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Turkish vs Azeri

Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2015 9:51 am
by Pole, the
Several days ago I was talking with my friend, who is from Turkey, about the level of mutual intelligibility among Slavic and among Turkic languages (well, it was not in technical terms, but it amounts to that). I asked about Azeri language, among others. He told me that they can communicate with few difficulties. He also said that Azeri is the “true” Turkish language, while the language used in Turkey is somewhat artificial.

My question is: apart from sound changes, what are the key differences between Turkish and Azeri languages? Are there conservative morphological features that have been kept in Azeri and lost in Turkish?

Re: Turkish vs Azeri

Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2015 11:57 am
by Nesescosac
You might find this article helpful.

Re: Turkish vs Azeri

Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2015 1:04 pm
by Pole, the
I have already read that, but thanks anyway.

Re: Turkish vs Azeri

Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2015 1:59 pm
by din
Funny, I was reading about that earlier today as well :D

Re: Turkish vs Azeri

Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2015 3:29 pm
by Richard W
Pole, the wrote:My question is: apart from sound changes, what are the key differences between Turkish and Azeri languages? Are there conservative morphological features that have been kept in Azeri and lost in Turkish?
Iranian Azerbaijanis have told me that Turkish has more European loans than standard Turkish. In keeping with the article quoted above, a guy from Tarsus told me that his Turkish was closer to the language of Azerbaijan than to that of İstanbul.

Re: Turkish vs Azeri

Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2015 3:48 pm
by linguoboy
Nesescosac wrote:You might find this article helpful.
Wow, they really whiff the biggest difference of all in the vocabulary section, don't they? Anatolian Turkish had its lexicon completely reworked after the founding of modern Turkey in order to purge Perso-Arabic elements (a process detailed in Geoffrey Lewis' excellent The Turkish language reform: a catastrophic success). Azeri didn't, which helps at least as much as its greater proximity in making it more intelligible to Central Asian Turks.

Re: Turkish vs Azeri

Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2015 4:06 pm
by Viktor77
I don't have anything to add but I do want to say that this is all very fascinating as I had always just assumed the Turkish/Azeri divide was just glorified ausbau along nationalistic lines, basically Balkanisation.