OMM Newsroom
Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev approved a law on Oct. 21 introducing changes to the Uzbek Latin alphabet, AnewZ reports. The revised alphabet will more closely resemble those used elsewhere in the Turkic world, including Azerbaijan and Türkiye.
Under the changes, the letters and combinations “o,” “g,” “sh” and “ch” will be replaced by “ö,” “ğ,” “ş” and “ç,” respectively. The “ng” combination will be removed. The new alphabet will consist of 28 letters and an apostrophe, compared with 26 letters and three letter combinations in the current alphabet.
Saida Mirziyoyeva, head of the Presidential Administration, said the aim was to address shortcomings in the Uzbek writing system and make the Uzbek language easier to use in digital environments.
Existing documents and currency will remain valid. Textbooks in the country will be updated in stages.
Schoolchildren will begin switching to the new alphabet in 2027, starting with first-graders. The full update of textbooks is expected to be completed by 2031.
Uzbekistan used the Latin alphabet from 1929 to 1940, then switched to Cyrillic. After declaring independence from the Soviet Union, the country returned to the Latin script. The initial version of the alphabet had 33 letters. In 1995, some letters were replaced by the combinations “sh,” “ch,” “o,” “g” and “ng,” while the letter “c” was removed.
The transition from Cyrillic to Latin was intended to be completed by 2000, but both writing systems are still used in Uzbekistan.
