North Azeri language

language
name=North Azeri
familycolor=Altaic
states=Azerbaijan and neighboring Caucasian region
speakers=7,059,529 worldwide including 4,000,000 monolinguals
fam1=Altaic [The existence of the Altaic family is controversial. See Altaic languages.]
fam2=Turkic
fam3=Oghuz
fam4=Azeri
iso3=azj

North Azeri (also known as North Azerbaijani) is a variety of the Azeri language spoken in Azerbaijan and neighboring regions of the Caucasus. Expatriate communities exist in Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. There are reported to be some North Azeri speakers remaining in Armenia. Dialects include Quba, Derbend, Baku, Shamakhi, Salyan, Lenkaran, Qazakh, Airym, Borcala, Terekeme, Qyzylbash, Nukha, Zaqatala, Qabala, Yerevan, Nakhchivan, Ordubad, Ganja, Shusha, Karapapak. Dialect differences are slight. There are significant differences between North Azeri and South Azeri in phonology, lexicon, morphology, syntax, and loanwords. [Raymond G. Gordon, Jr, ed. 2005. "Ethnologue: Languages of the World". 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.] North Azeri is the national language of Azerbaijan and the Baku variety is the basis of Standard Azerbaijani. It is officially written with a Roman script, but the older Cyrillic script is still widely used. [Schönig (1998), pg. 248.] There is a fair degree of mutual intelligibility, so they are listed as part of a single macrolanguage in ISO 639-3, but still separated. [ [http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=azj ISO 639-3 entry for North Azerbaijani] and [http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=aze ISO 639-3 entry for the Azerbaijani macrolanguage] ]

Notes

References

* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=azj Ethnologue entry for North Azerbaijani]
* Claus Schönig. 1998. "Azerbaijanian," "The Turkic Languages". Routledge Language Family Descriptions. London: Routledge. Page 248-260.

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