| South Azerbaijani |
| Spoken in |
 Iran
 Iraq
 Turkey[1]
 Syria
 Afghanistan |
| Region |
northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, eastern Turkey |
| Native speakers |
11,200,000 in Iran (2001), 600,000 in Iraq (1982), 30,000 in Syria (1961), 530,000 in Turkey.[1] (date missing) |
| Language family |
|
| Language codes |
| ISO 639-3 |
azb |
| Linguasphere |
part of 44-AAB-a |
South Azerbaijani (also known as South Azeri) is a variety of the Azerbaijani 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, Pichagchi, Bayat, Qajar. An Arabic script is used to write South Azerbaijani.[2][3][4] South Azerbaijani is influenced by the Persian language.[5] While there is a fair degree of mutual intelligibility between South Azerbaijani and North Azerbaijani, there are also morphological and phonological differences between the two varieties, so much so that Ethnologue considers them to be distinct languages[6] and they have separate ISO 639-3 codes.
[edit] See also
- ^ a b Ethnologue. "Azerbaijani, South". http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=azb. Retrieved 2012-01-31.
- ^ Jamie Stokes, "Encyclopaedia of the Peoples of Africa and Middle East, Volume 1", Infobase Publishing, 2009. pg 79 "Although Russian- influenced Azeris have used both the Cyrillic and the Roman alphabets, in Iran the Azerbaijani language has always been written in a version of the Arabic script."
- ^ "People of Western Asia, Volume 3", Marshall Cavendish, 2006. pg 124. Quote: "Iranian Azeris speak a Southern version of the Azeri language, which belongs to the Turkic family. They write in the Arabic script, while the northerners use Roman (European) letters"
- ^ Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.
- ^ L. Johanson, "AZERBAIJAN ix. Iranian Elements in Azeri Turkish" in Encyclopædia Iranica [1]
- ^ ISO 639-3 entry for South Azerbaijani and ISO 639-3 entry for the Azerbaijani
[edit] Bibliography
- Garry, Jane; Rubino, Carl R. Galvez (2010), Facts About the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present, University of Michigan, ISBN 0824209702
- Johanson, Lars (2008), "Azerbaijanian", in Brown, Keith; Ogilvie, Sarah (eds.), Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World, Elsevier, ISBN 0080877745
[edit] External links
Afghanistan
