HISTORICAL SOURCES AND STAGES OF LEXICAL BORROWINGS FROM GERMAN INTO UZBEK
Abstract
This paper investigates the historical trajectory of German-origin lexical units that have entered the Uzbek language over the past two centuries. Through a corpus-based analysis of 347 attested German loanwords extracted from the Annotated Dictionary of the Uzbek Language (2006–2008), monolingual and bilingual lexicographic sources, and periodical publications from 1920–2025, the study identifies four principal chronological stages of borrowing: the early Tsarist period (1860–1917), the Soviet modernization era (1917–1945), the post-war industrial expansion (1945–1991), and the independence period (1991–present). Statistical analysis reveals that 78.4% of German loanwords entered Uzbek through Russian as an intermediary language, while 12.1% arrived via direct academic and technical contact, and 9.5% through other Turkic languages. The findings demonstrate that the semantic domains of these borrowings shifted across periods—from military and mining terminology in the 19th century to scientific, medical, and technological vocabulary in the 20th and 21st centuries. The paper proposes a revised periodization model and provides quantitative evidence for the dominant role of Russian mediation in German–Uzbek lexical transfer.
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