Azerbaijani language

The Azerbaijani language, also called Azeri, Azari, Azeri Turkish, or Azerbaijani Turkish, is the official language of Republic of Azerbaijan.

It is called Azərbaycan dili in Azerbaijani. Some dialects of the language are spoken in many parts of Iran (but most notably in the northwestern areas, known as Iranian Azerbaijan), where it is the most dominant language and lingua franca for minority languages to the area such as Kurdish, Armenian and Taleshi. Iran is home for the majority of Azeri speakers in the world. The language is also spoken in Russia's Republic of Dagestan, south-eastern Georgia, northern Iraq, and eastern Turkey.

There are approximately 23 to 30 million native Azerbaijani speakers (Circa 16 to 23 million in Iran and 7 million in Azerbaijan Republic and 800,000 on other smaller communities). It is a Turkic language of Oghuz branch, closely related to Turkish and also historically influenced by Persian and Arabic languages.

History and evolution

For the languages spoken in Azerbaijan before the Turks' arrival, see Languages of Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani language of today was brought in from Central Asia by the Oghuz Seljuk Turks.

It gradually supplanted the previous Iranian languages - Tat and Pahlavi in the south, and a variety of Caucasian languages, particularly Udi, further north - and had become the dominant language before the Safavid dynasty; however, minorities in both the Republic of Azerbaijan and Iran continue to speak the earlier Iranian languages to this day, and Pahlavi and Persian loanwords are numerous in Azerbaijani.

Azerbaijani became a literary language early on, with some works from as early as the 11th century. The Russian conquest of Northern Azerbaijan in the 19th century split the speech community across two states; the Soviet Union promoted development of the language, but set it back considerably with two successive script changes - from Arabic alphabet to Latin to Cyrillic - while Iranian Azeris continued to use Arabic as they always had. After independence, the Republic of Azerbaijan decided to switch again, to the Latin script, following the Turkish model.

Literature

Main article: Azerbaijani literature

Classical literature in Azerbaijani was formed in 11th century based on Tabrizi and Shirvani dialects (these dialects were used by classical Azerbaijani writers Nasimi, Fuzuli, and Khatai). Modern literature in the Republic of Azerbaijan is based on the Shirvani dialect only, while in Iran it is based on the Tabrizi one. The first newspaper in Azerbaijani, Əkinçi was published in 1875. During the Soviet Union period, Azerbaijani was often used as a lingua-franca between the Turkic people of the Union.

In mid-19th century it was taught in schools of Baku, Ganja, Sheki, Tbilisi, and Yerevan. Since 1845, it has also been taught in the University of St. Petersburg in Russia.

Famous literacy works in Azerbaijani are The book of Dede Qorqud (which UNESCO celebrated its 1300th anniversary in 1998, written in an early Oghuz Turkic dialect), Koroğlu, Leyli and Majnun, and Heydar Babaya Salam. Important poets and writers of the Azerbaijani language include Imadeddin Nasimi, Muhammed Fuzuli (the first poet to write extensively in Azerbaijani, but also in Persian), Hasanoglu Izeddin, Shah Ismail I (the Azeri king), Khurshud Banu Natavan (female poet), Mirza Fatali Akhundov, Mirza Sabir (satirist), Bakhtiar Vahabzade, and Mohammad Hossein Shahriar (who has more poems in Persian than in Azerbaijani).

Distribution of native speakers

Since early last century, successive Iranian governments have avoided publishing any statistics on ethnic groups. This policy presents difficulty in providing any statistics on distribution and size of ethnicity in Iran. The population size of Turkic speaking ethnic groups, are estimated to be much higher in Iran than official publications.

Here is the population size of Azeri speakers in Azerbaijan and Iran, according to two major source. Their estimation differs from 23,4 to 30 million within two main countries. This total does not include the Azeri speakers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Georgia, Dagestan and other smaller pockets within the Middle East and Russia. Ethnologue adds 864,000 for the speakers out of Iran and Republics of Azerbaijan

Regions where Azerbaijani is spoken by significant group of people:

• Azerbaijani (North Dialect)1

Azerbaijan, and southern Dagestan, along the Caspian coast in the southern Caucasus Mountains. Also spoken in Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia (Asia), Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.

• Azerbaijani (South Dialect) 2

East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan, Ardebil, Zanjan, and part of Markazi provinces. Many in districts of Tehran. Some Azerbaijani-speaking groups are in Fars Province and other parts of Iran. Also spoken in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Turkey (Asia), USA.

Phonology

Based on information at [1], Azerbaijani phonology appears to be:

Consonants

Vowels

Alphabets

Officially, Azerbaijani now uses Latin alphabet, but the "Soviet" Cyrillic alphabet is still in wide use: see Azerbaijani alphabet. There is a one-to-one correspondence between the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets for Azerbaijani (although the Cyrillic alphabet has a different order):

(Aa Аа), (Əə Әә), (Bb Бб), (Cc Ҹҹ), (Çç Чч), (Dd Дд), (Ee Ее), (Ff Фф), (Gg Ҝҝ), (Ğğ Ғғ), (Hh Һһ), (Xx Хх), (Iı Ыы), (İi Ии), (Jj Жж), (Kk Кк), (Qq Гг), (Ll Лл), (Mm Мм), (Nn Нн), (Oo Оо), (Öö Өө), (Pp Пп), (Rr Рр), (Ss Сс), (Şş Шш), (Tt Тт), (Uu Уу), (Üü Үү), (Vv Вв), (Yy Јј), (Zz Зз).

Before 1929, Azerbaijani was only written in the Arabic alphabet. In 1929–1938 a Latin alphabet was in use (although it was different from the one used now), from 1938 to 1991 the Cyrillic alphabet was used, and in 1991 the current Latin alphabet was introduced, although the transition to it has been rather slow. The Azerbaijani speakers in Iran have always continued to use the Arabic alphabet, although the spelling and orthography is not yet standardized.

Azerbaijan Latin alphabets

The Azerbaijani language, if written in Latin, transliterates all foreign words to its own spelling. For example, "Bush" becomes "Buş", and "Schröder" becomes "Şröder".

Nomenclature

During the initial period of the Republic of Azerbaijan's independence, the official language of Azerbaijan was called "Türk dili" ("Turkish"), but since 1994 the older name of the language, "Azərbaycan dili" ("Azerbaijani"), has been re-established. The most important literary magazine of the language published in Iran, Varliq, uses the English term "Turkish" and the Persian term "torki" for the language. Most Iranians casually call the language Torki, distinguishing it from the Turkey's official language, Turkish, by calling the latter a term which can be translated as Istanbuli Turkish. Some people also consider "Azerbaijani" a dialect of a greater "Turkish" language and call it "Azerbaijani-Turkish". ISO and the Unicode Consortium, call the language "Azerbaijani".

Note

The term "Azeri language" is also sometimes used to refer to a dialect of the Tat language spoken in Azerbaijan or to the Ancient Azari language.

See also

• Historical linguistics
• Language families and languages
• Iranian languages

External links

Azerbaijani language edition of Wikipedia

• azeri.org
• Azerbaijani Language by Ethnologue
• Pre-Islamic roots
• Azerbaijani-Turkish language in Iran by Ahmad Kasravi