Where South Azerbaijani is spoken
South Azerbaijani is spoken in 5 countries: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq and 1 more.
On the map, South Azerbaijani is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks South Azerbaijani.
How many people speak South Azerbaijani?
Wikidata gives about 13.8 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.
Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.
Where South Azerbaijani sits in the language family tree
Glottolog classifies South Azerbaijani as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.
- Turkic
- Common Turkic
- Oghuz
- Nuclear Oghuz
- Central Oghuz
- South Azerbaijani
Related languages
Other languages in the Central Oghuz group:
- North Azerbaijani (9.2 million speakers)
More about South Azerbaijani
- Read about South Azerbaijani on Wikipedia
- Turkic languages map
- Languages spoken in Afghanistan
- All languages, A to Z
Codes: ISO 639-3 azb, Glottolog sout2697. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.
Questions about South Azerbaijani
Where is South Azerbaijani spoken?
South Azerbaijani is spoken in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq and 1 more. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.
How many people speak South Azerbaijani?
Wikidata gives about 13.8 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.
Which language family is South Azerbaijani in?
Glottolog places South Azerbaijani in the Turkic family, in the branch Common Turkic, Oghuz, Nuclear Oghuz and Central Oghuz.