The Uzbeks have played an important role in Asia region since the beginning of the fifteenth century, when present-day Uzbek began to take shape in the fifteenth century during the modern Turkic period.
         At that time, a strong cultural movement advocating the use of Uzbek emerged, which led to the creation of a rich Uzbek literature, a large part of which remains unstudied. The literary language of the period has Arabic and Persian influences especially in the area of word borrowing.
        The development of written Uzbek has undergone some dialectal shifts. The first post revolutionary standard was based on the dialect of Turkistan, in Uzbek-speaking area.

        Uzbek is a member of the Eastern Turkic group of languages which also includes Uyghur. Eastern Turkic is a subgroup of Common Turkic which also includes Turkish, Azerbaijani, Tartar, Qyrgyz, Qazakh, and others. The Turkic languages, and the Mongolian-Tungus languages of Siberia and northeastern China are major divisions of the Altaic family or phylum. Some experts also consider Japanese and Korean part of this phylum, although evidence of this is debated.