Azerbaijani language


Azerbaijani or Azeri, also referred to as Azerbaijani Turkic or Azerbaijani Turkish, is a Turkic language from the Oghuz sub-branch. It is spoken primarily by the Azerbaijani people, who live mainly in the Republic of Azerbaijan, where the North Azerbaijani variety is spoken, while Iranian Azerbaijanis in the Azerbaijan region of Iran, speak the South Azerbaijani variety, but it is unclear whether these two varieties form one language, as the International Organization for Standardization considers Northern and Southern Azerbaijani to be distinct languages.
Azerbaijani is the only official language in the Republic of Azerbaijan and one of the 14 official languages of Dagestan, but it does not have official status in Iran, where the majority of Iranian Azerbaijani people live. Azerbaijani is also spoken to lesser varying degrees in Azerbaijani communities of Georgia and Turkey and by diaspora communities, primarily in Europe and North America.
Although there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between both forms of Azerbaijani, there are significant differences in phonology, lexicon, morphology, syntax, and sources of loanwords. The standardized form of North Azerbaijani is based on the Shirvani dialect, while South Azerbaijani uses a variety of regional dialects. Since the Republic of Azerbaijan's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Northern Azerbaijani has used the Latin script. On the other hand, South Azerbaijani has always used and continues to use the Perso-Arabic script.
Azerbaijani is closely related to Turkmen, Turkish, Gagauz, and Qashqai, being mutually intelligible with each of these languages to varying degrees.

Etymology and background

Historically, the language was referred to by its native speakers as türk dili or türkcə, meaning either "Turkish" or "Turkic". In the early years following the establishment of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, the language was still referred to as "Turkic" in official documents. However, in the 1930s, its name was officially changed to "Azerbaijani". The language is often still referred to as Turki or Torki in Iranian Azerbaijan. The term "Azeri", generally interchangeable with "Azerbaijani", is from Turkish Azeri. The 17th century Capuchin missionary Raphael du Mans used the expression "Turk Ajami" in relation to the Azerbaijani language. This term is used by many modern authors to designate the direct historical predecessor of the modern Azerbaijani language. The term is derived from earlier designations, such as lingua turcica agemica, or Turc Agemi, which was used in a grammar book composed by the French writer Capuchin Raphaël du Mans in 1684. Local texts simply called the language türkī. During "the Isfahan phase of the Safavids", it was called ḳızılbaşī in contrast to rūmī and çaġatā’ī, due to its close relation to dialects spoken by the Qizilbash. Azerbaijani or Azeri is the term that is used interchangeably for the language throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

