted lamb fat or vegetable oil
• 1 kg carrot (4 large carrots preferably yellow)
• 3-4 medium size onions
• 2-3 whole heads of garlic (optional)
• 1-2 long hot chillies (optional)
• 1-1.5 tbsp cumin and ground coriander
• salt to taste 
• black pepper to taste 

1. Wash the rice under the tap until clear, cover with cold water and let it soaks for a while. Cut the meat with bones into match-box pieces. Cut the carrots into 0.5x0.5 cm thick sticks. Slice onions into thin rings or half-rings. Clean heads of garlic remove roots.

2. Heat oil in a min 5 litre cast iron Kazan (or similiar ie. Dutch Oven) on a very high flame, deep-fry meat until golden-brown, in 3-4 batches. Fry the onions until golden, add meat to the Kazan, stir well to prevent onion from burning. Add carrot, stir from time to time, until it starts to wilt and browns a little (15-20 min). Add 2/3 of the spices - rub it in your palms a little to release flavor, stir gentliy to keep carrot from broking..

3. Lower gas to moderate, pour hot water just to cover all the goods, add salt and let it simmer for 40 min to 1.5 hours until almost all water evaporate and meat became tender and juicy. Do not stir.

4. Turn gas to max. Drain rice well, place it on top the meat and vegs in one layer, stick the garlic and whole chillies in it, and carefully pour boiling water over it (place a spoon or ladle on top of the rice to keep the rice layer from washing away). Cover the rice with about 2 cm of water, let it boil. Add salt to make the water a bit over-salted. When water starts to go down, reduce the gas a bit, keeping it boiling rapidly. Check when it has evaporated and absorbed into rice completely - rice should remain rather al dente. Make a holes in the rice to the bottom of a vessel to allow you to check the water level.

5. Reduce gas to absolute min, cover tightly with the lid and let it steam 20 minutes. Turn of the heat, remove the garlic and chillies on the separate plate. Carefully mix rice with meat and carrots, if the rice tastes a bit blind add some salt, mix and let it stand for 5 minutes. Pile the plov on a big warmed plate and serve with garlic, chilies and plain thinly sliced tomato-sweet onions-chili-salt salad. Carefully mix rice with meat and carrots, if the rice tastes a bit blind add some salt, mix and let it stand for 5 minutes.

Sources: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/439632/uzbek-plov (Ed)

Source of Photographs and recommended additional Uzbek Plov Recipe (Arbuz.com)

http://arbuz.com/recipes/uzbek-palov-osh-recipe

Other post see Karakalpak Pilov:

http://karakalpak-karakalpakstan.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/plov-pilaf-national-dish.html

Linguistic map of the Altaic, Turkic and Uralic languages

The Altai - The ancestral homeland of the Turkic Peoples

The Turkic peoples are thought to have originated in the areas in and around the Altai Mountains of Siberia. Gradually they spread out and occupied large tracks of Siberia and Central Asia. In time groups emerged from within the Turkic horde, amongst whom are the Karluk (Uygur and Uzbek), Kipchak (Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Karakalpak and Tatar) and Oghuz (Turkmen, Azeri and Turks).  It is also regarded as the homeland of other nationalities Mongolians, Koreans and even Hungarians. The Ural-Altaic languages to whom all the groups (Turks, Mongols, Koreans and Hungarians) speak are named after the region.

Altai Mountains

The Altai Mountains are a mountain range in East-Central Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan come together, and where the rivers Irtysh and Ob have their sources. They stretch for 1,200 miles across southwestern Mongolia from Siberia plain to the Gobi Desert. The mountains are of moderate height. There are several peaks over 4,500 meters. Those that are higher than 3,000 meters are snowcapped throughout the year. The region is rich in lakes and streams. The Ob, Irtysh and Yenisei all have their sources in the Altai. The Altai people live mainly in the broad plateaus, steppes and valleys of the ranges, where water is plentiful. The Altai complex of mountain ranges embraces the water divide mountains for all of Asia: the South Altai, the Inner Altai and the east Altai. The Mongolian Altai is connected to this mountain complex, rising to the southeast of the Siberian Altai region.

A varied region it has many landscapes forests, steppes, wild rivers, lakes, deserts, snow capped mountains and abundant wildlife.  The climate is continental with extremes in temperatures occurring between the summer and the winter. The mountains help to mitigate the extremes to some extent by causing a winter temperature inversion that produces an island of winter temperatures that are warmer than those in the Siberian taiga to the north and the Central Asian and Mongolian steppes to south and east. Even so temperatures drop as low as -48°C in the winter. The mountains are a gathering point for precipitation in a region that otherwise is dry. The most rain falls in July and August, with another smaller period of rain in late autumn. The western Altai receives around 50 centimeters of precipitation a year. The eastern Altai receives less: around 40 centimeters a year.

 Snow leopard

Natural vegetation in the region includes steppe grasses, shrubs and bushes and light forests of birch, fir, aspen, cherry, spruce, and pines, with many clearings in the forest. These forest merge with a modified taiga. Among the animals are hare, mountain sheep, several species of deer, bobac, woodchucks, lynx, polecats, snow leopards, wolves, bears, argali sheep, siberian ibex, mountain goats and deer. Bird species include pheasants, ptarmigan, goose, partridge, Altai snowcocks, owls, snipes and jays. In the streams and rivers are trout, grayling and the herring-like sig.

Siberian ibex