Interview with Begam Kholmanovna Karaeva, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences (DSc), Associate Professor of the Department of Languages and Cultures of the CIS and Neighboring Countries IMO and SPN and Director of the Center for Uzbek Language and Culture at Moscow State Linguistic University
The correspondent: In recent years, October 21 has been celebrated in Uzbekistan as the Uzbek Language Holiday. On the eve of this holiday, we would like to ask you some questions about learning Uzbek as a foreign language. How long has Uzbek been studied at your university?
Karaeva: In 2025, Moscow State Linguistic University celebrated its 25th anniversary The Basic organization for Languages and Culture of the CIS member States. Currently, more than 40 foreign languages are being studied at our university, including Azerbaijani, Armenian, Georgian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Romanian (the language of Moldova), Tajik, Uzbek, and Ukrainian are being studied as a second foreign language. Since 2016, the Department of Languages and Cultures of the CIS countries and neighboring countries has been established. Uzbek language has been studied at MGLU since 2010, and the Center for Uzbek Language and Culture at MGLU was established in 2022.
The correspondent: You could tell us a little about the Uzbek language, its structure, and its origin…
Karaeva: By its origin, Uzbek belongs to the Turkic group of the Altaic language family. By its structure, the Uzbek language belongs to agglutinative languages, in which the formation occurs by adding special affixes. Basically, one affix has only one grammatical meaning (single-variant affixes). For example: -lar – plural affix, -im – affiliation affix, kitoblarim(my books).
Distinctive features of the phonetics of the Uzbek language: 1) elements of the synharmonism characteristic of other Turkic languages; 2) the presence of specific sounds [h],[q], [o‘], [g‘], which have no analogues in Russian. The main distinguishing features of the Uzbek language in the field of morphology are: 1) the absence of grammatical gender; 2) the absence of prepositions, which is compensated by the presence of postpositions, kabi (as), uchun (for), bilan (with), etc.
To express an action in three tenses: present, past, and future, there are nine verb forms.
Correspondent: I would like to know about the etymological dictionary of the Uzbek language, what layers are in it?
Karaeva: The main and most famous academic work in this field is “O’zbek tilining etimologik lug’ati” (“Etymological Dictionary of the Uzbek language”), authored by the outstanding Uzbek linguist Shavkat Rakhmatullayev. The dictionary consists of 4 volumes, if the first two volumes give the interpretation of Uzbek and Turkic words, the third and fourth Persian and Arabic words.In general, the dictionary explains the origin of Uzbek words, their historical roots, and the development of meanings with other Turkic, Arabic, Persian, Russian, and European languages.These layers enrich the Uzbek literary language and play a role in the development of the Uzbek language.
Correspondent: What are the prospects for creating textbooks and teaching aids?
Karaeva: At the moment we have the textbook “Uzbek language for the CIS countries”, published by the publishing house “Rema” MGLU and curricula and manuals for teaching Uzbek as a foreign language, as a second foreign language. We are currently working on new training manuals.
The material was provided by the press service of the Republic of Uzbekistan in the Russian Federation.
The opinions expressed in this information product belong to the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the point of view of the editors of the online publication “Embassy Life”.
