Talk:South Azeri language

This article was created using North Azerbaijani language as a base. (Taivo (talk) 07:40, 22 March 2008 (UTC))

numbers
I corrected some numbers. Iran's population is estimated at 70 million, and I checked ethnologue it says 11.6 million. However the 11.6 million is too low it seems. Based on a sample survey of Iran, with 3.9% margin of error, Azerbaijani comes approximately 21.6% (this match several other surveys based on provincial statistics). So I think CIA factbook seems like an okay estimate, although based on several different statistics done, the one in the site mentioned is more correct. --Nepaheshgar (talk) 00:30, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Merge
I believe this is the same language as Turkmen so I have proposed a merger. Izzedine (talk) 12:38, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * NO. Absolutely not.  You should actually read some linguistic texts on the Turkic languages before proposing such things.  You will find there that there is absolutely no basis whatsoever for considering Turkmen and South Azeri as the same language.  South Azeri and Turkmen have separate ISO 639-3 codes for a reason.  Indeed, South Azeri is included in the Azerbaijani macrolanguage which does not include Turkmen.  I am removing the request for merge template since it is completely unwarranted.  The requester has no reliable linguistic source which suggests any such thing.  (Taivo (talk) 14:32, 29 September 2009 (UTC))
 * To be clear, South Azeri is closely related to North Azeri. Indeed, there is much mutual intelligibility.  The main differences between the two Azeris are that South Azeri has a higher proportion of Persian loans, uses an Arabic-based script, and is non-standardized.  North Azeri has more Russian loans, uses a Cyrillic-based script, and is the basis of Standard Azerbaijani.  Neither of the Azeris are more closely related to Turkmen than they are to Turkish.  (Taivo (talk) 14:47, 29 September 2009 (UTC))


 * Who exactly are the "South Azeri" speakers in Iraq then? The Iraqi Turkmen article states that their spoken language is South Azeri. The Turkmen language is a dialect of Azeri, ie: South Azeri. From the Azerbaijani people article, "Ethnologue further reports that an additional 1 million South Azeris live outside Iran, but these figures most likely are a reference to the Iraqi Turkmen, a distinct though related Turkic people". Ethnologue and Linguasphere classify their spoken language as a form and a mix of South Azerbaijani and Urfa dialect. It doesn't matter what script a language is written in, it doesn't change the language. Izzedine (talk) 20:30, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The "Turkmen" people inside Iraq are a separate issue. If they speak South Azeri, they are NOT speakers of Turkmen, but speakers of the South Azeri variety of South Azerbaijani.  They might also be speakers of Turkish, but I suspect it's South Azeri.  You must not confuse ethnicity and ethnic labels with linguistic reality.  There is a Turkmen language spoken in Turkmenistan.  This is not South Azeri, nor is it a "dialect of Azeri".  South Azeri is a variety of Azerbaijani.  Turkmen, Turkish, Crimean Tatar, and the Azerbaijani varieties are related, but South Azeri is not Turkmen, nor is it a Turkmen variety.  Ethnically, many groups of people who speak the various Southern Turkic languages are mistakenly called "Turks", "Turkmen", etc., but that doesn't determine what language they speak or the relationships of the languages themselves.  Scripts are important in establishing language identity in some cases where scripts match a varietal, dialectal, or linguistic divide, as in the division between Urdu and Hindi.  Script alone does not constitute a linguistic divide, of course, but it often works in conjunction with other linguistic factors to mark a divide.  (Taivo (talk) 22:51, 29 September 2009 (UTC))
 * I've corrected the language information at Iraqi Turkmen to match the published sources. There is a great deal of mutual intelligibility between all the Turkish/Azerbaijani/Crimean Tatar/Turkmen varieties, but it is important to distinguish them based on reliable linguistic sources.  All the linguistic sources place the Iraqi varieties within the South Azeri sphere.  Indeed, Claus Schönig in his article on Azerbaijanian in The Turkic Languages (Routledge, pg. 260) extends the western boundary of Azerbaijanian dialects into eastern Turkey and includes those speech varieties in Azerbaijani as a whole.  He divides Azerbaijani into three dialect groups (northern, southern, and eastern Anatolian), so he doesn't specifically place the Iraqi varieties in southern, but both Ethnologue and Linguasphere limit North Azeri to Azerbaijan and place the rest in South Azeri.  There's not a lot of ambiguity on this issue from the scientific linguistic point of view.  (Taivo (talk) 23:19, 29 September 2009 (UTC))
 * Yeah, I forgot about the Turkmenistan language and thought both articles were describing the South Azeri language. Turkic linguistics are confusing. Part of the confusion came from references about the Turkmen language (of Turkmenistan) being spoken in Iraq... still confused about that. Izzedine (talk) 08:34, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The confusion is because the South Azeri speakers of Iraq and Syria call themselves "Turkmen". This confusion has been compounded because widely-used sources like Ethnologue have become confused.  Ethnologue is a good reference, but there are errors in it and one must compare confusing information with other sources for confirmation.  I have fixed the Turkmen language article to reflect more accurate information and hopefully reduce the confusion.  (Taivo (talk) 13:01, 4 October 2009 (UTC))