Southern Uzbek language

Southern Uzbek, also known as Afghan Uzbek, is the southern variant of the Uzbek language, spoken chiefly in Afghanistan and Pakistan with up to 5.7 million native and secondary speakers. It uses the Arabic writing system in contrast to the language variant of Uzbekistan.

Southern Uzbek is intelligible with the Northern Uzbek spoken in Uzbekistan to a certain degree. However, it has differences in grammar and also many more loan words from Dari, the local New Persian variety, in which many Southern Uzbek speakers are proficient; on the other hand, Northern Uzbeks have absorbed loanwords from Russian (in which many Northern Uzbeks are proficient) since their integration to the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union.