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Native Speakers: 24 million peopele (Data. 2022)
Spoken Area: Azerbaijan, (provincinal) Russia, Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Georgia
Language Family: Turkic >> Common Turkic >> Orghuz >> Western Orghuz
There are very few people in America who learn or speak Azerbaijani! Those who study Azerbaijani can find careers in a variety of fields including business, consulting, translation and interpreting, Foreign Service and intelligence, journalism, and more. Azeri is a gateway to accessing Turkic languages spoken by millions of people in Iran, Iraq, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. These regions are of vital strategic importance in the world today. Azerbaijan is the largest and most populous country in the South Caucasus and possesses sizable reserves of oil resources. A conflict with neighboring Armenia continues to simmer, but pipelines through Georgia have given Azerbaijan a new window onto the world. Today, the United States is Azerbaijan’s most prominent trade partner, and these business partnerships are fueling demand for Americans who are fluent in Azerbaijani.
Modern Azeri is a great resource for studying world-famous poets like Fuzuli, Nizami, and Khatai. It can also serve as a gateway to Ottoman Turkish, the language of diplomacy, administration, and literature in the Ottoman Empire. So you see, learning Azeri can open up rarely-explored research opportunities in history, culture, and languages of the Islamic world.
Azerbajiani courses are offered inLanguage Workshop at IU for Summer 2023.
More information can be found through the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center here on IU's campus. Courses are offered through the Department of Central Eurasian Studies (CEUS). Additional resources at Omniglot and Wikipedia. Free online study materials here.