Where Northern Uzbek is spoken
Northern Uzbek is spoken in 7 countries: Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, China and 3 more. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.
| Country | Share of population | Estimated speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Uzbekistan | 100% | 36,520,600 |
| Afghanistan | 4.7% | 1,885,715 |
| Turkmenistan | 9% | 516,974 |
| China | Not given | Not given |
| Kazakhstan | Not given | Not given |
| Kyrgyzstan | Not given | Not given |
| Tajikistan | Not given | Not given |
Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.
On the map, Northern Uzbek is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Northern Uzbek.
How many people speak Northern Uzbek?
Wikidata gives about 25.1 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.
Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.
Where Northern Uzbek sits in the language family tree
Glottolog classifies Northern Uzbek as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.
- Turkic
- Common Turkic
- Kipchak-Turkestan
- Turkestan
- Modern Turkestan
- Uzbek
- Northern Uzbek
Related languages
Other languages in the Uzbek group:
- Southern Uzbek (4.2 million speakers)
More about Northern Uzbek
- Read about Northern Uzbek on Wikipedia
- Turkic languages map
- Languages spoken in Uzbekistan
- All languages, A to Z
Codes: ISO 639-3 uzn, Glottolog nort2690. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.
Questions about Northern Uzbek
Where is Northern Uzbek spoken?
Northern Uzbek is spoken in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, China and 3 more. Unicode CLDR puts it at 100% of the population of Uzbekistan, which is about 36,520,600 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.
How many people speak Northern Uzbek?
Wikidata gives about 25.1 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.
Which language family is Northern Uzbek in?
Glottolog places Northern Uzbek in the Turkic family, in the branch Common Turkic, Kipchak-Turkestan, Turkestan, Modern Turkestan and Uzbek.