Hello fellow wikipedia users, I want to propose the creation of a wikipedia for the Uzbek language (uzb) variant which uses the Perso-Arabic writing system, called „Arab Yazuv“ („Arab writing system“). This variant is also known as Southern Uzbek (uzb) or Afghan Uzbek. Although there is an Uzbek wikipedia (uz.wikipedia.org), it does not include this type of writing system and therefore it cannot be understood by a large group of Uzbek speakers who use this writing system. This group of speakers consists of 3.4 million people in Afghanistan alone, where the Perso-Arabic writing system is the sole and only used writing system for the Uzbek language. There are also a sizable group of Uzbeks living in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and China who still use the Arab variant for writing their language. Historically the Perso-Arabic writing system was the only writing system used for the Uzbek language before beeing replaced in Uzbekistan by latin and cyrillic writing systems in the 20th century. The amount of literature for the Uzbek language written in the Perso-Arabic writing system is considerably high due to the developmemt of Uzbek from Chaghatai (chg), which is very closely resembled to the Perso-Arabic written Uzbek language of today. The amount of modern Uzbek literature in this writing system increased in recent years due to educational improvements in Northern Afghanistan. The interest in a Wikipedia for Uzbek Speakers using the Perso-Arabic writing system is also considerably high and will probably increase even more after its creation. The language is sufficiently unique because it shares more words with Persian and Arabic than the language variant used in Uzbekistan. It is even differentiated from the „uzb“ language code of Uzbekistan and uses its own „uzs“ language code. The language can not coexist on the general latin based Uzbek wikipedia which consists of the latin and cyrillic written variant of the language, because those two variants share a much stronger etymological and liguistic development and are often understood by both, cyrillic and latin writers of the Uzbek language, whereas the Perso-Arabic variant is almost exclusively understood by the Afghan Uzbeks. Most modern computer like Mac and Windows desktops include Afghan Uzbek Keyboards. I want to thank anybody who can help in this case. Abu Asem _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l