Uzbek is spoken in Uzbekistan, naturally—even if you don’t know much about world languages, that’s easy to guess. But what about Southern Uzbek? You might be surprised to learn that Southern Uzbek is based not in Uzbekistan, like its northern counterpart, but rather in Afghanistan, where it’s spoken alongside a number of other languages. Indeed, in this part of the world, linguistic diversity is high, and the people of Afghanistan are represented by numerous tongues. Dari is the country’s official language and lingua franca, but Southern Uzbek is one of the biggest local languages.
With more than 6 million speakers, Southern Uzbek accounts for a whopping 10% of the Afghani population, with additional speakers found in Pakistan, China, and even as far away as Saudi Arabia. While the majority of Southern Uzbek speakers speak the language as their native tongue, as many as half a million people have also learned it as a foreign language—mostly minority language speakers in Afghanistan. The language is in good standing, with a healthy base of speakers, but Afghanistan’s biggest languages, Dari and Pashto, nonetheless pose a threat to the language—and that’s why we here at TranslationServices.com are so proud to offer translation services for Southern Uzbek.
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Southern Uzbek: the Afghani variety of Uzbek
Though Southern Uzbek is spoken mostly by ethnically Uzbek people, they’re citizens of Afghanistan, hailing from the Central Asian nation’s northern region. Specifically, most of Afghanistan’s Southern Uzbek-speaking population can be found in the provinces of Faryab, Sar-e Pol, Jowzjan, Balkh, Kunduz, Baghlan, and Takhar, though these areas are also interspersed with speakers of Pashto, Tajik, and Turkmen.
Unlike most other languages in Afghanistan, which come from the Indo–European language family, Southern Uzbek is a Turkic language with relations to Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, and Turkish. In general, it’s mutually intelligible with the Uzbek spoken in Uzbekistan, but only in speech—whereas Northern Uzbek is written in the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, Southern Uzbek speakers rely on the Perso–Arabic script. Also, the two languages exhibit various grammatical differences, and Southern Uzbek features many loanwords from Dari.
In terms of grammar, Southern Uzbek shares most of the hallmark features of Turkic languages: no articles, no gender, and agglutinativity, which means that suffixes are “glued” to root words to express grammatical nuance. Uzbek’s biggest difference from its fellow Turkic languages is its general lack of vowel harmony, whereby the vowels of suffixes change based on the vowels in the root word. Southern Uzbek speakers generally need not worry about this grammatical complication.
Bringing you the best in Southern Uzbek translation services
Not many translation services cater specifically to Southern Uzbek—they just tailor their services to the Uzbek spoken in Uzbekistan. But here at TranslationServices.com, we just don’t believe in ignoring a vibrant language spoken by 6 million people. That’s why we’ve proudly scouted out the most talented Southern Uzbek translators from across northern Afghanistan (as well as elsewhere in the country and even abroad). Our team of passionate Southern Uzbek translators can seamlessly translate your documents both to and from Southern Uzbek, so we’re confident we can help you with your project.
Our well-rounded team features translators with diverse experience and knowledge, allowing us to accommodate a wide variety of client needs. For example, we can help you translate business documents into Southern Uzbek to connect with clients in northern Afghanistan, or we can translate educational or academic texts from Southern Uzbek, helping local scholars spread their knowledge far and wide. We’re also here to translate traditional Southern Uzbek stories into English for the rest of the world to cherish, as well as English-language media like books, poems, or even apps and games into Southern Uzbek, giving local speakers more avenues to appreciate their unique language.
If you need Southern Uzbek translation services, what are you waiting for? Reach out to our passionate team today!