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Azerbaijani, Azeri, or Azeri Turkish (Azərbaycanca or Azərbaycan dili) is a language belonging to the Russian Caucasus, Eastern Turkey and small parts of Armenia (6 million speakers).[7] Azerbaijani is a member of the Oghuz/Western branch of the Turkic languages and is closely related to Turkish, Qashqai, Turkmen and Crimean Tatar. Turkish and Azerbaijani closely resemble one another and are largely mutually intelligible, though it has been said that it is easier for a speaker of Azerbaijani to understand Turkish than the other way around.[8]
Today′s Azerbaijani languages evolved from the Eastern Oghuz branch of Western (Oghuz) Turkic[9] which spread to the Caucasus, in Eastern Europe,[10][11] and northern Iran, in Western Asia, during the medieval Turkic migrations, and has been heavily influenced by Persian.[12] Arabic also influenced the language, but Arabic words were mainly transmitted through the intermediary of literary Persian.[13]
Azerbaijani gradually supplanted the Iranian languages in what is now northern Iran, and a variety of Caucasian languages in the Caucasus, particularly Udi. By the beginning of the 16th century, it had become the dominant language of the region, and was a spoken language in the court of the Safavid Empire.
The historical development of Azerbaijani can be divided into two major periods: early (c. 16th to 18th century) and modern (18th century to present). 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 (such as pronouns, case endings, participles, etc.). 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 Azerbaijani-speaking masses.
Between c. 1900 and 1930, there were several competing approaches to the unification of the national language in Azerbaijan popularized by the literati, 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, Ottoman Turkish, and other foreign (mainly Russian) elements in both colloquial and literary language and called for a more simple and popular style.
The Russian conquest of the South Caucasus 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[14] - from Perso-Arabic script to Latin and then to Cyrillic - while Iranian Azerbaijanis continued to use the Perso-Arabic script as they always had. Despite the wide use of Azerbaijani in Azerbaijan during the Soviet era, it became the official language of Azerbaijan only in 1956.[15] After independence, Azerbaijan decided to switch to the Latin script.
Classical literature in Azerbaijani was formed in the fifteenth century[16] based on the various Early Middle Ages dialects of Tabriz and Shirvan (these dialects were used by classical Azerbaijani writers Nasimi, Fuzuli, and Khatai). Modern literature in Azerbaijan is based on the Shirvani dialect mainly, while in Iran it is based on the Tabrizi one. The first newspaper in Azerbaijani, Əkinçi was published in 1875.
In mid-19th century it was taught in the schools of Baku, Ganja, Shaki, Tbilisi, and Yerevan. Since 1845, it has also been taught in the University of St. Petersburg in Russia.
Azerbaijani served as a lingua franca throughout most parts of Transcaucasia (except the Black Sea coast), in Southern Dagestan,[17][18][19] Eastern Turkey, and Iranian Azerbaijan from the 16th century to the early 20th century.,[20][21] alongside the cultural, administrative, court literature, and most importantly official language of all these regions, namely Persian.[22] Per the 1829 Caucasus School Statute, Azerbaijani was to be taught in all district schools of Ganja, Shusha, Nukha (present-day Shaki), Shamakhy, Guba, Baku, Derbent, Erivan, Nakhchivan, Akhaltsikhe, and Lankaran. Beginning in 1834, it was introduced as a language of study in Kutaisi instead of Armenian. In 1853, Azerbaijani became a compulsory language for students of all backgrounds in all of the South Caucasus with the exception of the Tiflis Governorate.[23]
Azerbaijani is sometimes classified as two languages, North and South Azerbaijani. While there is a fair degree of mutual intelligibility between them, there are also morphological and phonological differences. Four varieties have been accorded ISO 639-3 codes: North Azerbaijani, South Azerbaijani, Salchuq, and Qashqai. Glottolog, based on Johanson (2006) and Pakendorf (2007), classify North Azeri with Salchuq in one branch of the Oghuz languages, and South Azeri with Qashqa'i in another.
North Azerbaijani,[24] or North Azeri, is the official language of Azerbaijan. It is also spoken in southern Dagestan, along the Caspian coast in the southern Caucasus Mountains, and scattered through Central Asia. There are some 7.3 million native speakers, and about 8 million L2 speakers.
The Shirvan dialect is the basis of Standard Azerbaijani. Since 1992 it has been officially written with a Latin/Roman script in Azerbaijan, but the older Cyrillic script was still widely used in the late 1990s.[25]
South Azerbaijani,[26] or South Azeri, is spoken in northwestern Iran and to a lesser extent in neighboring regions of Iraq and Turkey, with smaller communities in Afghanistan and Syria. In Iran, the Persian word for Azerbaijani is Torki,[5] which literally means Turkish; in Azerbaijani it is usually pronounced as Türkü. In Iran, it is spoken in East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Zanjan, and parts of Kurdistan, Hamadan, Markazi, Qazvin and Gilan. It is also spoken in some districts of Tehran city and across Tehran Province. Most sources report the percentage of South Azerbaijani speakers at around 16 percent of the Iranian population, or about 16.9 million people worldwide.[4]
The vowels are the same as in Turkish. Unlike Turkish, /e/ and /æ/ are spelled using different letters, and <ə> (Turkish uses for both).
In Azerbaijan, North Azerbaijani now officially uses the Latin script, but the Cyrillic script is also in wide use, while in Iran, South Azerbaijani uses the Perso-Arabic script. There is a one-to-one correspondence between the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets for North Azerbaijani (although the Cyrillic alphabet has a different order):
Before 1929, Azerbaijani was written only in the Bush" becomes "Buş", and "Schröder" becomes "Şröder".
South Azerbaijani speakers in Iran have always continued to use the Arabic script, although the spelling and orthography is not yet standardized.
In 1992–1993, when ISO encodes its two varieties, North Azerbaijani and South Azerbaijani, as distinct languages. According to the Linguasphere Observatory, all Oghuz languages form part of a single "outer language" of which North and South Azerbaijani are "inner languages".
For numbers 11-19, the numbers literally mean "10 one, 10 two' and so on.
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