South Azeri language

language
name=South Azeri
familycolor=Altaic
states=Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan
region=northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, eastern Turkey
speakers=24,364,000 worldwide
fam1=Altaic [The existence of the Altaic family is controversial. See Altaic languages.]
fam2=Turkic
fam3=Oghuz
fam4=Azeri
iso3=azb

South Azeri (also known as South Azerbaijani) is a variety of the Azeri language spoken in northwestern Iran and neighboring regions of Iraq and Turkey. Other communities exist in Afghanistan and Syria. Dialects include Aynallu, Karapapakh, Tabriz, Afshari, Shahsavani, Moqaddam, Baharlu, Nafar, Qaragozlu, Pishagchi, Bayat, Qajar. North Azeri uses a Latin script while an Arabic script is used to write South Azeri. [Raymond G. Gordon, Jr, ed. 2005. "Ethnologue: Languages of the World". 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.] South Azeri is influenced by the Persian language while in addition to that North Azeri is influenced by the Russian language. While there is a fair degree of mutual intelligibility, there are also morphological and phonological differences between the two varieties, so much so that ISO 639-3 lists them as two varieties of a single macrolanguage—Azerbaijani. [ [http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=azb ISO 639-3 entry for South 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=azb Ethnologue entry for South Azerbaijani]

Further reading

* Sooman Noah Lee. 1996. "A Grammar of Iranian Azerbaijani," University of Sussex PhD dissertation.

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