Azerbaijani language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Azerbaijani | ||
|---|---|---|
| Azərbaycan dili (Latin script) Азәрбајҹан дили (Cyrillic script) آذربایجان دیلی (Perso-Arabic script) |
||
| Pronunciation | /azærbajdʒan dili/ | |
| Spoken in |  Iran, Azerbaijan Georgia, Armenia Germany Russia, UK USA Uzbekistan Syria Iraq[1], Turkey, Turkmenistan Ukraine, Canada |
|
| Total speakers | 20-31 million [2][3][4][5][6] | |
| Ranking | 34th (native speakers) | |
| Language family | Altaic[8] (controversial) | |
| Writing system | Latin alphabet for North Azeri in Azerbaijan, Perso-Arabic script for South Azeri in Iran, and, formerly, Cyrillic alphabet for North Azeri (Azerbaijani variants) | |
| Official status | ||
| Official language in | Azerbaijan (North Azeri) Iran (South Azeri) - constitutional status as a regional language |
|
| Regulated by | No official regulation | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | az | |
| ISO 639-2 | aze | |
| ISO 639-3 | variously: aze – Azerbaijani (generic) azj – North Azerbaijani azb – South Azerbaijani |
|
 |
||
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
 Part of a series on |
|
|---|---|
| Culture | |
|
Architecture · Art · Cinema · Cuisine |
|
| By country or region | |
| Religion | |
| Language | |
|
Azerbaijani |
|
| Persecution | |
| Azerbaijan Portal |
|
Azerbaijani (also Azeri, Azari, Azeri Turkic, Azerbaijani Turkic) is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran. The term "Azeri language" is also sometimes used to refer to a dialect of the Tat language spoken in Azerbaijan or to the Old Azari language. Azerbaijani is member of the Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages and is related to Turkish, Afshar, Qashqai and Turkmen language.
Contents |
[edit] History and evolution
The Azerbaijani language of today evolved from the Eastern Oghuz dialect of Western (Oghuz) Turkic [9] which spread to Southwestern Asia during medieval Turkic migrations, and was heavily influenced by Persian[10] and Arabic words mainly through the intermediary of literary new Persian[11].
It gradually supplanted the previous Iranian languages—Tat, Azari, and Middle Persian in northern Iran, and a variety of Caucasian languages in the Caucasus, particularly Udi, and had become the dominant language before the time of the Safavid dynasty; however, some of minorities in both the Republic of Azerbaijan and Iran continue to speak the earlier Iranian languages to this day, and Middle- and New Persian loanwords are numerous in Azeri[citation needed].
The historical development of Azerbaijani can be divided into two major periods: early (ca. 16th to 18th century) and modern (18th century to present). Old Azeri differs from its descendant in that it contained a much greater amount of Persian, and Arabic loanwords, phrases and syntactic elements. Early writings in Azeri also demonstrate lingustic interchangeability between Oghuz and Kypchak elements in many aspects (such as pronouns, case endings, participles, etc.). As Azeri 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, bulky Iranisms and Ottomanisms, and other words, expressions, and rules that failed to gain popularity among Azeri-speaking masses.
Between ca. 1900 and 1930, there were several competing approaches to the unification of the national language in Azerbaijan popularized by the literati. Despite major differences, they all aimed primarily at making it easy for semiliterate masses to read and understand literature. They all criticized the overuse of Persian, Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and European (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 - from Perso-Arabic script to Latin and then to Cyrillic - while Iranian Azeris continued to use the Perso-Arabic script as they always had. Despite the wide use of Azerbaijani during the Soviet era, it became the official language of Azerbaijan only in 1978 (along with Georgian in Georgia and Armenian in Armenia). After independence, the Republic of Azerbaijan decided to switch to the Latin script, following the Turkish model.
[edit] Literature
Classical literature in Azerbaijani was formed in 14th century based on the various dialect Early Middle Ages dialects of Tabriz and Shirvan (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 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.