History and evolution

Azerbaijani evolved from the Eastern branch of Oghuz Turkic which spread to the Caucasus in Eastern Europe and northern Iran in West Asia during the medieval Turkic migrations. Persian and Arabic influenced the language, but Arabic words were mainly transmitted through the intermediary of literary Persian. Azerbaijani is, perhaps after Uzbek, the Turkic language upon which Persian and other Iranian languages have exerted the strongest impact—mainly in phonology, syntax, and vocabulary, less in morphology.
During the period of the Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu states, Azerbaijani Turkic gradually began to emerge as a means of literary and poetic expression.
During this period, writing in Turkic became fashionable in the court and among poets. The ruler of the Qara Qoyunlu, Jahanshah, was known by his pen name "Haqiqi", and the ruler of the Aq Qoyunlu, Sultan Yaqub, was known for writing poems in Turkic.
The great Sufi poet Qasim-i Anvar also accepted Turkic as a literary language and presented highly poetic examples in this language.
The Turkic language of Azerbaijan gradually supplanted the Iranian languages in what is now northwestern Iran, and a variety of languages of the Caucasus and Iranian languages spoken in the Caucasus, particularly Udi and Old Azeri. By the beginning of the 16th century, it had become the dominant language of the region. It was one of the spoken languages in the court of the Safavids and Qajars.
The historical development of Azerbaijani can be divided into two major periods: early and modern. Early Azerbaijani differs from its descendant in that it contained a much larger number of Persian and Arabic loanwords, phrases and syntactic elements. Early writings in Azerbaijani also demonstrate linguistic interchangeability between Oghuz and Kypchak elements in many aspects. As Azerbaijani gradually moved from being merely a language of epic and lyric poetry to being also a language of journalism and scientific research, its literary version has become more or less unified and simplified with the loss of many archaic Turkic elements, stilted Iranisms and Ottomanisms, and other words, expressions, and rules that failed to gain popularity among the Azerbaijani masses.
The Russian annexation of Iran's territories in the Caucasus through the Russo-Iranian wars of 1804–1813 and 1826–1828 split the language community across two states. Afterwards, the Tsarist administration encouraged the spread of Azerbaijani in eastern Transcaucasia as a replacement for Persian spoken by the upper classes, and as a measure against Persian influence in the region.
Between and 1930, there were several competing approaches to the unification of the national language in what is now the Azerbaijan Republic, popularized by scholars such as Hasan bey Zardabi and Mammad agha Shahtakhtinski. Despite major differences, they all aimed primarily at making it easy for semi-literate masses to read and understand literature. They all criticized the overuse of Persian, Arabic, and European elements in both colloquial and literary language and called for a simpler and more popular style.
The Soviet Union promoted the development of the language but set it back considerably with two successive script changes – from the Persian to Latin and then to the Cyrillic script – while Iranian Azerbaijanis continued to use the Persian script as they always had. Despite the wide use of Azerbaijani in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, it became the official language of Azerbaijan only in 1956. After independence, the Republic of Azerbaijan decided to switch back to a modified Latin script.

Azerbaijani literature

The development of Azerbaijani literature is closely associated with Anatolian Turkish, written in Perso-Arabic script. Examples of its detachment date to the 14th century or earlier. Kadi Burhan al-Din, Hasanoghlu, and Imadaddin Nasimi helped to establish Azerbaiijani as a literary language in the 14th century through poetry and other works. One ruler of the Qara Qoyunlu state, Jahanshah, wrote poems in Azerbaijani language with the nickname "Haqiqi". Sultan Yaqub, a ruler of the Aq Qoyunlu state, wrote poems in the Azerbaijani language. The ruler and poet Ismail I wrote under the pen name Khatā'ī during the fifteenth century. During the 16th century, the poet, writer and thinker Fuzûlî wrote mainly in Azerbaijani but also translated his poems into Arabic and Persian.
Starting in the 1830s, several newspapers were published in Iran during the reign of the Qajar dynasty, but it is unknown whether any of these newspapers were written in Azerbaijani. In 1875, Akinchi became the first Azerbaijani newspaper to be published in the Russian Empire. It was started by Hasan bey Zardabi, a journalist and education advocate.
Mohammad-Hossein Shahriar is an important figure in Azerbaijani poetry. His most important work is Heydar Babaya Salam and it is considered to be a pinnacle of Azerbaijani literature and gained popularity in the Turkic-speaking world. It was translated into more than 30 languages.
In the mid-19th century, Azerbaijani literature was taught at schools in Baku, Ganja, Shaki, Tbilisi, and Yerevan. Since 1845, it has also been taught in the Saint Petersburg State University in Russia. In 2018, Azerbaijani language and literature programs are offered in the United States at several universities, including Indiana University, UCLA, and University of Texas at Austin. The vast majority, if not all Azerbaijani language courses teach North Azerbaijani written in the Latin script and not South Azerbaijani written in the Perso-Arabic script.
Modern literature in the Republic of Azerbaijan is primarily based on the Shirvani dialect, while in the Iranian Azerbaijan region it is based on the Tabrizi one.

