Reflections on Uzbekistan

In May 2024, I will spend ten days in Uzbekistan to do photography workshops with the deaf community in Tashkent. I will blog regular updates here.

#1

I’m taking one-to-one online lessons in Uzbek Sign Language (USL).

Here’s my first USL video greeting to my Uzbek deaf allies.

British Sign Language (BSL) and USL are very different languages. As you’ll see from the 26 signs I use here, only a few are the same or roughly similar. Can you spot these?

But the power of the two languages to make human connections is exactly the same.

Uzbek Sign Language has a rich history. It is a dialect of Russian Sign Language (RSL). And, RSL itself has earlier 19th century roots in the French Sign Language family.

But, after gaining independence in 1991 from Russia’s Soviet Union, USL is now steadily evolving its own dialect signs to reflect its Central Asian culture.

For Uzbekistan is a fascinating mix of different cultures – from Persian to Turkic, from Russian to European – and its sign language reflects this.

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Thanks to British Council Uzbekistan for funding support, to Husniddin Ato for the invitation to work with his students, to Damira Gaynetdinova for USL lessons.