Azerbaijan Languages

Azerbaijani (Azeri, Azeri Turkic or Azeri Turkish) is the official language of Azerbaijan, it is also the language of instruction in education. Azerbaijani is a member of the Turkic language family, specifically the Oghuz branch. Azerbaijani is mutually intelligible with Modern Turkish. The alphabet is a Latin-script alphabet with 32 letters including special characters like Çç, Əə, Ğğ, Öö, and Üü among others.

92.5% of the people in Azerbaijan speak Azerbaijani as per the country’s 2009 census. There are two varieties of Azerbaijani language; Northern Azerbaijani and Southern Azerbaijani. Most people in Azerbaijan speak Northern Azerbaijani which accounts for 6.1 million people as of 2013 statistics. There are 21 dialects of Northern Azerbaijani including Nakhchivan, Borcala, Derbend, Ganja, Karapapak, Airym, Baku, Lenkaran, Nukha, Ordubad, Quba, Qyzylbash, Salyan, Shamakhi, Qabala, Qazakh, Shusha (Karabakh), Terekeme, Yerevan, and Zaqatala (Mugaly).

Common phrases in Azerbaijani include "salam" for "hello" and "ne var?" for "how are you?"

Minority languages in Azerbaijan include Georgian, Talysh, Lezgian, and Avar. The remaining minority languages are endangered due to the low numbers of speakers leading to their listing in UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. These languages include Budukh, Juhuri, Kryts, Khinalug, Cek, Rutul, Tsakhur, Tat, and Udi.