Lingua franca

An Azerbaijani koine served as a lingua franca throughout most parts of Transcaucasia except the Black Sea coast, in southern Dagestan, and all over Iran from the 16th to the early 20th centuries, alongside cultural, administrative, court literature, and most importantly official language of all these regions, Persian. From the early 16th century up to the course of the 19th century, these regions and territories were all ruled by the Safavids, Afsharids, Zands, and Qajars until the cession of Transcaucasia proper and Dagestan by Qajar Iran to the Russian Empire per the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan and the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay. Per the 1829 Caucasus School Statute, Azerbaijani was taught in all district schools of Ganja, Shusha, Nukha, Shamakhi, Quba, Baku, Derbent, Yerevan, Nakhchivan, Akhaltsikhe, and Lankaran.

Dialects of Azerbaijani

Azerbaijani is one of the Oghuz languages within the Turkic language family. Ethnologue lists North Azerbaijani and South Azerbaijani as two groups within the Azerbaijani macrolanguage with "significant differences in phonology, lexicon, morphology, syntax, and loanwords" between the two. The International Organization for Standardization considers Northern and Southern Azerbaijani to be distinct languages. Linguists Mohammad Salehi and Aydin Neysani write that "there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility" between North and South Azerbaijani.
Svante Cornell wrote in his 2001 book Small Nations and Great Powers that "it is certain that Russian and Iranian words, respectively, have entered the vocabulary on either side of the Araxes river, but this has not occurred to an extent that it could pose difficulties for communication". There are numerous dialects, with 21 North Azerbaijani dialects and 11 South Azerbaijani dialects identified by Ethnologue.
Three varieties have been accorded ISO 639-3 language codes: North Azerbaijani, South Azerbaijani and Qashqai. The Glottolog 4.1 database classifies North Azerbaijani, with 20 dialects, and South Azerbaijani, with 13 dialects, under the Modern Azeric family, a branch of Central Oghuz.
In the northern dialects of the Azerbaijani language, linguists find traces of the influence of the Khazar language.
According to Encyclopedia Iranica:

North Azerbaijani

North Azerbaijani, or Northern Azerbaijani, is the official language of the Republic of Azerbaijan. It is closely related to modern-day Istanbul Turkish, the official language of Turkey. It is also spoken in southern Dagestan, along the Caspian coast in the southern Caucasus Mountains and in scattered regions throughout Central Asia., there are some 9.23 million speakers of North Azerbaijani including 4 million monolingual speakers.
The Shirvan dialect as spoken in Baku is the basis of standard Azerbaijani. Since 1992, it has been officially written with a Latin script in the Republic of Azerbaijan, but the older Cyrillic script was still widely used in the late 1990s.
Ethnologue lists 21 North Azerbaijani dialects: "Quba, Derbend, Baku, Shamakhi, Salyan, Lenkaran, Qazakh, Airym, Borcala, Terekeme, Qyzylbash, Nukha, Zaqatala, Qabala, Nakhchivan, Ordubad, Ganja, Shusha, Karapapak, Kutkashen, Kuba".

South Azerbaijani

South Azerbaijani, or Iranian Azerbaijani, is widely spoken in Iranian Azerbaijan and, to a lesser extent, in neighboring regions of Turkey and Iraq, with smaller communities in Syria. In Iran, the Persian word for Azerbaijani is borrowed as Torki "Turkic". In Iran, it is spoken mainly in East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan, Ardabil and Zanjan. It is also spoken in Tehran and across the Tehran Province, as Azerbaijanis form by far the largest minority in the city and the wider province, comprising about of its total population. The CIA World Factbook reports that in 2010, the percentage of Iranian Azerbaijani speakers was at around 16 percent of the Iranian population, or approximately 13 million people worldwide, and ethnic Azeris form by far the second largest ethnic group of Iran, thus making the language also the second most spoken language in the nation. Ethnologue reports 10.9 million Azerbaijani-speakers in Iran in 2016 and 13,823,350 worldwide.
Dialects of South Azerbaijani include:
Russian comparatist calls the Turkmen language the closest relative of Azerbaijani.

