Azerbaijani

Introduction

Azerbaijani, also known as Azeri, is a member of the Turkic branch of the Altaic language family. Turkic-speaking peoples first appeared in the area that is present-day Azerbaijan in the 7th century. The region became Turkic-speaking in the 11th century when it was invaded by the Turks. It was invaded by Mongols in the 13th century, but the invasion was short-lived. In the early 1800s, Azerbaijan was divided between Persia and Russia. Russian took control of the northern while Persia took over the southern region.

After the partition, literature and the arts flourished in the Russian part of Azerbaijan. In the first years of the Soviet rule, communist authorities promoted the use of Azerbaijani, and in 1923, made it the official language of education. However, after World War II, the Soviet government began to wage a campaign again the growing Islamic influence in the Caucasus and stopped promoting Azerbaijani.

Azerbaijani is the least russified of all the Turkic languages spoken in the former USSR, and since 1970 there has been a campaign to purge it of Russian words.

There are two varieties of Azerbaijani. Northern Azerbaijani is spoken in the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Southern Azerbaijani is spoken in Iran.

Northern Azerbaijani	6.1 million (4 million monolinguals) in Azerbaijan; 7.1 million speakers worldwide		also spoken in Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.
Southern Azerbaijani	23 million in Iran; 0.5 million in Turkey; 23.5 million worldwide		also spoken in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, USA.

Azerbaijan
Northern Azerbaijani is the official language of Azerbaijan. It is used at all levels of education, in the media, and in business and government. Azerbaijani is the main language of instruction with most schoolchildren being taught in Azerbaijani. The rest are taught in Russian or in Armenian. At more advanced levels of education, technical subjects are often taught in Russian. Newspapers and magazines have been published in the language since the mid-19th century. Radio Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, broadcasts in Azerbaijani, as well as Russian, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, and Baku Television broadcasts in Azerbaijani and Russian.

Iran
In Iran, Southern Azerbaijani is widely used as a lingua franca, although it has no official status. Literacy rates are low. Speakers of Southern Azerbaijani use it at home and in their own communities, but are taught to read and write in Persian or Kurdish.

Dialects

Azerbaijan Man

Azerbaijan Woman

There are distinctive differences between the Northern Azerbaijani of the former USSR and Southern Azerbaijani of Iran in phonology, grammar, and lexicon. In addition, each of the two major varieties of Azerbaijani has a number of sub-dialects.

Northern Azerbaijani	Quba, Derbend, Baku, Shamakhi, Salyan, Lenkaran, Qazakh, Airym, Borcala, Terekeme, Qyzylbash, Nukha, Zaqatala (Mugaly), Qabala, Yerevan, Nakhchivan, Ordubad, Ganja, Shusha (Karabakh), Karapapak
Southern Azerbaijani	Aynallu (Inallu, Inanlu), Karapapakh, Tabriz, Afshari (Afshar, Afsar), Shahsavani (Shahseven), Moqaddam, Baharlu (Kamesh), Nafar, Qaragozlu, Pishagchi, Bayat, Qajar

Structure

Sound System

Azerbaijan boy

Azerbaijan children

Azzerbaijani Man

Azerbaijani Woman

The sound system of Azerbaijani is typically Turkic. The sound system of Northern Azerbaijani is described below.

Vowels
Northern Azerbaijani has nine vowel phonemes, i.e., sounds that make a difference in word meaning.

x	Front		Back
x	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
High	/i/	/ü/	//	/u/
Mid	/e/	/ö/	x	/o/
Low		x	/a/	x

As all other Turkic languages, Azerbaijani is characterized by vowel harmony, a type of phonological process that involves constraints on what vowels may be found near each other. Vowels in Azerbaijani words must harmonize with one another in terms of front versus back, and rounded versus unrounded. For example, if the first vowel in a word is a front rounded vowel such as /ü/ or /ö/, then all other vowels in that word must also be /ü/ or /ö/ since these are the only two front rounded vowels in Azerbaijani.

