Tashkent, 25 October. The law on a new version of the Latin-script Uzbek alphabet, signed by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev on 21 October, takes effect on 22 April 2027; the government has two months to adopt a transition programme.
The new alphabet will have 28 letters and an apostrophe instead of the current 26 letters and three letter combinations. Four sounds now written with two characters will get a single letter each: "oʻ" becomes "ö", "gʻ" becomes "ğ", "sh" becomes "ş" and "ch" becomes "ç". The combination "ng" is removed from the alphabet; the other letters do not change. The new characters, the developers explain, match letters in the Turkish, Azerbaijani and Turkmen alphabets and in the common Turkic alphabet promoted by the Organization of Turkic States; the principle is "one sound, one letter".
Documents will not have to be replaced. "We chose to minimise costs: all existing documents, the national currency and securities will remain valid, while textbooks, signboards and signs will be replaced gradually as they reach the end of their service life," said Saida Mirziyoyeva, head of the Presidential Administration. The law states this separately: letters of the old alphabet on documents, banknotes and securities do not prevent them from remaining valid.
The law was signed on Uzbek Language Day; the Senate approved the amendments on 10 September. It amends the 1993 law "On the introduction of the Uzbek alphabet based on the Latin script".
Kazakhstan's road to the Latin script has been longer and is still unfinished. A 2017 decree ordered a switch to Latin by 2025, but the first alphabet, with apostrophes, was criticised as awkward to read and write, and in 2018 a new version with the digraphs sh and ch was approved. The switch was then moved to 2023–2031, and in September 2026 the government said no date has been set for a full transition: the alphabet and spelling rules are still being refined. Uzbekistan, which adopted Latin script back in 1993, is now correcting an alphabet already in use, bringing it closer to the common Turkic one.
What it means: Uzbekistan is bringing back to its Latin alphabet the letters with diacritics that it abandoned 31 years ago, and is doing so without forcing people to replace documents. The actual transition will take years, as textbooks and signs wear out.
Who benefits: Users of the Uzbek Latin script get shorter, unambiguous spelling; schools and publishers get a clear standard. The noticeable cost of replacing textbooks and signs has been spread over time.
Background: Uzbekistan introduced the Latin alphabet in 1993, with 33 letters and an apostrophe, including Ş, Ç, Õ, Ğ, Ĵ and Ń. In 1995 the letters with diacritics were replaced by Sh, Ch, Oʻ, Gʻ and Ng. The full switch to Latin script was due to be completed by 2000, but the deadline was repeatedly postponed.
