Hi! Some time ago I got interested in Azerbaijan and its culture. I would love to learn something more about its language but there is not much information available on the internet. I know that Azerbaijani and Turkish languages are close relatives, but what are the main differences between these two? Particularly I wonder what is used to express inferentiality, if (as I’ve managed to learn) -mi? – is not?
In Turkish, inferential past tense -mi? is used to precisely indicate inference. Therefore, it will not be used often with the first person.
In Azeri, -mi? is used more commonly to indicate status, so it goes often with the first person as well. Also, particularly in spoken language, the inferential -mi? is replaced with -ib for second and third persons.
For example, the Turkish "gelmi?sin" (apparently, you came) becomes "gelibsen" in Azeri (also notice that i in the second person suffix is replaced with an (open) e in Azeri).
As for the general differences, the split between the two langues dates at most 7-8 centuries (the common ancestor being Iranian Turkish). For example, you cannot characterize the divan of Hatayi (Shah Ismail of Iran), who lived in the 16th century, as being distinctly Turkish or Azeri. In the last 200 years, Azeri has been influenced more by Russian, while Turkish has been influenced by French and English, leading to important differences in vocabulary; but the grammatical differences are relatively minor.
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Even though Azeri and Turkish have lots of words in common but the dialect is completely different . Specially the verbs and tenses. Even some common words have completely different meanings in these two languages . There are different dialects of Azeri that are somehow different , the one which is spoken in Azerbaijan one of former soviet union states has some common words with Russian whereas the one is spoken in north west of Iran influenced by Farsi . However Azeri is very near to the dialect is spoken in east of Turkey . Generally if a person was born in Ankara or Istanbul will have difficulties to understand Azeri .
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Azeri and Turkish are very similar to each other and we can understand each other very well. There are only a few words that different in these languages. I am watching an Azeri TV channel right now and do understand every single word they are saying.
References :
In Turkish, inferential past tense -mi? is used to precisely indicate inference. Therefore, it will not be used often with the first person.
In Azeri, -mi? is used more commonly to indicate status, so it goes often with the first person as well. Also, particularly in spoken language, the inferential -mi? is replaced with -ib for second and third persons.
For example, the Turkish "gelmi?sin" (apparently, you came) becomes "gelibsen" in Azeri (also notice that i in the second person suffix is replaced with an (open) e in Azeri).
As for the general differences, the split between the two langues dates at most 7-8 centuries (the common ancestor being Iranian Turkish). For example, you cannot characterize the divan of Hatayi (Shah Ismail of Iran), who lived in the 16th century, as being distinctly Turkish or Azeri. In the last 200 years, Azeri has been influenced more by Russian, while Turkish has been influenced by French and English, leading to important differences in vocabulary; but the grammatical differences are relatively minor.
References :