Notable folklore and literary works in Azerbaijani are the Book of Dada Gorgud, Asli and Kerem, the Epic of Köroğlu, and others. Important poets and writers of the Azerbaijani language include
- Imadaddin Nasimi
- Muhammed Fuzuli
- Khatai
- Molla Panah Vagif
- Khurshidbanu Natavan
- Mirza Fatali Akhundov
- Jalil Mammadguluzadeh
- Mirza Alakbar Sabir
- Huseyn Javid
- Jafar Jabbarly
- Samad Vurghun
- Mikayil Mushfig
- Mammed Said Ordubadi
- Mohammad Hossein Shahriar
[edit] Lingua franca
Azerbaijani served as a lingua franca throughout most parts of Transcaucasia (except the Black Sea coast), in Southern Dagestan[12][13][14], Eastern Turkey, and Iranian Azerbaijan from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century.[15][16]
[edit] Varieties and dialects
Azeri, formally Azerbaijani[17][18], is divided into two varieties, North Azerbaijani[19] and South Azerbaijani,[20] and a large number of dialects. Turkic Khalaj[21], Qashqa'i[22], and Salchuq[23] are considered by some[17] to be separate languages in the Azerbaijani language class.
_uses_the_Arabic_script.jpg)
Despite their relatively large number, dialects of Azeri do not differ substantially. Speakers of various dialects normally do not have problems understanding each other. However minor problems may occur between Azeri-speakers from the Caucasus and Iran, as some of the words used by the latter that are of Persian or Arabic origin may be unknown to the former. For example, the word firqə ("political party") used by Iranian Azeris may not be understood in Azerbaijan, where the word partiya is used to describe the same object. Such phenomenon is explained by the fact that both words have been in wide use since after the split of the two speech communities in 1828.
The following list reflects only one of several perspectives on the dialectology of Azeri. Some dialects may be varieties of others.
- Ardabil dialect (Ardabil and western Gilan, Iran)
- Ayrum dialect (northwestern Azerbaijan; northeastern Armenia1)
- Baku dialect (eastern Azerbaijan)
- Borchali dialect (southern Georgia; northern Armenia1)
- Derbent dialect (southern Russia)
- Gabala (Gutgashen) dialect (northern Azerbaijan)
- Ganja dialect (western Azerbaijan)
- Gazakh dialect (northwestern Azerbaijan)
- Guba dialect (northeastern Azerbaijan)
- Hamadan dialect (Hamadan, Iran)
- Karabakh dialect (central Azerbaijan)
- Karadagh dialect (East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan, Iran)
- Kars dialect (eastern Turkey and northwestern Armenia1)
- Lankaran dialect (southeast Azerbaijan)
- Maragheh dialect (East Azerbaijan, Iran)
- Mughan (Salyan) dialect (central Azerbaijan)
- Nakhichevan dialect (southwestern Azerbaijan)
- Ordubad dialect (southwestern Azerbaijan; southern Armenia1)
- Shaki (Nukha) dialect (northern Azerbaijan)
- Shirvan (Shamakhy) dialect (eastern Azerbaijan)
- Tabriz dialect (East Azerbaijan, Iran)
- Yerevan dialect (central Armenia1)
- Zagatala-Gakh dialect (northern Azerbaijan)
- Zanjan dialect (Zanjan, Iran)
[edit] Distribution of speakers
[edit] North Azerbaijani variety
North Azeri [26] is the official language of the Republic of Azerbaijan. It is spoken in: 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.
[edit] South Azerbaijani variety
South Azeri[27] is spoken in Iran. Iranian Azeris often call it[citation needed] Türki , Türki Azari or Azari. Specifically it is spoken in East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Zanjan,and parts of Kordestan, Hamedan, Qazvin, Markazi and Gilan provinces. It is spoken in many districts of Tehran city and across Tehran Province. Some Azerbaijani-speaking groups are in Fars Province and other parts of Iran. Most of the sources have reported the percentage of Azerbaijani-Turkic-speakers at around 16-24 percent of the Iranian population.[28] South Azerbaijani is also spoken in parts of Azerbaijan, Iraq, Syria, and Asian Turkey.
[edit] Phonology
[edit] Consonants
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n̪ | ||||||||||
| Stop | p | b | t̪ | d̪ | tʃ | dʒ | c | ɟ | k | ɡ | ||
| Fricative | f | v | s̪ | z̪ | ʃ | ʒ | ç | x | ɣ | h | ||
| Approximant | l | j | ||||||||||
| Tap | ɾ | |||||||||||
- /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ are realised as [ts] and [dz] respectively in the areas around Tabriz and to the west, south and southwest of Tabriz (including Kirkuk in Iraq); in the Nakhchivan and Ayrum dialects, in Jabrayil and some Caspian coastal dialects;[29]
- In many dialects of Azeri, /c/ is realized as [ç] when it is found in the coda position or is preceded by a voiceless consonant (as in çörək [tʃœˈɾæç] - "bread"; səksən [sæçˈsæn] - "eighty").
