Azerbaijani language

Azerbaijani or Azeri is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in the Republic of Azerbaijan (9 million speakers), in northwestern Iran (12 to 15.5 million speakers) and in the Republic of Georgia, Russia, Turkey and in other countries with a presence of Azerbaijani speakers (6 million speakers).

Azerbaijani is member of the Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages and is closely related to Turkish, Qashqai, Turkmen and Crimean Tatar. Turkish and Azerbaijani are known to closely resemble each other, and the native speaker of one language is able to understand the other, though it is easier for a speaker of Azerbaijani to understand Turkish than the other way around