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Revision as of 23:06, 4 July 2004 by 24.156.68.153 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Azerbaijani language, also called Azeri and Azerbaijani Turkic, is the official language of Azerbaijan and most common minority language in Iran (notably in the provinces of Ardabil, East Azarbaijan, West Azarbaijan, and Zanjan). The language is also spoken in Russia, Georgia, Iraq, Turkey, and Afghanistan. There are approximately 38 million native speakers of Azerbaijani. Azerbaijani is a Turkic language.
(It may be worth noting that some sources like Gholamhossein Mosahab's The Persian Encyclopedia consider the languages Azeri and Azerbaijani to be different languages, the former being an older language only spoken by few rural communities in Iran's Azerbaijan, and the later the modern language.)
Literature
Classical literature in Azerbaijani was formed in 11th century based on Tabrizi and Shirvani dialects (these dialects were used by classical Azerbaijani writers Nasimi, Fizuli, and Khatai). Modern literature is based on the Shirvani dialect only. The first newspaper in Azerbaijani, Akinchi was published in 1875. During the Soviet Union period, Azerbaijani was often used as a lingua-franca between the peoples of South Caucasus, Eastern Turkey, and Northern Iran.
In mid-19th century it was taught in schools of Baku, Ganja, Sheki, Tbilisi, and Yerevan. Since 1845, it has also been taught in the University of St. Petersburg in Russia.
Famous literacy works in Azerbaijani are The book of Dede Gorgud (which became a UNESCO book of the year in 2000), Koroğlu, Leyli and Mejnun, and Heydar Babaya Salam. Important Azerbaijani poets and writers include Imadedin Nesimi, Muhammad Suleymanoglu Fuzuli (the first writer to write extensively in Azerbaijani), Hesenoglu Izedin, Ismail I (the Persian king), Bakhtiar Vahabzada, Khurshudbanu Natavan (female poet), Mirza Fatali Akhundov, Mirza Sabir (satirist), and Mohammad Hossein Shahriar (who also has poems in Persian).
Phonology
Based on information at , Azeri phonology appears to be:
Consonants
| bilabial | dental | alveolar | velar | uvular | glottal | ||
| stops | voiceless | p | t | k | q | ||
| voiced | b | d | g | ||||
| affricates | voiceless | tS | |||||
| voiced | dZ | ||||||
| fricatives | voiceless | f | s | S | x | h | |
| voiced | v | z | Z | G | |||
| nasals | m | n | |||||
| lateral | l | ||||||
| rhotic | r | ||||||
| front | central | back | ||||
| unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | |
| high | i | y | M | u | ||
| mid | e | 9 | o | |||
| low | { | a | ||||
(The above uses the SAMPA coding scheme.)
Alphabets
(see: Azeri alphabet) Officially, Azerbaijani now uses Latin alphabet, but the "Soviet" Cyrillic alphabet is still in wide use. There is a one-to-one correspondence between the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets for Azerbaijani (although the Cyrillic alphabet has a different order):
(Aa Аа), (Əə Әә), (Bb Бб), (Cc Ҹҹ), (Çç Чч), (Dd Дд), (Ee Ее), (Ff Фф), (Gg Ҝҝ), (Ğğ Ғғ), (Hh Һһ), (Xx Хх), (Iı Ыы), (İi Ии), (Jj Жж), (Kk Кк), (Qq Гг), (Ll Лл), (Mm Мм), (Nn Нн), (Oo Оо), (Öö Өө), (Pp Пп), (Rr Рр), (Ss Сс), (Şş Шш), (Tt Тт), (Uu Уу), (Üü Үү), (Vv Вв), (Yy Јј), (Zz Зз).
Before 1929, Azerbaijani was written with the Arabic alphabet, in 1929-1938 a Latin alphabet was in use (although it was different from the one used now), from 1938 to 1991 the "Soviet" Cyrillic alphabet was used, and in 1991 the current Latin alphabet was introduced, although the transition to it has been rather slow. The Azerbaijani speakers in Iran have always continued to use the Arabic alphabet.
Azerbaijanis transliterate all foreign words and transliterate their own words to foreign. For example, "Bush" becomes "Buş", and "Schröder" becomes "Şröder".