Azeri : diforc'h etre ar stummoù

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The '''Azerbaijanian''' language, also called '''Azeri''', '''Azari''', '''Azeri Turkish''', or '''Azerbaijanian Turkish''', is the [[official language]] of [[Republic of Azerbaijan]]. It is called '''azərbaycanca''' in Azerbaijani. Some dialects of the language are spoken in many parts of [[Iran]]. Iran is home for the majority of Azeri speakers in the world. The language is also spoken in [[Russia]]'s [[Republic of Dagestan]], south-eastern [[Georgia (country)|Georgia]], northern [[Iraq]], and eastern [[Turkey]].

There are approximately between 21 to 22 million native Azerbaijanian speakers (Circa 16 million in Iran and 7 million in Azerbaijan Republic). It is a [[Turkic languages|Turkic language]] of Oghuz branch, closely related to [[Turkish language|Turkish]] and also historically influenced by [[Persian language|Persian]] and [[Arabic language|Arabic]] languages.

During the initial period of the Republic of Azerbaijan's independence, the official language of Azerbaijan was called "''Türk dili''" ("Turkish"), but since [[1994]] the older name of the language, "''Azərbaycan dili''" ("Azerbaijanian"), has been re-established. The most important literary magazine of the language published in Iran, ''Varliq'', uses the English term "Turkish" and the Persian term "''torki''" for the language. Most [[Iran]]ians casually call the language ''Torki'', distinguishing it from the [[Turkey]]'s official language, Turkish, by calling the latter a term which can be translated as ''Istanbuli Turkish''. Some people also consider "Azerbaijanian" a dialect of a greater "Turkish" language and call it "Azerbaijanian-Turkish". [[ISO]] and the [[Unicode Consortium]], call the language "Azerbaijani".

The Azerbaijani language of today was brought in from [[Central Asia]] by the [[Oghuz]] [[Seljuk Turk]]s. It gradually supplanted the previous Iranian languages - [[Tat language|Tat]] and [[Pahlavi language|Pahlavi]] in the south, and a variety of [[Caucasian languages]], particularly [[Udi language|Udi]], further north - and had become the dominant language before the [[Safavid]] dynasty; however, minorities in both the Republic of Azerbaijan and Iran continue to speak the earlier [[Iranian languages]] to this day, and Pahlavi and [[Persian]] loanwords are numerous in Azerbaijani. It became a [[literary language]] early on, with some works from as early as the 11th century. The Russian conquest of northern Azerbaijan in the 19th century split the speech community across two states; the [[Soviet Union]] promoted development of the language, but set it back considerably with two successive script changes - from [[Arabic alphabet]] to [[Latin alphabet|Latin]] to [[Cyrillic alphabet|Cyrillic]] - while Iranian Azeris continued to use Arabic as they always had. After independence, the Republic of Azerbaijan decided to switch again, to the Latin script, following the Turkish model.

Before [[1929]], Azerbaijani was only written in the [[Arabic alphabet]]. In [[1929]]–[[1938]] a [[Latin alphabet]] was in use, from [[1938]] to [[1991]] the [[Cyrillic alphabet]] was used, and in [[1991]] the current [[Latin alphabet]] was introduced. The Azerbaijani speakers in Iran have always continued to use the [[Arabic alphabet]], although the spelling and orthography is not yet standardized.

Officially, Azerbaijani now uses [[Latin alphabet]], but the "Soviet" [[Cyrillic alphabet]] is still in wide use. There is a one-to-one correspondence between the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets for Azerbaijani (although the Cyrillic alphabet has a different order):