European International Journal of Philological Sciences
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TYPE
Original Research
PAGE NO.
29-31
DOI
OPEN ACCESS
SUBMITED
14 March 2025
ACCEPTED
10 April 2025
PUBLISHED
12 May 2025
VOLUME
Vol.05 Issue 05 2025
COPYRIGHT
© 2025 Original content from this work may be used under the terms
of the creative commons attributes 4.0 License.
The Phenomenon of Word
Appropriation in The
Khorezm Dialect and Epics
Egamberdiyeva Go‘zal Rashid qizi
Assistant Professor, Tashkent Institute of Management and Economics,
Uzbekistan
Abstract
: In order to educate the growing younger
generation as a perfect person who loves the homeland
and is devoted to the country, it is extremely important
to study and promote the heritage of our ancestors,
whose national identity is being blown away by works
created for other purposes, before they have a harmful
effect on the minds of young people.
Keywords:
Khorezm dialect, word appropriation, epic
tradition, linguistic variation, oral literature, lexical
borrowing, regional speech, folk narratives, cultural
identity, language and folklore.
Introduction:
The language's own layer is a process that
arose based on the internal capabilities of each
language. In linguistics, the following phenomena are
considered the main factors in the development of the
lexicon using internal capabilities: 1) enrichment of the
lexicon by creating words through internal sources; 2)
enrichment of the lexicon based on obsolete, historical
and generally old lexical units; 3) enrichment of the
lexicon of the literary language due to dialectical words.
Languages in the world are not fixed in one place, in the
same form. They are still changing and moving.
Accordingly, it is very necessary to improve the lexical
norms of our language, to ensure the growth of the
literary language lexicon at the expense of the dialect
dictionary, to take specific words and terms that are not
found in the literary language and introduce them into
the literary language. The need to map Uzbek dialects
requires a comprehensive lexical examination of large
dialects spread over large language areas. At the same
time, the works of Prof. F.A.Abdullayev, such as
“Khorazm shevalari” (1961), “Khorazm shevalari
leksikasi” (1966), are also dialectal in nature and provide
very rich lexical material.
The population living in the Khorezm oasis has a long
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European International Journal of Philological Sciences
and ancient history. Their languages also underwent a
complex process of development. The language of the
Turkic tribes and clans here was in contact with the
Iranian-speaking population that had inhabited these
territories since ancient times. Historical sources
contain information about the widespread use of the
Khorezm script in the 7th-8th centuries and earlier. The
ancient Khorezm language merged with the Uzbek
language in the 14th century [1, 32]. As a result, some
lexical units of this language have survived to this day
[2, 109].
The languages of the ancient Turkic tribes, mixed with
Iranian languages, were also related to the Altai-
Mongol languages. These connections were further
strengthened during the Mongol conquest of Central
Asia in the 13th century. During the period of Arab rule
in Central Asia, Uzbek-Arabic language contacts
emerged. During this period, Arabic became
widespread as the language of state and religion,
science and official correspondence. Arabic was
forcibly taught to the local population as the language
of state and science, and especially as the language of
religion. As a result, the local population reached a
point where they could write and in some cases speak
Arabic alongside their native language.
This is even more evident in the language of Khorezm
folk epics, especially those that have survived in
manuscript form. They cannot be called examples of
pure oral literature or written literature in the full
sense. Because their language reflects a synthesis of
the features inherent in these two forms of literature.
In addition, they often encounter old forms of lexical
units characteristic of the ancient Turkic language,
dialects, and archaic words belonging to the
assimilation layer.
Similar issues create certain difficulties in assessing the
units in the lexical fund of the Khorezm epic language
as belonging to the native layer or the assimilation
layer. Therefore, in order to rely on a certain principle
within the framework of our work, we decided to
conditionally consider units belonging to non-Turkic
languages in the broad sense as assimilation. However,
during the analysis, we also noted that these units have
long been used in the language of the local population.
At this point, the following thoughts of Otanazar
Madrakhimov, a scholar who studied Oghuz dialects,
are noteworthy: “…It should be noted that it is not true
to say that all words of this category came from the
Persian-Tajik language. There are two sides to this
phenomenon. First, the Khiva Khanate had economic
and cultural relations with Iran for centuries, and
secondly, the ancient Khorezmians lived in this region.
Historical sources testify that bilingualism (Khorezmian
and Turkic) continued in Khorezm until the 13th
century” [3, 18].
The Iranian languages that influenced the Uzbek
language in ancient times were Sogdian and ancient
Khorezmian. Before the arrival of the Arabs, Sogdian
peasants were considered the ruling class. The Arabic
language influenced the history of the Turkic languages
in the 8th-9th centuries. Later, the Iranian languages
regained their position. As a result, in the 9th-10th
centuries, the Persian-Tajik literary language and the
local Tajik language had a strong influence on the Uzbek
language. This influence intensified even more in the
11th-12th centuries.
