Turkish vs Azerbaijani (How SIMILAR are they?)

the turkic language family is a huge family of languages with over 170 million native speakers stretching all the way from europe to northeast asia there are many different languages in this family including turkish azerbaijani or azeri turkmen kazakh tatar and wigar among others interestingly i've spoken with people from turkey who tell me that turkic is a single language some of them said they can understand every single turkic language to a large degree but others say that their comprehension is limited until they get enough exposure to the language the level of mutual intelligibility is often highest for certain languages that are geographically close to each other like turkish and azerbaijani which are said to be anywhere from 65 to 90 mutually intelligible azerbaijani speakers often understand turkish better than the other way around because they see lots of turkish tv shows turkish speakers tend to need several weeks of exposure in order to comprehend what azerbaijani speakers are saying quite well this may also depend on the region and dialect group north azerbaijani is spoken in azerbaijan and south azerbaijani is spoken in some parts of iran turkish and azerbaijani are both members of the oz branch of turkic speakers of oau's turkic began arriving in large numbers in both present-day turkey and present-day azerbaijan as well as northwestern iran in the 11th century when the seljuk empire conquered the area then their speech began to diverge into various regional and local dialects especially since they usually lived under different rulers the ottoman empire had a standardized literary form of turkish known as ottoman turkish which was highly influenced by persian and arabic and the literary language used in azerbaijan was quite similar after the ottoman empire fell turkey removed much of the persian and arabic vocabulary from literary turkish creating a new standard form of turkish that favored words of turkic origin this never happened in azerbaijani so it retains more of those words than turkish does so whereas in turkey the word for yes is evidence a turkic word in azerbaijani yet at least that's the word used in formal speech the word for teacher in turkish men and in azerbaijani the word for school in turkish and in azerbaijani the word for province in turkish and in azerbaijani the same loanword used to be used in the ottoman empire and in turkey until 1960 but it's not used for the modern provinces the word for doctor in turkish persian and arabic words like these in azerbaijani often sound old-fashioned and funny to turkish speakers but there are still a decent number of arabic and persian words in turkish too they weren't all successfully removed from the language it's also worth noting that the turkish language reforms replaced the perso arabic script with the latin script which turkish is still written in today in iran south azerbaijani or azeri as it's often called there is still written in the person-arabic script until its independence in 1991 azerbaijan spent most of the 19th and 20th centuries under the control of the russian empire than the soviet union and in 1939 north azerbaijani began to be written in the cyrillic script it now uses the latin script but there are russian loanwords in the language for example the word for closet in turkish and in azerbaijani the word for pencil in turkish and in azerbaijani interestingly this word was borrowed from russian but russian actually borrowed this word from a different turkic language not azerbaijani but a different one so it's like russian borrowed the word and then lent it back azerbaijani also has a cognate of the turkish word but it means pen rather than pencil there were also words of russian origin used in administration and military for example the word for headquarters in turkish madqueez and in azerbaijani the word for division in turkish and azerbaijani division loan words aside plenty of other common words are different as well for instance the word for probably in turkish and in azerbaijani dsn the word meaning supposedly in turkish and in azerbaijani and the list goes on as is normally the case with closely related languages there are numerous false friends in turkish and azerbaijani words that look and sound similar but have different meanings yes yes in turkish this means summer and in azerbaijani it means spring in turkish this means muffin but in azerbaijani it means bread cool in turkish this means postage stamp but in azerbaijani it means money sumik in turkish this means snot as in nasal mucus while in azerbaijani it means bone in turkish this word means dirt in azerbaijani it means harm or a harmful act in some cases cognate words may be difficult to recognize because of multiple differences in spelling and pronunciation for example the word meaning like that in turkish and in azerbaijani the word meaning sublime in turkish and in azerbaijani the word for grazing in turkish and in azerbaijani there are many little differences in pronunciation and orthography between the two languages there are too many little differences to talk about all of them but let's look at a few examples some of the words starting with the letter b in turkish start with m in azerbaijani while the other personal pronouns are the same the one meaning i is different in turkish ben and in azerbaijani men the word for thousands in turkish and in azerbaijani mean for some turkish words that have the letter d or k in the middle the d or k becomes doubled in azerbaijani look at the following numbers for example seven yeti also notice the k in turkish becomes q in azerbaijani which represents the sound ga as it appears next to the hard vowels this is because the old unpalatalized k sound became voiced to ge in azerbaijani still occurs but only in loanwords the word for woman in turkish and in azerbaijani garden the word for far note that at the end of a word q is pronounced the letter q is not used in turkish for some turkish words that start with g g is replaced with k in azerbaijani for example the word for shirt and the word for heart in the abstract sense of the word in azerbaijani there's a tendency for side-by-side consonants to undergo metathesis in other words their order becomes reversed this happens in many words in very casual speech but even some standard formal words have undergone metathesis the word for soil the word for leaf the word for naked the word for incense and in azerbaijani it means smoke rather than incense the voiced consonants never occur at the end of a word in turkish whereas they