ABSTRACT
Azeri or, officially, Azerbaijani is the national language of the Republic of Azerbaijan, located in Transcaucasia and bordering Iran, Russia, Georgia, and the Caspian Sea. The term Azeri is used in linguistic publications to refer to the language of Azerbaijan and the related varieties in Iran and Iraq. Historically, Azeri goes back to the Turkic varieties spoken by the Seljuks, who immigrated to Transcaucasia from Inner Asia during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Azeri was written in Arabic script until a Latin-based system was introduced in 1929 in line with the script reforms employed throughout the Soviet Union. Azeri word accent follows general Turkic patterns. There is normally a high pitch on the last syllable and often an expiratory stress on the first one. The first- and second-person singular genitive and dative forms do not display the irregular back vowels of most other Turkic languages.
