Fun Fact of the Day

Have you ever listened to Bohemian Rhapsody?  Seen Wayne's World? Or read The Chronicles of Narnia?

Then you know Azərbaycani.

Well, you know some Azərbaycani.

Exhibit 1: "Aslan," from the Chronic(what!)cles of Naria, means "lion" in Azərbaycani.

Exhibit 2: "Bismillah," from "Bohemian Rhapsody" (as in: "Let him go! Bismillah! We will not let you go-o-o-o!"), means "in the name of God" in Azərbaycani.  I've learned of it's use in two situations so far:

1. As an exclamation: if someone startles you, you might say "Bismillah!"; and 
2. As a preface to an action: you might say this prior to rinsing out a glass and tossing the water out the window or before you start tinkering with some electrical wiring.

Mother Tongue

Introduction

Since language is one of the most important keys to any culture, you will find below a very brief introduction to the Azerbaijani language.  After I go over the pronunciation of the Azerbaijani alphabet below, I will make every effort in my future blog posts to write Azerbaijani (Azərbaycani) words as you would see them written in-country.

General Background (excerpted from our language workbook):

"Azerbaijani is a member of the Turkic branch of the Altaic language family.  Specifically, it belongs to the Oghuz Seljub sub-group, along with (Osmanli) Turkish and some dialects of Crimean Tatar.  Other well-known members of the Turkic branch include: Uzbek, Kipchak, Kyrgyz, Tatar and Kazakh. The Turkic languages closely resemble each other and form a complex of mutually intelligible dialects. The other two branches generally presumed to make up the Altaic family are the Mongolian and Manchu Tungus languages."

Brief History of the Written Language

Beginning approximately in the 7th Century, written Azerbaijani used the Arabic alphabet, which was replaced by the Latin alphabet in January 1929.  In 1940, a new Azerbaijani alphabet was created based on Cyrillic.  After independence from the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan returned to the use of a Turkish version of a Latin alphabet having 32 letters.  There are nine vowels and twenty three consonants.  Many of the letters sound the same as in English, but there are several special characters that have no English equivalent and a few letter that look like an English letter, but sound different.

Letter	Pronunciation
A a	father
B b	bat
C c	jam
Ç ç	chat
D d	dog
E e	enter
Ə ə	man; sad
F f	football
G g	no exact equivalent but similar to "g" in "give; singer"
Ğ ğ	no English equivalent; clost to French "r" in "pardon"
H h	hat
X x	no English equivalent; close to Scottish "ch" in "loch"
I ı	happen
İ i	beach
J j	massage
K k	keep
Q q	Goat
L l	lamp
M m	map
N n	nap
O o	often
Ö ö	heard
P p	paper
R r	radio
S s	city; south
Ş ş	shelter
T t	tapestry
U u	moon
Ü ü	no exact English equivalent; very close to German übung
V v	vector
Y y	yesterday
Z z	zephyr

Notable Linguistic Characteristics

Unlike English, which has a subject-verb-object sentence structure, Azərbaycani generally has a subject-object-verb structure (e.g., "My name Yoda is."), wherein the grammatical functions are indicated by adding various suffixes to fixed stems.  Suffixes on nouns generally indicate gender and number, but there is no grammatical gender, as there is in most Romance Languages.  Azərbaycani also has Turkic vowel harmony where the vowels of suffixes must harmonize with the vowels of nouns and verb stems.  

PC Language Training

In addition to technical training regarding community economic development, our schedule generally includes four hours of formal language training per day, six days a week, conducted by our (awesome!) Language and Cultural Facilitator ("LCF"), which is reinforced by self-study (i.e., homework) and immersion (i.e., host family/community interaction).  It's definitely challenging, but seeing how well the AZ7s and AZ8s communicate in Azərbaycani after two years or one year, respectively, is both inspiring and reassuring.

Baku to the Future

As with general living conditions, internet access varies from PCT to PCT.  Some host families have wifi; some have DSL; some don't have any internet. My own access is limited, so please bear with.

We PCTs are currently stationed in the suburbs of Baku (on the road towards Sumgayit), which we aren't allowed to visit yet, but here's a preview of the capital city.

Baku is Azerbaijan's capital (and largest) city, the oil capital of the Caspian region. This satellite photo shows remarkable details of the city, including numerous port facilities, which are part of the extensive network of offshore oil platforms in the Caspian. The oil platforms off Baku, built in the 1950s and 1960s, were the first offshore oil-drilling efforts in the world. Today, multinational upstream activities, sea-level rise (the Caspian Sea has risen more than 2 m in the past 20 years), offshore platform maintenance, and related environmental impact are hot issues in Baku.  Courtesy of NASA.

Downtown Baku.  Courtesy of CIA World Factbook.

The Maiden Tower, built sometime between A.D. 800 and 1200, is probably the most recognized structure in the Old City of Baku.  Courtesy of CIA World Factbook.