Uzbek is the official language of Uzbekistan. It has 28 million native speakers and is spoken by the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan, and more than 7 million speakers in Afghanistan, in Tajikistan, in Kyrgyzstan, in Kazakhstan, in Turkmenistan and in Russia.
Uzbek belongs to the Eastern Turkic, or Karluk, branch of the Turkic language family. External influences include Persian, Arabic and Russian.