Azerbaijan Vocabulary

[Julian Gladyshev]

Azerbaijaniˌzərbaɪˈdʒni, -ɑːni/ AZ-ər-by-JAN-ee) or Azeri (/ˈzɛəri, ɑː-, ə-/ az-AIR-ee, ah-, ə-), also referred to as Azeri Turkic or Azeri 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. Azerbaijani has official status in the Republic of Azerbaijan and Dagestan (a federal subject of Russia), 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 (spoken in the Republic of Azerbaijan and Russia) is based on the Shirvani dialect, while South Azerbaijani uses 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.

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, Afsharids and Qajars.

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.[20][21] 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.[21] One ruler of the Qara Qoyunlu state, Jahanshah, wrote poems in Azerbaijani language with the nickname "Haqiqi".[22][23] Sultan Yaqub, a ruler of the Aq Qoyunlu state, wrote poems in the Azerbaijani language.[24] The ruler and poet Ismail I wrote under the pen name Khatā'ī (which means "sinner" in Persian) during the fifteenth century.[25][26] During the 16th century, the poet, writer and thinker Fuzl wrote mainly in Azerbaijani but also translated his poems into Arabic and Persian.[25]

Starting in the 1830s, several newspapers were published in Iran during the reign of the Azerbaijani speaking Qajar dynasty, but it is unknown whether any of these newspapers were written in Azerbaijani. In 1875, Akinchi (Əkini / اکينچی) ("The Ploughman") became the first Azerbaijani newspaper to be published in the Russian Empire. It was started by Hasan bey Zardabi, a journalist and education advocate.[21]

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.[27]

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.[21] 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.

An Azerbaijani koine served as a lingua franca throughout most parts of Transcaucasia except the Black Sea coast, in southern Dagestan,[28][29][30] the Eastern Anatolia Region and all over Iran[31] from the 16th to the early 20th centuries,[32][33] alongside cultural, administrative, court literature, and most importantly official language (along with Azerbaijani) of all these regions, namely Persian.[34] From the early 16th century up to the course of the 19th century, these regions and territories were all ruled by the Safavids, Afsharids, 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 to be taught in all district schools of Ganja, Shusha, Nukha (present-day Shaki), Shamakhi, Quba, Baku, Derbent, Yerevan, 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 Transcaucasia with the exception of the Tiflis Governorate.[35]

Azerbaijani is one of the Oghuz languages within the Turkic language family. Ethnologue lists North Azerbaijani (spoken mainly in the Republic of Azerbaijan and Russia) and South Azerbaijani (spoken in Iran, Iraq, and Syria) as two groups within the Azerbaijani macrolanguage with "significant differences in phonology, lexicon, morphology, syntax, and loanwords" between the two.[3] The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) considers Northern and Southern Azerbaijani to be distinct languages.[36] Linguists Mohammad Salehi and Aydin Neysani write that "there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility" between North and South Azerbaijani.[36]

Svante Cornell wrote in his 2001 book Small Nations and Great Powers that "it is certain that Russian and Iranian words (sic), 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".[37] There are numerous dialects, with 21 North Azerbaijani dialects and 11 South Azerbaijani dialects identified by Ethnologue.[3][4]

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.[38]

North Azerbaijani,[3] 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. As of 2011[update], there are some 9.23 million speakers of North Azerbaijani including 4 million monolingual speakers (many North Azerbaijani speakers also speak Russian, as is common throughout former USSR countries).[3]

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.[40]

Speakers of Turkish and Azerbaijani can, to an extent, communicate with each other as both languages have substantial variation and are to a degree mutually intelligible, though it is easier for a speaker of Azerbaijani to understand Turkish than the other way around.[56] Turkish soap operas are very popular with Azeris in both Iran and Azerbaijan. Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran (who spoke South Azerbaijani) met with Mustafa Kemal Atatrk of Turkey (who spoke Turkish) in 1934; the two were filmed speaking their respective language to each other and communicated effectively.[57][58]

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.[59] In a 2017 study, Iranian Azerbaijanis scored in average 56% of receptive intelligibility in spoken language of Turkish.[60]

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.[citation needed]

The modern Azerbaijani Latin alphabet contains the digraphs ov and v to represent diphthongs present in the language, and the pronunciation of diphthongs is today accepted as the norm in the orthophony of Azerbaijani.[78] Despite this, the number and even the existence of diphthongs in Azerbaijani has been disputed, with some linguists, such as Abdulazal Damirchizade [az], arguing that they are non-phonemic. Damirchizade's view was challenged by others, such as Aghamusa Akhundov [az], 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, /ou̯/ and /œy̯/,[80] represented by ov and v in the alphabet, both of which are phonemic due to their contrast with /o/ and /œ/, represented by o and .[81] In some cases, a non-syllabic /v/ can also be pronounced after the aforementioned diphthongs, to form /ou̯v/ and /œy̯v/, the rules of which are as follows:[82]

The Azerbaijani Latin alphabet is based on the Turkish Latin alphabet, which in turn 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.

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