The Uzbek -Cha

As a contributor to this great idea of Brian's, I want to focus a little on the various dialects of the Uzbek language. For my first entry, I'd like to talk about the Uzbek suffix -cha. Although people frequently use the word til ("tongue" or "language") to refer to languages, such as O'zbek tili (the Uzbek language) or Ingliz tili (the English language), the suffix -cha is frequently used in everyday speech to refer to languages. It literally means "in the _____ way," such as:

O'zbekcha (O'zbek + cha) = Uzbek ("in the Uzbek way")
Inglizcha (Ingliz + cha) = English
Ruscha (Rus + cha) = Russian

I think that -cha is a wonderful suffix because you can use it to denote dialects and to turn any noun into a way of speaking. This means that you do not need to make a distinction between a "full" language and a "mere" dialects or privilege one over another.

Toshkentcha = the language of Tashkent
Xorazmcha = the language of Xorazm (a region in western Uzbekistan)

People do say Xorazm shevasi, which is used to mean "the Xorazm accent/dialect." However even the word sheva itself comes from the Persian words for "tongue," not exclusively meaning "dialect/accent."

I find -cha to be especially nice because you can use it to turn any noun into a dialect or language. When I lived in Uzbekistan, my friends noticed that I used the words yaxshi ("good"/"okay") and rahmat ("thank you") a lot. Once a friend started playfully mocking me by saying these two words frequently. She turned to me and said:

"I'm speaking Katherinecha!"