Azerbaijani and Turkish

Speakers of Turkish and Azerbaijani can, to an extent, communicate with each other as both languages have substantial similarity. However, it is easier for many Azerbaijani speakers to understand Turkish than it is for Turkish speakers to understand Azerbaijani. Turkish soap operas are very popular with Azeris in both Iran and Azerbaijan. Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran met with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk of Turkey in 1934; the two were filmed speaking their respective languages to each other and communicated effectively.
In a 2011 study, 30 Turkish participants were tested to determine how well they understood written and spoken Azerbaijani. It was found that even though Turkish and Azerbaijani are typologically similar languages, on the part of Turkish speakers the intelligibility is not as high as is estimated. In a 2017 study, Iranian Azerbaijanis scored in average 56% of receptive intelligibility in spoken Turkish.
Azerbaijani exhibits a similar stress pattern to Turkish but simpler in some respects. Azerbaijani is a strongly stressed and partially stress-timed language, unlike Turkish which is weakly stressed and syllable-timed.
Below are some cognates with different spelling in Azerbaijani and Turkish:
AzerbaijaniTurkishEnglish
shoes
foot
book
blood
goose
eyebrow
snow
stone

Azerbaijani and Turkmen

The 1st person personal pronoun is mən in Azerbaijani just as men in Turkmen, whereas it is ben in Turkish. The same is true for demonstrative pronouns bu, where sound b is replaced with sound m. For example: bunun>''munun/mının, muna/mına, munu/munı, munda/mında, mundan/mından. This is observed in the Turkmen literary language as well, where the demonstrative pronoun bu undergoes some changes just as in: munuñ, munı, muña, munda, mundan, munça. b''>m replacement is encountered in many dialects of the Turkmen language and may be observed in such words as: boyun>''moyın in Yomut – Gunbatar dialect, büdüremek>müdüremek in Ersari and Stavropol Turkmens' dialects, bol>mol in Karakalpak Turkmens' dialects, buzav>mizov'' in Kirac dialects.
Here are some words from the Swadesh list to compare Azerbaijani with Turkmen:
AzerbaijaniTurkmenEnglish
menI, me
senyou
haçanwhen
başgaother
, it, köpekdog
deriskin, leather
ýumurtgaegg
ýürekheart
eşitmekto hear

Oghuric

share paradigms of verbs in some tenses with the Chuvash language, on which linguists also rely in the study and reconstruction of the Khazar language.

Phonology

Phonotactics

Azerbaijani phonotactics is similar to that of other Oghuz Turkic languages, except:
  • Trimoraic syllables with long vowels are permissible.
  • There is an ongoing metathesis of neighboring consonants in a word. Speakers tend to reorder consonants in the order of decreasing sonority and back-to-front. Some of the metatheses are so common in the educated speech that they are reflected in orthography. This phenomenon is more common in rural dialects but observed even in educated young urban speakers, but noticeably absent from some Southern dialects.
  • Intramorpheme q becomes.

    Consonants

  1. Outside Iran, the sound is used only in loanwords; the historical unpalatalized became voiced to, and was only preserved in Iran.
  2. and are realised as and respectively in the areas around Tabriz and to the west, south and southwest of Tabriz ; in the Nakhchivan and Ayrum dialects, in Cəbrayil and some Caspian coastal dialects;.
  3. Sounds and may also be recognized as separate phonemic sounds in the Tabrizi and southern dialects.
  4. In most dialects of Azerbaijani, is realized as when it is found in the syllabic coda or is preceded by a voiceless consonant.
  5. exists in the Kirkuk dialect as an allophone of in Arabic loanwords.
  6. In colloquial speech, is usually pronounced as

    Dialectal consonants

Works on Azerbaijani dialectology use the following notations for dialectal consonants:
  • Ⱪ ⱪ—
  • X' x'—
  • Ŋ ŋ—
  • Ц ц—
  • Dz dz—
  • Ž ž—
  • W w—
Examples:
  • —ⱪış
  • —üzüx'
  • —ataŋın
  • —цay
  • —dzan
  • —əžəli
  • —dowşan
  • —töwlə