Consonants
Northern Azerbaijani has 24 consonants.

xx	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p - b	x	t - d	xx	xx	c - j	k - g	x
Fricatives	x	f - v	xx	s - z	-	xx	x -	h
Affricates	xx	xx	xx	xx	t - d	xx	xx	xx
Nasals	m	xx	n	x	xx	xx	xx	xx
Tap (flap)	xx	xx	xxx	r	xx	xxx	xx	x
Laterals	xx	xx	xx	xx	l	xxx	xx	x
Semi-vowel	x	x	xxx	xx	xx	j	xx	x

c - j	no equivalents in English
	sh in shop
	s in measure
x -	no equivalents in English
t	ch in chop
d	j in joy

Stress
Stress normally falls on the last syllable of a word.

Grammar

Azerbaijani Man

Azerbaijan iMan

Azerbaijani Man

Azerbaijani Boy

Like all Turkic languages, Azerbaijani is agglutinative, i.e., grammatical relations are indicated by the addition of suffixes to stems. There are no prefixes. There is a one-to-one relationship between suffixes and their meanings, so that suffixes are strung together one after another, sometimes resulting in long words. There are various rules for the ordering of suffixes. Azerbaijani uses postpositions rather than prepositions to signal grammatical relationships.

Noun phrase

Azerbaijani nouns are marked for number (singular and plural).
There is no grammatical gender.
There are six cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, ablative. Cases are marked by inflectional suffixes and governed by verbs and postpositions.
There are no articles.

Verb phrase
Verbs agree with their subjects in person and number. Verbs have the following grammatical categories:

two numbers: singular and plural;
three persons: 1st, 2, 3rd;
five moods: indicative, dubitative, imperative, conditional, subjunctive;
two voices: active and passive;
three tenses: present, past, future;
evidentiality: Azerbaijani contrasts direct information (reported directly) and indirect information (reported indirectly).

Word order
Word order in Azerbaijani sentences is normally Subject-Object -Verb. However, other orders are possible, depending on discourse-oriented considerations such as emphasis.

Vocabulary

Azerbaijani lexicon is basically Turkic. Like other Islamic languages, Azerbaijani has been strongly influenced by Arabic, particularly in the area of vocabulary. Azerbaijani speakers in Iran are often bilingual, with the result that their language also shows a strong imprint of Persian, in addition to Arabic. Northern Azerbaijani has a number of borrowings from Russian, although it is believed that it is the least russified of all the Turkic languages spoken in the former USSR. A campaign is now underway to purge the language of Russian loanwords.

Below are numerals 1-10 in Azerbaijani.

Azerbaijani Numerals

Writing

	Azerbaijani was and continues to be written in several different scripts. Republic of Azerbaijan Before 1929, Azerbaijani was written with the Arabic alphabet. Between 1929–1938, it was written in a version of the Roman alphabet. Between 1838-1991, it was written with the Cyrillic alphabet. The Roman script was used from 1922 to 1939. The Cyrillic alphabet was introduced in 1939, and was amended over the next twenty years. This alphabet contains six non-Cyrillic characters to represent sounds specific to Azerbaijani. In 1991, a different version of the Roman alphabet was reintroduced but the implementation of the new Latin alphabet has been rather slow, and most Azerbaijanis continue to use the Cyrillic alphabet. There is a one-to-one correspondence between the Cyrillic and the Latin alphabets for writing Azerbaijani, even though the letters in the two alphabets have a different order. The comparison table was taken from Wikipedia.

Kurban Said	Iran Azerbaijani speakers in Iran have always used the Arabic alphabet, although spelling and orthography have not been standardized. Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the different scripts used in Azerbaijan and in Iran.
Click here to listen to a recording of the text. Azerbaijani has a rich literary tradition. The earliest literature in Azerbaijani dates back to the 16th century. The first newspaper in the language was published in 1875. Newspapers and magazines have been published in the language ever since the middle of the 19th century.

Resources

Click here to find out where Azerbaijani is taught in the United States.
Click here to find materials for studying Azerbaijani.

Online resources for the study of Azerbaijani
Wikipedia article on Azerbaijani language
Ethnologue report on Azerbaijani
Omniglot guide to Azerbaijani script
SEELRC Webliography for Azerbaijani
UCLA Language Profile for Azerbaijani
Central Asian Language Modules
Azeri Language and Literature
Azeri Literature Index
Languages on the Web: Azerbaijani
Azerbaijan International online magazine