- /k/ appears only in words borrowed from Russian or French (spelled, as with /c/, with a k).
- /w/ exists in the Kirkuk dialect as an allophone of /v/ in Arabic loanwords.
- In the Baku dialect, /ov/ may be realised as [oʷ], and /ev/ and /œv/ as [œw], e.g. /ɡovurˈmɑ/ → [ɡowurˈmɑ], /sevˈdɑ/ → [sœwˈdɑ], /dœvˈrɑn/ → [dœwˈrɑn][citation needed]
[edit] Vowels
Vowel phonemes of Standard Azeri
[edit] Alphabets
In the Republic of Azerbaijan, North Azeri now officially uses the Latin alphabet, but the Cyrillic alphabet is also in wide use, while in Iran, South Azeri uses the Perso-Arabic script. There is a one-to-one correspondence between the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets for North Azeri (although the Cyrillic alphabet has a different order):
|
|
|
|
Before 1929, Azeri was only written in the Perso-Arabic script. In 1929–1938 a Latin alphabet was in use for North Azeri (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. If written in the Latin alphabet, all foreign words are transliterated, for example, "Bush" becomes "Buş", and "Schröder" becomes "Şröder".
South Azeri speakers in Iran have always continued to use the Perso-Arabic script, although the spelling and orthography is not yet standardized[citation needed].
[edit] Nomenclature
In 1992–1993, when Azerbaijan Popular Front Party was in power in Azerbaijan, the official language of Azerbaijan was renamed by the parliament to Türk dili ("Turkic"). However, since 1994 the Soviet era name of the language, Azərbaycan dili ("Azerbaijani"), has been re-established and reflected in the Constitution. Varlıq, the most important literary Azeri magazine published in Iran, uses the term Türki ("Turkish" in English or "Torki" in Persian) to refer to the Azeri language. South Azeri speakers in Iran often refer to the language as Türki, distinguishing it from İstambuli Türki ("Anatolian Turkish"), the official language of Turkey. Some people also consider Azeri to be a dialect of a greater Turkish language and call it Azərbaycan Türkcəsi ("Azerbaijani Turkish"), and scholars such as Vladimir Minorsky used this definition in their works. ISO and the Unicode Consortium, call the macrolanguage "Azeri" and its two varieties "North Azeri" and "South Azeri". According to the Linguasphere Observatory, all Oghuz languages form part of a single 'outer language' of which "Azeri-N." and "Azeri-S." are 'inner languages'.
[edit] Vocabulary
| Category | English | Azerbaijani |
|---|---|---|
| Basic expressions | yes | bəli |
| no | yox | |
| hello | salam | |
| goodbye | sağol | |
| sağolun (formal) | ||
| good morning | sabahınız xeyir | |
| good afternoon | günortanız xeyir | |
| good evening | axşamın xeyir | |
| axşamınız xeyir | ||
| Colours | black | qara |
| blue | göy | |
| cyan | mavi | |
| brown | qəhvəyi | |
| grey | boz | |
| green | yaşıl | |
| orange | narincı | |
| pink | çəhrayı | |
| purple | bənövşəyi | |
| red | qırmızı | |
| white | ağ | |
| yellow | sarı |
[edit] Numbers
| Number | Word |
|---|---|
| 0 | sıfır |
| 1 | bir |
| 2 | iki |
| 3 | üç |
| 4 | dörd |
| 5 | beş |
| 6 | altı |
| 7 | yeddi |
| 8 | səkkiz |
| 9 | doqquz |
| 10 | on |
For numbers 11-19, the numbers literally mean 'ten one, ten two' and so on.
| Number | Word |
|---|---|
| 20 | iyirmi |
| 30 | otuz |
| 40 | qırx |
| 50 | əlli |
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Ethnologue
- ^ "Peoples of Iran" in Looklex Encyclopedia of the Orient. Retrieved on 22 January 2009.
- ^ http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/upimagestft/TFT%20Iran%20Survey%20Report%200609.pdf
- ^ "Iran: People", CIA: The World Factbook: 24% of Iran's total population. Retrieved on 22 January 2009.
