# Shouldn't we allow posts about Azeri/Azerbaijani here, inasmuch as they are Turkish dialects?



## kraftwerk

Nationalism aside: all questions about Azeri/Azerbaijani at the moment have to go in the 'other languages' forum, where no-one answers. This makes no sense, since the vocabulary and grammar are so akin to Turkish. The Arabic language thread allows questions about Moroccan Arabic and about Iraqi Arabic, which are much more different from each other than Azeri and Turkish. Can we please post about Azeri here, or at least generate thoughtful discussion?


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## Rallino

While a joint-forum would be helpful in that more people would see a question and try to answer; with a much larger user-base of Turkish than Azerbaijani, I'm almost sure that the Azerbaijanis would risk being drowned, or that all questions about Azerbaijani would risk getting a "Well, in Turkish it would be ..." answer before an Azerbaijani native comes around.

Plus, Azerbaijani isn't the only language Turkish is to a high degree mutually intelligible with. There is also Turkmen.

I'll, however, leave this thread open to see what others think.


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## kraftwerk

Rallino said:


> While a joint-forum would be helpful in that more people would see a question and try to answer; with a much larger user-base of Turkish than Azerbaijani, I'm almost sure that the Azerbaijanis would risk being drowned, or that all questions about Azerbaijani would risk getting a "Well, in Turkish it would be ..." answer before an Azerbaijani native comes around.
> 
> Plus, Azerbaijani isn't the only language Turkish is to a high degree mutually intelligible with. There is also Turkmen.
> 
> I'll, however, leave this thread open to see what others think.



Wouldn't "well in Turkish it would be..." responses actually be useful?


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## shafaq

Rallino said:


> .... I'm almost sure that the Azerbaijanis would *risk being drowned*, or that all questions about Azerbaijani would *risk getting a "Well, in Turkish it would be ..."* answer before an Azerbaijani native comes around.
> 
> Plus, Azerbaijani isn't the only language Turkish is to a high degree mutually intelligible with. There is also Turkmen.



I think a more real risk even danger than *this*; is the possibility of causing a closeness between intentionally estranged parts of Turk originated peoples.
That would be a real disaster.


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## cherine

Hi,

Let's not get politics into this, please, Shafaq.


kraftwerk said:


> The Arabic language thread allows questions about Moroccan Arabic and about Iraqi Arabic, which are much more different from each other than Azeri and Turkish.


It's not a matter of similarity or mutual intelligibility, but of classification. Iraqi, Moroccan, Levantine, Egyptian... are _dialects_ of one language. Just like Mexican, Colombian, Peruvian, Castellano... are dialects of Spanish and are all discussed in one forum.
If Azeri and Turkemen are dialects of Turkish, then they should be all discussed in the Turkish forum. But if they're independent languages, than they shouldn't be placed here. Just like Sicilian and Neapolitan and other langagues spoken in Italy are discussed in the Other Languages forum and not the Italian forum, because they are not considered dialects of Italian.

Whenever there's enough demand for, and replies to, Azeri and Turkemen and whichever other languages discussed in the Other Languages forum, we can have a forum for them as well, which was the case of most of the forums in WordReference. They started as separate threads from time to time about a language, and when the number of those threads, and of the participants, grew, the forum admin created a subforum for them.


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## kraftwerk

cherine said:


> Hi,
> 
> Let's not get politics into this, please, Shafaq.
> 
> It's not a matter of similarity or mutual intelligibility, but of classification. Iraqi, Moroccan, Levantine, Egyptian... are _dialects_ of one language. Just like Mexican, Colombian, Peruvian, Castellano... are dialects of Spanish and are all discussed in one forum.
> If Azeri and Turkemen are dialects of Turkish, then they should be all discussed in the Turkish forum. But if they're independent languages, than they shouldn't be placed here. Just like Sicilian and Neapolitan and other langagues spoken in Italy are discussed in the Other Languages forum and not the Italian forum, because they are not considered dialects of Italian.



What's considered a dialect or a language is a political question.

I'm talking about linguistics here.


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## cherine

Me too. And I don't want to go into a debate about what's political and what's not, I prefer to rely on the unanimous opinions of linguists. If it's unanimously accepted that Azeri is a Turksih dialect, then you're right and the Azeri threads should be discussed here (even at the risk of them being burried by the other ones about Turkish). Otherwise, they should remain in the Other Languages forum.


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## Rallino

Azerbaijani has its own written standard which is used in their official documents. I don't know if it can be considered a dialect of Turkish.


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## kraftwerk

These give good rules of thumb:

Duolingo: Learn Spanish, French and other languages for free
"This text is almost fully understandable. There are 4 unknown words: "səthində, materik, qoşalaşmak, qoşa-qoşa". But overall it is easily understandable by a Turk."
https://www.quora.com/To-what-exten...thers-language-can-native-speakers-understand
"Azerbaijani people listen to Turkish music, watch Turkish serials, read books in Turkish etc. Did they attend any Turkish course to be able to do all those? Of course not. Can an American person learn Turkish by only doing those without attending any course? The answer is obvious: no! Azerbaijanis can do because they already know it. All they need to do is to get used to the words that we use but they don’t. I learned Azerbaijani by only reading newspapers, forums, blogs etc."


also, why would we allow Osmanlica, which is not intelligible to Turkish speakers without education (not so for Azeri)?


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## shafaq

cherine said:


> Hi,
> 
> Let's not get politics into this, please, Shafaq.


