Uzbek (oʻzbek tili in Latin script; ўзбек тили in Cyrillic script; اوُزبېک تیلی in Arabic script) is the official language of Uzbekistan. It has anywhere between 20 and 26 million native speakers in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia. Uzbek belongs to the Eastern Turkic branch of the Turkic language family. External influences include Persian, Arabic and Russian. Before 1928 Uzbek was written in Arabic script, in 1940 switched to the Cyrillic one and recently it’s been replaced with Latin alphabet. Writing system: Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic (Uzbek alphabet) Official in: Uzbekistan