The Sogdians and the Sogdian language, which were
absorbed into the Turkic peoples and languages, did not
completely disappear without a trace, of course. A
number of words (such as large, short, and many) have
been preserved in the languages of Central Asia. In fact,
such units are elements of Iranian languages, but some
words that are structurally similar to the patterns of
those languages, but have existed in the Uzbek language
for a long time (but are not Turkic), should actually be
the remains of the ancient Sogdian language.
One of the Iranian languages with which the Uzbek
language (Turkic language) was in contact in the past is
the ancient Khorezm language. The ancient Khorezm
language and ancient Khorezm script played a certain
role in the history of the peoples of Central Asia.
However, the ancient Khorezm language, which was of
an Iranian and ancient Khorezmian character, and its
influence on the Turkic languages and the elements that
entered the lexicon of the Uzbek language have hardly
been studied in science. However, some elements of
this language have been preserved in the lexicon of the
Uzbek language, especially in the vocabulary of folk
dialects [4, 95].
The ancestors of the Uzbeks have long lived together
with the Iranian-speaking population, merged with
them, and mixed with them. The Turkic and Iranian
(Sogd) tribes have long been territorially close, lived a
similar life, had economic and cultural ties, and fought
together against foreign invaders.
By this time, the Persian literary language had
supplanted and displaced Arabic, which was the
language of state, literature, and religion at that time.
During the Samanid dynasty (9th-10th centuries), the
Persian language, or the local language called Dari, was
widely used as a literary language instead of Arabic. In
the 9th-10th centuries, the Iranian-speaking population
living in Transoxiana and Khorasan was called Dari or
Tajik. The spoken language of the people living in
Khorasan was the basis for the “Persian Dari,” or Persian
literary language. [4, 95] .
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European International Journal of Philological Sciences
It is also known from the studies conducted on the
Uzbek language and dialects to this day that the place
and weight of words belonging to Arabic and Iranian
languages in the Uzbek literary language and dialects
occupy a very high level. Although the genetics of the
Iranian languages and the Turkic languages are
different, the main factor determining the amount of
Iranian borrowings in the Turkic languages, including
the Uzbek language, is the necessity of life, the
deepening of cultural-literary and various social
relations [5, 103-115].
The ways and factors of the assimilation of lexical units
belonging to Iranian languages into the Uzbek literary
language and dialects have been shown by our
scientists such as F.Abdullayev, O.Madrahimov,
A.Ishayev[6, 111]. Persian borrowings in the
vocabulary of the Uzbek language are expressed by
such terms as “Persian borrowings”, “Persian
-Tajik
words”, “Tajik
-
Persian words”. Special attention is also
paid to this issue in works devoted to the lexical study
of regional dialects.
Now, a word or two about the borrowings specific to
the Arabic languages. Arabic words entered the
languages of the peoples of Central Asia through
written literature, mainly through literature in Iranian
languages. [7, 41] Some of the words that historically
came from Arabic have been assimilated and are now
barely noticeable as having come from another
language. Professor F. Abdullayev notes, "...we
completely assimilate such words, diversify them as
our own, and create new words using formative
suffixes..." [8, 89].
The Uzbek language, including local dialects, has been
so infused with Arabic words that it is now difficult to
distinguish whether Arabic words are Uzbek or Arabic.
This can be confirmed by analyzing a number of cases.
To confirm these ideas, the following passage from the
introduction to Abulgozi Bahodirkhan's "Shajarayi
Tarokima" is particularly valuable: "...You all know that
those who told Turkic history before us used to add
Arabic dictionaries, and they also added Persian, and
they also used Turkish, in order to make their craft and
mastery known to the people, but we did none of these
things, because the reader and listener of this book will
certainly be a Turk. So it is necessary to tell the Turks
in Turkic..." [9, 6]. That is, Abulgozi Bahodirkhan says:
our predecessors used Arabic and Persian words to
show off their knowledge, we did the same, only we
said it in Turkic.
In the quoted text, Abulgozi Bahodirkhan himself,
without noticing it, used several Arabic words,
including lu'at, sa'j, halq, ma'lum, kitab, etc. This
situation itself once again confirms the ideas expressed
by F. Abdullayev. That is, we sometimes do not even
notice that Arabic words are used in our language.
As a generalization to the above ideas, it should be
noted that the borrowings used in the language of
Khorezm epics are mainly units related to the Arabic and
Persian languages, while in part they are elements
specific to the ancient languages of Khorezm and
Sanskrit. Some of them also have forms that are
considered "lexical parallelism," so the issue of native
and adopted layers in the language of epics is a
phenomenon that requires serious analysis.
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