Azeri language
From Wikinfo
Azeri is the official language of Azerbaijan and a minority language in Iran (Northwestern provinces). There are approximately 7 million native speakers of Azeri. The language is closely related to Turkish.
It may be worth noting that some sources like Mosahab Persian Dictionary consider the languagues 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.
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Phonology
Based on information at [1], Azeri phonology appears to be:
| 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
Officially Azeri 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 Azeri (although Cyrillic alphabet has different order):
(Aa Аа), (Əə Әә), (Bb Бб), (Cc Ҹҹ), (�� 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), (�� Өө), (Pp Пп), (Rr Рр), (Ss Сс), (Şş Шш), (Tt Тт), (Uu Уу), (�� Үү), (Vv Вв), (Yy Јј), (Zz Зз).
Before 1929, Azeri was written with 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 very slow.
However, the Azeri speakers in Iran have always continued to use the Arabic alphabet.
External Links
- azeri.org [[et:Aserbaidz<caron>aani keel]]
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Azeri_language" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azeri_language, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
