A brilliant song by a crooner with a rich velvety voiceLaliddin in Uzbek inspired us to see just how much Uzbek is similar to Turkish for another video in our ‘Turkic Lyrics series.

Uzbek is the main language of Uzbekistan and a regional language in Afghanistan. With estimates ranging from 32 to 60 million speakers worldwide, it is the second largest Turkic language after Turkish. Both belong to the common Turkic language group, but represent two different subgroups: Karluk, and Oghuz.

The song is titled Sog’intirma which sounds very much Turkic, but matching it with Turkish vocabulary was not an easy task: it required some work with an Uzbek consultant. Here are some key observations:

Immediately we see Uzbek using the full form of seningsiz – sensiz ‘without you’. It even retained the nasal ng there.

While the sound [g] is quite stable the [w] sound can appear or be missing in either of the languages. The lenition of these sounds creates interesting pairs: urmaydi – vurmaz, sovuq – soğuk, dovulda – doluda.

The key to getting a hang of Uzbek is the vowel corespondence. Turkish [a]’s often sound like [o]’s in Uzbek: yonimda – yanımda, go’yo – güya, sarop – serap, holi – hal, harop – harap, yonmoqda – yanmakta.

Arabic and Persian loans may at times be unrecognizable, but these languages inherited a lot from divan literature: words, phrases and references. Uzbek is keen on Persian words, while in Turkish they aren’t quite common: majnun – mecnun, intizor – intizar, harorat – hararet, Laylim – Leylim.

Uzbek ditched the vowel harmony the Turkic languages are famous for and the vowels tend to be central both by height and the place of the tongue: etma – etme, so’nar – söner, ko’zlaringdagi – gözlerindeki…

Please leave a comment if you too have interesting observation or fascinated by the song just like us.

UPDATED:
After the publication of video some insights came from viewers:

• Visoling – Visalin
• zor-zor – zar zor
• dovul may not be related to dolu, as there is do’l in the exact same meaning with the Turkish dolu
• also in the verse the singer may be singing ‘sevgingsiz’ not ‘seningsiz’.

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