    Vowels

The vowels of the Azerbaijani are, in alphabetical order, a, e, ə, ı, i, o, ö, u, ü.
The typical phonetic quality of South Azerbaijani vowels is as follows:
  • are close to cardinal.
  • The F1 and F2 formant frequencies overlap for and. Their acoustic quality is more or less close-mid central. The main role in the distinction of two vowels is played by the different F3 frequencies in audition, and rounding in articulation. Phonologically, however, they are more distinct: is phonologically a mid front rounded vowel, the front counterpart of and the rounded counterpart of. is phonologically a close back unrounded vowel, the back counterpart of and the unrounded counterpart of.
  • The other mid vowels are closer to close-mid than open-mid.
  • is phonetically near-open back.

    Diphthongs

The modern Azerbaijani Latin alphabet contains the digraphs and ' to represent diphthongs present in the language, and the pronunciation of diphthongs is today accepted as the norm in the orthophony of Azerbaijani. Despite this, the number and even the existence of diphthongs in Azerbaijani has been disputed, with some linguists, such as, arguing that they are non-phonemic. Damirchizade's view was challenged by others, such as, who argued that Damirchizade was taking orthography as the basis of his judgement, rather than its phonetic value. According to Akhundov, Azerbaijani contains two diphthongs, and, represented by and ' in the alphabet, both of which are phonemic due to their contrast with and, represented by and . In some cases, a non-syllabic can also be pronounced after the aforementioned diphthongs, to form and, the rules of which are as follows:
  • If the letter precedes and then, forming, it should be pronounced as, e.g. sovurmaq,.
  • If the letter precedes and then any consonant, it should be pronounced as, with the pronunciation of the being optional, e.g. dovşan,.
  • If the letter precedes and then any unvoiced consonant, it should be pronounced as, e.g. cövhər,.
  • If the letter precedes and then any voiced consonant, it should be pronounced as, with the pronunciation of the being optional, e.g. tövbə,.
Modern linguists who have examined Azerbaijani's vowel system almost unanimously have recognised that diphthongs are phonetically produced in speech.

Writing systems

Before 1929, Azerbaijani was written only in the Perso-Arabic alphabet, an impure abjad that does not represent all vowels. In Iran, the process of standardization of orthography started with the publication of Azerbaijani magazines and newspapers such as Varlıq from 1979. Azerbaijani-speaking scholars and literarians showed great interest in involvement in such ventures and in working towards the development of a standard writing system. These effort culminated in language seminars being held in Tehran, chaired by the founder of Varlıq, Javad Heyat, in 2001 where a document outlining the standard orthography and writing conventions were published for the public. This standard of writing is today canonized by a Persian–Azeri Turkic dictionary in Iran titled Loghatnāme-ye Torki-ye Āzarbāyjāni.
Between 1929 and 1938, a Latin alphabet was in use for North Azerbaijani, although it was different from the one used now. From 1938 to 1991, the Cyrillic script was used. Lastly, in 1991, the current Latin alphabet was introduced, although the transition to it has been rather slow. For instance, until an Aliyev decree on the matter in 2001, newspapers would routinely write headlines in the Latin script, leaving the stories in Cyrillic. The transition has also resulted in some misrendering of İ as Ì. In Dagestan, Azerbaijani is still written in Cyrillic script.
The Azerbaijani Latin alphabet is based on the Turkish Latin alphabet. In turn, the Turkish Latin alphabet was based on former Azerbaijani Latin alphabet because of their linguistic connections and mutual intelligibility. The letters Әə, Xx, and Qq are available only in Azerbaijani for sounds which do not exist as separate phonemes in Turkish.
Northern Azerbaijani, unlike Turkish, respells foreign names to conform with Latin Azerbaijani spelling, e.g. Bush is spelled Buş and Schröder becomes Şröder. Hyphenation across lines directly corresponds to spoken syllables, except for geminated consonants which are hyphenated as two separate consonants as morphonology considers them two separate consonants back to back but enunciated in the onset of the latter syllable as a single long consonant, as in other Turkic languages.

