Languages of Azerbaijan

Azerbaijani is the sole official language of Azerbaijan and is spoken by the majority of its population. However, several minority languages also exist in the country, including Lezgian, Talysh, Avar, Russian, and Tat. Additionally, languages such as Tsakhur and Khinalug are spoken by a small percentage of the population.

General
The primary and official language of Azerbaijan is Azerbaijani, a Turkic language closely related to and partially mutually intelligible  with Modern Turkish and Khorasani Turkic. Together with Turkish, Turkmen and Gagauz, Azerbaijani is a member of Oghuz branch of southwestern group Turkic language family.

Present
According to the 2009 census of the country, Azerbaijani is spoken as a native language by 92.5% of the population, whereas Russian and English play significant roles as languages of education and communication. More than half of Azerbaijani speakers are monolingual. Lezgian, Talysh, Avar, Georgian, Budukh, Juhuri, Khinalug, Kryts, Jek, Rutul, Tsakhur, Tat, and Udi are all spoken by minorities. All these (with the exception of Armenian, Lezgian, Talysh, Avar, and Georgian, which have a much larger number of speakers outside Azerbaijan, but nevertheless are steadily declining within Azerbaijan) above-mentioned languages are endangered languages which are threatened with extinction, as they are spoken by few (less than 10,000) or very few (less than 1,000) people and their usage is steadily declining with emigration and modernization.

According to 2019 research, English language proficiency in Azerbaijan was the lowest among surveyed European countries.

An entire issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, edited by Jala Garibova, was devoted to the matter of languages and language choices in Azerbaijan, vol. 198 in 2009.

Azerbaijan has not ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages to which it became a signatory in 1992, under the Popular Front. In 2001, the then President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev issued a statement whereby "the Republic of Azerbaijan is not in the power to guarantee the implementation of the Charter regulations until its territory occupied by the Republic of Armenia is liberated".