- published: 07 May 2012
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Azerbaijani or Azeri or Azerbaijani Turkish (Azərbaycanca, Azərbaycan türkcəsi, Azərbaycan dili) is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran. Azerbaijani is member of the Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages and is closely related to Turkish, Qashqai and Turkmen. Turkish and Azerbaijani are known to closely resemble each other, and the native speaker of one language is able to understand the other, though it is easier for a speaker of Azerbaijani to understand Turkish than the other way around.
Today′s Azerbaijani languages evolved from the Eastern Oghuz branch of Western (Oghuz) Turkic which spread to Southwestern Asia during medieval Turkic migrations, and has been heavily influenced by Persian.Arabic also influenced the language, but Arabic words were mainly transmitted through the intermediary of literary Persian.
Azerbaijani gradually supplanted the Iranian languages in what is now northern Iran (most notably the Tat, Azari, and Middle Persian varieties), and a variety of Caucasian languages in the Caucasus, particularly Udi. By the beginning of the 16th century, it had become the dominant language of the region, and was a spoken language in the court of the Safavid Empire. However, minorities in both Azerbaijan and Iran continue to speak the earlier Iranian languages to this day, and Middle- and Modern Persian loanwords are numerous in the Azerbaijani language.