Azerbaijani language

The Azerbaijani language, also called Azeri, or Azerbaijani Turkish^[4] is a Turkic language that is spoken in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran. Azerbaijani is the official language of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Dagestan in Russia.

Azerbaijani
Azeri
Azərbaycan dili, آذربایجان دیلی, Азәрбајҹан дили[note 1]
Azerbaijani in Perso-Arabic Nastaliq (Iran), Latin (Azerbaijan), and Cyrillic (Russia).
Pronunciation	[ɑːzæɾbɑjˈdʒɑn diˈli]
Native to	Azerbaijan Iran Russia Turkey Iraq[a] Georgia Romania Moldova Ukraine Serbia Bulgaria Afghanistan Kazakhstan
Region	Iranian Azerbaijan, South Caucasus
Ethnicity	Azerbaijanis
Native speakers	24 million (2022)[2]
Language family	Turkic Common Turkic Oghuz Western Oghuz Azerbaijani
Early forms	Old Anatolian Turkish Ajem-Turkic
Standard forms	Shirvani (In Republic of Azerbaijan) Tabrizi (In Iranian Azerbaijan)
Dialects	Afshar Sonqori Yerevan various others
Writing system	In Azerbaijan: Latin script[3] (Azerbaijani Latin alphabet) In Iran: Perso-Arabic script (Azerbaijani Arabic alphabet) In Russia: Cyrillic script[3] In Georgia: Georgian script (rarely)
Official status
Official language in	Azerbaijan Dagestan (Russia) Organization of Turkic States
Regulated by	Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (North Azerbaijani) No regulatory body (South Azerbaijani)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	az
ISO 639-2	aze
ISO 639-3	aze – inclusive code Individual codes: azj – North Azerbaijani azb – South Azerbaijani
Glottolog	azer1255  Central Oghuz
Linguasphere	part of 44-AAB-a
Areas that speak Azerbaijani   The majority speak Azerbaijani   A sizable minority speaks Azerbaijani
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Azerbaijani is also spoken in Dagestan (a republic of Russia), southeastern and eastern Georgia, northeastern Turkey and in some parts of Ukraine, northern Dobruja in Romania and in northwestern Iran. In Dagestan, there are over 30 different languages, and Russian is used as a lingua franca.

References

1. Bulut, Christiane (2018b), "The Turkic varieties of Iran", in Haig, Geoffrey; Khan, Geoffrey (eds.), The Languages and Linguistics of Western Asia: An Areal Perspective, Walter de Gruyter, p. 398, ISBN 978-3-11-042168-2
2. Azerbaijani language at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
3. "Azerbaijani, North". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on 5 June 2019. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
4. L. Johanson, "AZERBAIJAN ix. Iranian Elements in Azeri Turkish" in Encyclopædia Iranica .

Notes

1. Former Cyrillic spelling used in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.

1. • The written language of the Iraqi Turkmen is based on Istanbul Turkish using the modern Turkish alphabet.
   • Professor Christiane Bulut has argued that publications from Azerbaijan often use expressions such as "Azerbaijani (dialects) of Iraq" or "South Azerbaijani" to describe Iraqi Turkmen dialects "with political implications"; however, in Turcological literature, closely related dialects in Turkey and Iraq are generally referred to as "eastern Anatolian" or "Iraq-Turkic/-Turkman" dialects, respectively.^[1]