Azerbaijani language: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

The factual accuracy of this article is .

The Azerbaijani language, also called Azeri, Azari, Azeri Turkish, or Azerbaijani Turkish, is the official language of Republic of Azerbaijan. Some dialects of the language are spoken in many parts of Iran (but most notably in the northwestern areas, known as the Iranian Azarbaijan), where it is the most popular minority language and there are more speakers than any other country in the world. The language is also spoken in Russia's Republic of Dagestan, Georgia, northern Iraq, and eastern Turkey.

There are approximately between 22 and 50 million native speakers of Azerbaijani. It is a Turkic language, related to Turkish and Turkmen.

Nomenclature

During the initial period of the Republic of Azerbaijan's independence, the official language of Azerbaijan was called "Turk dili" ("Turkish"), but since 1994 the older name of the language, "Azerbaycan 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 turki or torki, distinguishing it from the Turkey's official language, Turkish, by calling the latter a term which can be translated as Istanbul 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".

Some sources like Gholamhossein Mosahab's The Persian Encyclopedia consider Azari/Azeri to be a different language, an older Iranian Tati language which was spoken in the region before the spread of Turkic languages, but now only spoken by different rural communities in Iran's Azerbaijan (such as villages in Harzanabad area, villages around Khalkhal and Ardebil, and also in Zanjan and Qazvin area). There are serious supporters and opposers of the theory (and even some who consider it offensive), which was originally published by Ahmad Kasravi, an ethic Azerbaijani and a native of Iran. People who disagree with Kasravi's theory prefer not to call themselves or their language Azeri or Azari because of the relation to the theory. Common usage of the terms in the English language is against this distinction.

Main article: Azerbaijani literature

Classical literature in Azerbaijani was formed in 11th century based on Tabrizi and Shervani dialects (these dialects were used by classical Azerbaijani writers Nasimi, Fizuli, and Khatai). Modern literature in the Republic of Azerbaijan is based on the Shervani dialect only, while in Iran it is based on the Tabrizi one. The first newspaper in Azerbaijani, Akinchi 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, some linguists believe it to be written in an early Ottoman dialect), Koroğlu, Leyli and Mejnun, and Heydar Babaya Salam. Important poets and writers of the Azerbaijani language include Imadedin Nesimi, Muhammad Suleymanoglu Fuzuli (the first writer to write extensively in Azerbaijani, but also in Persian), Hesenoglu Izedin, Ismail I (the Persian king), Bakhtiar Vahabzada, Khurshudbanu Natavan (female poet), Mirza Fatali Akhundov, Mirza Sabir (satirist), and Mohammad Hossein Shahriar (who also has poems in Persian).

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

Consonants

Vowels

(The above uses the SAMPA coding scheme.)

Officially, Azerbaijani now uses Latin alphabet, but the "Soviet" Cyrillic alphabet is still in wide use. 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.

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