Grammar: Tiny Sentences

Today we learned how to make some simple sentences.  The pattern we learned combines pronouns and predicates.  It gets a little more complicated than that, though.  Also, we’ve only been covering adjectives as predicates, so I’m sure things are different with verbs.

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Here are the patterns (the hyphens don’t actually show up in writing):

Singular:

I am X = Men X-man.

You are X (informal) = Sen X-san.

You are X (formal) = Siz X-siz.

He/she/it is X = U X.

Plural:

We are X = Biz X-miz.

Y’all are X = Sizlar X-sizlar.

They are X = Ular X-lar.

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Notes:

The initial pronoun may be omitted.  So, you could say X-man for I am X.

This doesn’t count for the third person, though, as usually the -lar in the third person plural is omitted, leaving the forms for third person plural and singular the same.  So, for the third person, you should always include the U or Ular.

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Examples

Men khursandman = I am happy.

Siz ochsiz = You are hungry.

Biz yomonmiz = We are bad.

Hellos, How-are-yous, and Names

Phrases:

Salom – Hello

Yakhshimisiz – How are you?

Yakhshi, rahmat. – Good, thanks.

Sizning ismingiz nima? – What is your name?

Mening ismim Cornelius – My name is Cornelius.

Remarks:

Salom is a loanword ultimately from the Arabic salaam, meaning peace (a common Arabic Muslim greeting is as-salaamu ‘alaykum, which in Uzbek is written “Assalomu alaykum”).

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Yakhshimisiz is made up of three parts: “Yakhshi-mi-siz”.  Yakhshi is the Uzbek word for “good”.  Mi is a marker that indicates a yes-or-no question.  Siz is a marker meaning “you”.  So, Yakhshisiz would mean, declaratively, “You are good.”

Note: mi usually comes before the person marker (like siz), but it does come after the person marker for first person markers.  So, if you wanted to ask, “Am I good?” you would say “Yakhshimanmi?”  Man is the marker for “I”.  The marker for “we” is miz, so you would say “Yakhshimizmi?” for “Are we good?”  For the other persons, though, “mi” comes before the person marker.

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In the name-related sentences we see examples of possession.  Sizning X-ingiz means “Your X” and Mening X-im means “My X”.  We stick the word for name, “ism”, in the X slot.

Nima means “what”, so, word for word, Sizning ismingiz nima means “Your name-your what?”  and Mening ismim Cornelius means “My name-my Cornelius”.

Note the absence of any verb like English’s “to be”.  A sentence can be formed simply by putting the subject next to the predicate.  Similar structures lacking a “to be” verb can be found in Arabic and Russian.

Also note the placement of nima in the first sentence.  It comes after “sizning ismingiz”, which is the opposite of what you’d expect in English.

The aim of this blog…

…is pretty simple.  I’m taking a university class on Elementary Uzbek, and I plan on posting words and phrases I’ve learned in that course here, maybe along with some remarks about the grammar.  Hopefully, this will be helpful to anyone else learning the language.

I am a beginner in the language, though, so I may miss some fine details in my explanations, and it’s possible I’ll be flat-out wrong.  If you know Uzbek better than I do, please feel free to comment with any corrections!