- ^ G. Riaux, "The Formative Years of Azerbaijani Nationalism in Post-Revolutionary Iran", Central Asian Survey, 27(1): 45-58, March 2008: 25% of Iran's total population (p. 46). Retrieved on 22 January 2009.
- ^ "Iran", Amnesty International report on Iran and Azerbaijanis . Retrieved 30 July 2006.
- ^ Ethnologue total for South Azerbaijani plus Ethnologue total for North Azerbaijani
- ^ "[1] Ethnologue"
- ^ "The Turkic Languages" Osman Fikri Sertkaya, in "Turks - A Journey of a Thousand Years", London, 2005.
- ^ L. Johanson, "Azerbaijan: Iranian Elements in Azeri Turkish" in Encycoopedia Iranica [2]
- ^ John R. Perry, "Lexical Areas and Semantic Fields of Arabic" in Éva Ágnes Csató, Eva Agnes Csato, Bo Isaksson, Carina Jahani,"Linguistic convergence and areal diffusion: case studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic",Routledge, 2005. pg 97: "It is generally understood that the bulk of the Arabic vocabulary in the central, contingous Iranic, Turkic and Indic languages was originally borrowed into literary Persian between the ninth and thirteenth century"
- ^ Pieter Muysken, "Introduction: Conceptual and methodological issues in areal linguistics", in Pieter Muysken, From Linguistic Areas to Areal Linguistics, 2008 ISBN 9027231001, p. 30-31 [3]
- ^ Viacheslav A. Chirikba, "The problem of the Caucasian Sprachbund" in Muysken, p. 74
- ^ Lenore A. Grenoble, Language Policy in the Soviet Union, 2003 ISBN 1402012985,p. 131 [4]
- ^ Nasledie Chingiskhana by Nikolai Trubetzkoy. Agraf, 1999; p. 478
- ^ J. N. Postgate. Languages of Iraq. British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 2007; ISBN 090347221X; p. 164
- ^ a b "Language Family Trees: Altaic, Turkic, Southern, Azerbaijani" Ethnologue
- ^ ISO 639-3 aze "Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: aze" SIL International
- ^ ISO 639-3 azj "Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: azj" SIL International
- ^ ISO 639-3 azb "Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: azb" SIL International
- ^ ISO 639-3 klj "Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: klj" SIL International
- ^ ISO 639-3 qxq "Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: qxq" SIL International
- ^ ISO 639-3 slq "Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: slq" SIL International
- ^ http://www.anl.az/sh002e3.php
- ^ http://www.anl.az/el/k/k002/mmt001.htm
- ^ "Azerbaijani, North - A language of Azerbaijan" Ethnologue, accessed 8 December 2008
- ^ "Azerbaijani, South - A language of Iran" Ethnologue, accessed 8 December 2008
- ^ N. Ghanea-Hercock, Ethnic and religious groups in the Islamic Republic of Iran. London: University of London, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 2003, p. 6
- ^ Persian Studies in North America by Mohammad Ali Jazayeri
[edit] External links
- Learning Azeri Site
- AZERI.org - Azerbaijan Literature and English translation
- Alphabet and Language in Transition. Entire issue of Azerbaijan International (AZER.com), Spring 2000 (8.1)
- Editorial: Azerbaijani Alphabet & Language in Transition. Azerbaijan International (AZER.com), Spring 2000 (8.1)
- Chart: Four Alphabet Changes in Azerbaijan in the 20th Century. Azerbaijan International (AZER.com), Spring 2000 (8.1)
- Chart: Changes in the Four Azerbaijan Alphabet Sequence in the 20th century. Azerbaijan International (AZER.com), Spring 2000 (8.1)
- Baku’s Institute of Manuscripts: _Early Alphabets in Azerbaijan__. Azerbaijan International (AZER.com), Spring 2000 (8.1)
- Azeri language at Ethnologue
- Azeri language, alphabets and pronunciation at omniglot.com
- Pre-Islamic roots
- Azerbaijani-Turkish language in Iran by Ahmad Kasravi
- Azeri with Japanese translation incl. sound file, from Internet Archive
- Azerbaijani-Turkish and Turkish-Azerbaijani dictionary
- Azerbaijani Language with Audio
- AzConvert An open source computer transliterator program for Azerbaijani language
|
||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
