Azerbaijani, also known as Azeri, Azari, Azeri Turkish, or Azerbaijani Turkish, is the official language of the Republic of Azerbaijan. It is estimated that there are between 23–30 million speakers of Azerbaijani worldwide, with Iran the home of the majority of Azerbaijani speakers. Outside of the Republic of Azerbaijan and Iran, communities of Azerbaijani speakers can also be found in Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Kazakhstan.
Azerbaijani is a member of the Turkic branch of the Indo-European family of languages and is most closely related to Turkish. The Azerbaijani language can be broadly divided between North and South dialects. Northern dialects are commonly spoken in Azerbaijan and in surrounding former USSR territories while Southern dialects are to be found most in Iran. There are significant differences between the two variant groups, in spoken as well as written forms.
Azerbaijani was originally written using the Arabic alphabet. For almost a decade after, a form of the Latin alphabet was used. However, as a result of the former Soviet Union’s drive towards securing its hegemony in the region, the use of a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet was enforced until the USSR’s collapse in 1991, after which a revised Latin alphabet was re-introduced. The transition to a Latin alphabet has been slow with many Azerbaijanis continuing to use the Cyrillic alphabet. Azerbaijani speakers in Iran have always used the Arabic form of writing and continue to do so. |