More than 2,800 companies are resident in IT Park, and many of the people who work for them arrived recently, often with families. If that is you, you have probably found that you can live in Tashkent without Uzbek. This page is about why it is still worth twenty minutes a day, and what to spend those minutes on.
Key points
- Learn in the order your week demands: greetings, numbers, taxi and courier exchanges, neighbours, and then colleagues.
- Russian and English cover a lot in Tashkent. They cover less in offices and clinics than they used to, and less again outside the capital.
- Twenty minutes a day, split in two, is enough for basic daily Uzbek in one to two months.
- Tell people you are learning. It changes how they talk to you.
Russian and Uzbek in Tashkent, honestly
Tashkent is a bilingual city in practice. Older people are more likely to know Russian, younger people often know some English, and many people will switch for you without being asked. That is a kindness, and it is also the reason expats stay at zero for years.
Uzbek is the state language. Since 2023 official life has run in Latin-script Uzbek, and the assumption that Russian is enough is fading in offices, clinics and classrooms. Signs, forms and official websites are in Uzbek. Outside Tashkent, Uzbek carries you furthest. None of this means you must be fluent. It means that a working base of Uzbek is useful now and will be more useful each year you stay.
When someone switches languages for you, two sentences keep the practice going: Men oʻzbekcha oʻrganyapman (I am learning Uzbek) and Oʻzbekcha gapiraylik (let’s speak Uzbek). See how to say I am learning Uzbek.
Who you will talk to
Taxi drivers. Apps handle the route. The last two hundred metres are yours: Toʻgʻriga (straight ahead), Oʻngga (right), Chapga (left), Shu yerda toʻxtang (stop here). Drivers will also ask where you are from: Men Rossiyadanman, Men Hindistondanman, or your own country plus -danman. All of it is on the taxi and directions page.
Couriers. A delivery is a thirty-second conversation with the same parts every time: a greeting, Kuting, iltimos (please wait), Karta boʻladimi? (do you take cards?), Naqd pul (cash), Rahmat. It is ideal practice because it repeats several times a week.
The landlord and the neighbours. Here the vocabulary is numbers and agreement. Prices are said in thousands and millions of soʻm, so learn the numbers page properly, including ming and million. Boʻladi settles things (“that works”), Mayli is “fine”, and kerak means “is needed”. With neighbours, the greeting ritual matters more than anything else: Assalomu alaykum, Yaxshimisiz?, Uydagilar yaxshimi? (is everyone at home well?). The answer is always a version of Yaxshi, rahmat. Address an older neighbour as aka or opa after the first name: Rustam aka, Nodira opa.
Colleagues. Work itself may run in English or Russian. The goodwill runs in Uzbek: Ishlar qalay? (how are things?), Men dasturchiman (I am a programmer), Tabriklayman! for good news, Tugʻilgan kuningiz bilan! for a birthday, Navroʻz muborak! and Hayit muborak! on the holidays. The how-to-say pages cover each with the expected reply.
A 20-minutes-a-day plan
Split it: ten minutes of new material in the morning, ten minutes of review and speaking aloud in the evening. Then use one thing you learned with a real person that day.
Week 1. Greetings, thank you, please and sorry, aka and opa, and the difference between siz (polite, the default for every adult you meet) and sen (children and close friends only). Read the alphabet post once; the script is phonetic and takes an evening.
Weeks 2 to 4. Numbers and prices, the taxi page, the bazaar page, and introducing yourself. Learn Sekinroq gapiring, iltimos (please speak more slowly) and Tushunmadim (I did not understand) early; you will need both daily.
Months 2 and 3. Move from phrases to patterns. Four suffixes unlock most of what you hear: -ga (to), -da (in, at), -dan (from) and -mi (the question marker). Add the present tense (Men Toshkentda yashayman, I live in Tashkent), the past with -di, and -moqchi for plans (bormoqchiman, I want to go). Start reading what is around you: shop signs, the building chat, delivery notifications.
After month 3. On the usual timeline you are approaching A2: simple conversations about work, home and plans. Following a meeting is B1, which takes most people eight to fourteen months. Those estimates assume about fifteen minutes a day, so twenty keeps you on the faster side.
For families
Partners and children meet Uzbek in different places from you: school gates, playgrounds, neighbours, shops. Share week 1 as a household. Children pick up Assalomu alaykum and rahmat quickly, and neighbours notice. Holiday greetings are an easy family project, because everyone uses them on the same day.
Where Uzbekcha fits
Uzbekcha is our app, and it is not available yet; there is a waitlist and nothing to download. It is being built to generate lessons from your native language, your level and your reason for learning, with “I live here” as one of those reasons and a conversation mode for practising situations such as the ones above. Until then, the free phrasebook covers the first month of this plan.