can in azerbaijani in turkish their voiceless equivalents are used instead for example the word for book in turkish it's and in azerbaijanitz the word for crown in turkish for turkish words that begin with vowels it's common for the azerbaijani cognate word to have an h before the initial vowel pronounced ha for example the word for spider this word means knitting or braiding in turkish in azerbaijani it refers to braiding or bricklaying like in construction when the letter a comes before v in turkish in azerbaijani it's an o and the combination of o plus v sounds like o for example the word for rabbit in turkish and an azerbaijani in turkish an apostrophe is used to add a suffix to a proper noun like the name of a person place or thing but not in azerbaijani for example this means in baku which is a city in azerbaijan in both turkish and azerbaijani there's this letter in azerbaijani this letter is pronounced like a soft g in spanish in turkish it isn't really pronounced as a consonant anymore but normally indicates that the previous vowel is lengthened in turkish this letter called umushak ge or soft g can appear next to any vowel in azerbaijani when it occurs next to a soft vowel it becomes y for example the word for needle the word for button also when the letter g appears next to a hard vowel in a turkish word in the equivalent azerbaijani word it's the soft g called re in azerbaijani the word for wave talga the word for emotion do we i should note that the more common word for emotion in azerbaijani is which looks to me like a russian loanword grammar the grammar of turkish and azerbaijani is basically the same both are agglutinative languages that follow the same system of adding derivational affixes to roots to create longer words but there are some isolated differences to use a verb in a subordinate clause with the meaning of when the action takes place the turkish verb has the suffix while azerbaijani has for example the verb meaning to flow with the following forms it expresses the meaning of when it flows in turkish there's a difference in the definite accusative forms of nouns in turkish and azerbaijani when the accusative suffix is added to a noun ending in a vowel in turkish the consonant is added to the beginning of the suffix while in azerbaijani the consonant is added for example this word which means person in turkish and man as in male in azerbaijani now the accusative form in turkish and azerbaijani here's an example sentence in turkish this means i don't know that person in azerbaijani this means i don't know that man in azerbaijani the usual word for person is an arabic word that's also used in persian this means i don't know that person why is there no sound in the accusative form because this word ends in a consonant not in a vowel turkish also has a cognate of this word which is a synonym of but is used less often in turkish there's a present continuous suffix ior though the first vowel changes depending on the vowels in the verb root we just saw this suffix in the previous sentence this suffix is not used in azerbaijani and might sound funny to azerbaijani speakers for example this means he's coming in turkish and in azerbaijani as is typical in agglutinative languages this one word is a whole sentence this is the root meaning come this is the present continuous this is the general present suffix and there's nothing after that meaning there's no personal ending so we know this is in the third person singular he she or it in azerbaijani there's a negative prefix na that comes from persian which is productive meaning that new words can be produced using it in turkish it's only used for a small number of pre-existing archaic words for example in both turkish and azerbaijani this word means complete in turkish the word for incomplete is in azerbaijani it's this means an incomplete sentence in azerbaijani aside from the different word for incomplete notice that the turkish phrase has an extra word in azerbaijani there's no indefinite article but in turkish the word meaning one can be used as an indefinite article in a noun phrase like this with an adjective the word comes after the adjective if it's being used as an indefinite article it would come before the adjective if it were being used as a number unlike in turkish in azerbaijani the question forming suffixes are placed at the end of the sentence for example the sentence meaning can you come over here in turkish it's nice word for word it's here come able question you are in azerbaijanitz word for word it's here come able you are question but in daily spoken azerbaijani usually the question suffixes are not even used and questions are indicated with intonation instead also notice that in turkish meaning to be able to is a suffix on the verb but in azerbaijani it's a separate word and other elements are suffixed to it as you can see turkish and azerbaijani are closely related and very similar the way they work is basically the same but you also saw that there are lots of minor differences in pronunciation spelling and grammar that you would need to become familiar with in order to fully understand the other language the biggest difference probably lies in the vocabulary since the two languages have moved in different directions especially with the 1920s language reforms in turkey but they are indisputably sister languages and a native speaker of either one can get used to hearing the other relatively easily speaking the other one well is another matter and would probably take longer the question of the day for speakers of turkish and azerbaijani how well are you able to communicate with speakers of the other language and to other people what's your impression of turkish and azerbaijani do the differences stand out to you as major and now it's time to say thanks to all of the langfocus patreon supporters especially the ones whose names appear right here on the screen because they are the top tier patreon supporters so i want to emphatically say thank you to them and to everyone thank you for watching and have a nice day [Music] you

Channel: Langfocus

Views: 752,071

Keywords: language study, polyglot, foreign language, linguist, linguistics, Turkic languages, Middle Eastern languages, Central Asian languages, languages of the Caucasus, Azeri language, Azerbaijan, languages of Iran, Turkish Azerbaijani comparison, Are Turkish and Azerbaijani the same, Are Turkish and Azerbaijani mutually intelligible, Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Turkish

Id: WHpqT2nDrfY

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 18 2021