Sample text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
;Arabic script
;Arabic script
;Latin script
Butun insanlar ləjakət və hukykları̡na ƣɵrə azad və bərabər dogylyrlar. Onları̡ŋ зuyrları̡ və vicdanları̡ var və bir-birlərinə munasibətdə kardaзlı̡k ryhynda davranmalı̡dı̡rlar.
;Yañalif
Bytyn insanlar ləjaqət və hyquqlarьna gɵrə azad və вəraвər doƣulurlar. Onlarьŋ şyurlarь və viçdanlarь var və вir-вirlərinə mynasiвətdə qardaşlьq ruhunda davranmalьdьrlar.
;Cyrillic script
Бүтүн инсанлар ләягәт вә һүгугларына ҝөрә азад вә бәрабәр доғулурлар. Онларын шүурлары вә виҹданлары вар вә бир-бирләринә мүнасибәтдә гардашлыг руһунда давранмалыдырлар.
;Cyrillic script
Бүтүн инсанлар ләјагәт вә һүгугларына ҝөрә азад вә бәрабәр доғулурлар. Онларын шүурлары вә виҹданлары вар вә бир-бирләринә мүнасибәтдә гардашлыг руһунда давранмалыдырлар.
;Latin script
Bütün insanlar läyaqät vä hüquqlarına görä azad vä bärabär doğulurlar. Onların şüurları vä vicdanları var vä bir-birlärinä münasibätdä qardaşlıq ruhunda davranmalıdırlar.
;Latin script
Bütün insanlar ləyaqət və hüquqlarına görə azad və bərabər doğulurlar. Onların şüurları və vicdanları var və bir-birlərinə münasibətdə qardaşlıq ruhunda davranmalıdırlar.
;Narrow IPA transcription, based on the Azerbaijani standard

English translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Vocabulary

Interjections

Some samples include:
Secular:
  • Of
  • Tez Ol
Invoking deity:
  • implicitly:
  • * Aman
  • * Çox şükür
  • explicitly:
  • * Allah Allah
  • * Hay Allah; Vallah "By God ".
  • * ''Çox şükür allahım''

    Formal and informal

Azerbaijani has informal and formal ways of saying things. This is because there is a strong tu-vous distinction in Turkic languages like Azerbaijani and Turkish. The informal "you" is used when talking to close friends, relatives, animals or children. The formal "you" is used when talking to someone who is older than the speaker or to show respect.
As in many Turkic languages, personal pronouns can be omitted, and they are only added for emphasis.
Since 1992, North Azerbaijani has used a phonetic writing system, so pronunciation is easy: most words are pronounced exactly as they are spelled. However, the combination in words is pronounced, as the first voiced velar stop is devoiced when it is geminated, such as in çaqqal,.
CategoryEnglishNorth Azerbaijani
Basic expressionsyeshə , bəli
Basic expressionsnoyox , xeyr
Basic expressionshellosalam
Basic expressionsgoodbyesağ ol
Basic expressionsgoodbyesağ olun
Basic expressionsgood morningsabahınız xeyir
Basic expressionsgood afternoongünortanız xeyir
Basic expressionsgood eveningaxşamın xeyir
Basic expressionsgood eveningaxşamınız xeyir
Coloursblackqara
Coloursbluegöy
Coloursbrownqəhvəyi / qonur
Coloursgreyboz
Coloursgreenyaşıl
Coloursorangenarıncı
Colourspinkçəhrayı
Colourspurplebənövşəyi
Coloursredqırmızı
Colourswhiteağ
Coloursyellowsarı
Coloursgoldenqızıl

Numbers

The numbers 11–19 are constructed as on bir and on iki, literally meaning "ten-one, ten-two" and so on up to on doqquz.
NumberWord
20iyirmi
30otuz
40qırx
50əlli

Greater numbers are constructed by combining in tens and thousands larger to smaller in the same way, without using a conjunction in between.