Uzbek/Lesson Two

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This lesson is divided up into several sections. After your done you'll be ready to have your very first conversation in Uzbek. Sure, it'll be real simple—but you'll know how to greet somebody, introduce yourself, ask some polite questions, and say goodbye. If you want to do it intensive (which I'd recommend) you can do this all as one lesson. If you don't have much time the dialogues are broken up into four sections—just do one. (Eventually I think we'll merge all four tiny dialogues)

Cultural Notes
For many years Soviet histories portrayed Central Asia as a backward area with no tradition of scholarship and learning. In fact, education in the region was widespread and well developed long before the nineteenth century Russian conquest. There existed a large network of "old style" primary (maktab) and higher (madrasa) schools, which taught religious subjects. In those days many children studied at maktabs in their own neighborhoods. Some continued their studies for another ten years at a madrasa.

After the Russian conquest, the tsarist administration established schools with instruction in Russian for the indigenous nationalities. These trained a small number of Central Asians to serve the tsarist administration. Around the turn of the century, reform minded local intelligentsia called iadids opened "new style" schools (usul-i jadid). Unlike the "old style" schools, the jadid schools taught secular subjects.

Both the "old style" and the "new style" schools disappeared in the 1920s. Today Uzbekistan has educational institutions developed after the Soviet model, including primary and secondary schools, specialized technical schools, and institutes and universities. . . '''--The rest of the information from the peace corps manual is dated. Any important cultural fact about education can go here--'''

For Dialogue 1
In Uzbek the infinitive is formed by adding the suffix -moq to the verbal stem:

Without the infinitive or any other suffix, the Uzbek verbal stem is identical to the second person singular or imperative which is used in familiar or sometimes impolite situations:

To express the imperative for singular and plural in a polite manner, the suffix -ing is added to a verbal stem ending in a consonant. The suffix -ng is added to a stem ending in a vowel:

In the sentence gapni yozing the suffix -ni indicates the accusative case and expresses the idea of a definite quality. It is equivalent to English 'the':

Pronunciation Notes
Pronounce the letters ng as one sound as in the American English ng in the word song, and not as two sounds n and g as in English 'in good standing'.

Imperative sentences are pronounced in Uzbek with a falling intonation on the last syllable:

For Dialogue 2
The negative of a verb is formed by adding the suffix -ma to the stem of the verb before adding any of the tense or person suffixes:

The word tushunmayman is a negative verb in the present-future tense and can mean 'I do not understand' or 'I will not understand.' It is formed by adding the suffix -i to the negative form of the verb:

As in English, an adjective always stands before the noun it qualifies:

Aytishingiz mumkin (you can say) consists of a verbal noun aytishingiz (your saying) and a verbal predicate mumkin (it is possible).

The expression Sogʻ boʻling! (Be healthy) is used by Uzbeks to wish each other well when saying goodbye.

For Dialogue 3
The locative case suffix -da is attached to nouns and has the meaning of 'at,' 'in,' 'on':

The verbal forms of oʻqidim (I read), qildingiz (you did) etc. .. contain the definite past tense suffix -di. This suffix is added to the verb stem and indicates in a factual manner that an action was completed in the recent past:

Sentence Patterns
When a word needs to be emphasized, it is usually placed immediately before the predicate:

Recap
Congratulations! You can now have your first ever conversation in Uzbek--and that wasn't that hard either? Was it?

In future editions of this book we might have exercises and such, so that you can practice what you learned, and really get it to soak in--and also so you can double check and make sure you know it. But they aren't available just yet :)

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