 Calling my post as "political"(in fact is just a statement); is  the confession and the proof for that the ongoing situation in Turkish Language Forum is a political choice.

Otherwise we can't allege anything reasonable in explaining what is going on Turkish Forum; where; Amharik, Aramaik, Amazigh even Hebrew related posts arn't alienated in the Arabic Forum;  besides much more far dialects of Arabic comparing to the Turkish and Azerbaijani...

Ah! Excuse me please! I have forgotten the possible "deep *dark ignorance* on Turkish Language and its dialects" as another choice for "reasonable explanation" .




cherine said:


> It's not a matter of similarity or mutual intelligibility, but of classification. Iraqi, Moroccan, Levantine, Egyptian... are _dialects_ of one language. Just like Mexican, Colombian, Peruvian, Castellano... are dialects of Spanish and are all discussed in one forum.
> If Azeri and Turkemen are dialects of Turkish, then they should be all discussed in the Turkish forum.


If you are serious in your that opinion; (frankly; I surely believe that you are; because you can't imagine that even an American  forum user had insulted here because s/he used the most known and famous Turkish salutation word "Selam!" when saluting the Forum users. That was just because its Islamic and Arabic origin); you wouldn't advocate this nonsense, cold war era phenomenon which is still insistently surviving in Turkish Forum.

-Just to remember, it was a cold war era convention behind the Iron Curtain  -even in the Republic of Turkey- to treat Turkic dialects as independent languages and make up all the way different alphabets for them instead of commonly used Arabic Alphabet; to alienate the peoples. That was a 'realite politic' and a political choice at that era-.




cherine said:


> But if they're independent languages, than they shouldn't be placed here.


Turkish; isn't a language that imported to Earth by Martian aliens... It is farthest western dialect of Turks' language side by side with Azeri, Turkomani, Uzbeki, Uyghur as well as many others; with sometimes different prononciation of same words and verbs as well as same rules. Some of these dialects are so close to each other that you can't realize the difference; like the dialect of Moldovian Christian Gagauses; and faraway like- farthest Eastern- China Uyghur dialect; but not far than Iraqi and Maghrebi dialects of Arabic -as stated by others too-.

Due to nonwritten political choices of someones (perhaps someone would prefer "deep dark ignorance" option here) ruling on this forum -against the allover mission of the Word Reference Forums- ; Turkish dialects are alienated and discriminated by alleging some flimsy pretexts.

 Here I invite all; to face this -whatever politics or ignorance sourced- palpable awkwardness in Turkish Forum and to do what has to be done; without crouching down behind "alleging all demands on that way are political".

I hope that the common sense will urge here too; instead of personal political choices or ignorance -whatsoever-.


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## Rallino

Shafaq, you're talking as if I'm against the idea. I am not. I just don't think it's feasible right now.

The reason why Turkish has its own forum and the other languages/dialects don't is because WordReference has a Turkish dictionary. When a language has its dictionary on WRF, it gets its own forum.

A similar thing happened with Czech and Slovak. Both languages are mutually intelligible just like how Turkish and Azerbaijani are, but Czech has a dictionary, so it got its own forum while all Slovak related questions go under the forum "Other Slavic Languages".

Now, the problem is "Is Azeri is a dialect of Turkish?" Even though "Azeri" is a term coined in the USSR period, and prior to that people in Azerbaijan claimed they spoke Turkish, times are different now. The constitution of Azerbaijan states: _Azərbaycanın dövlət dili Azərbaycan dilidir._ (The official language of Azerbaijan is Azerbaijani language). It doesn't say "Turkish". And I think many Azeris would be offended to hear "Azeri is just a dialect of Turkish." No one wants their language to be called _just a dialect_ of some other language. Nonetheless, I hope some Azeri forum members will join this discussion and let us know what they think.

On the other hand, we *could* at least have an "Other Turkic Languages" forum, which I thought about in the past. But there is a major problem. The number of threads in all the major Turkic languages are as follows:

Azeri: 20
Turkmen: 3
Uyghur: 2
Kazakh: 14
Uzbek: 9
Kyrgyz: 2
Tatar: 19

That's a total of 70 threads *in the past 13 years*. There's just not enough traffic for such a forum to happen unfortunately.


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## shafaq

Rallino said:


> Shafaq, you're talking as if I'm against the idea. I am not. I just don't think it's feasible right now.


For a moment; I felt as if we discuss how we establish an Intergalactic Network Space Station on Mars for WRF with a trillion $$$ cost. 
I think our current agenda is just how we repair 'against the grain' placement of Turkic languages within this (not political or religious but) linguistic forums.

I appreciate your terrific effort to keep the status quo as it is; by supplying us some non-real, some political, some contorted, some flimsy -but as a whole "linguistically nonsense"- data; to convince us that the Azeri is is a different language and this mistaken statu quo is the best and compatible with the linguistic facts.

But what I can't get properly is; in the sake of what is your this sacred fight...
I am sure it isn't in the sake of linguistics. Because even your own words(just give a visit to the blue coloured ones) are opposing your assertion.

Willy-nilly leaving the linguistics out and remembering your many -politics or religion smelling- false and misleading posts on some -somehow religion related- Turkish words and expressions (like that resusticated first page example ); I suspect that your this sacred fight is in the sake of religion and/or politics; in this language forums.



Rallino said:


> The reason why Turkish has its own forum and the other languages/dialects don't is because WordReference has a Turkish dictionary. When a language has its dictionary on WRF, it gets its own forum.
> 
> A similar thing happened with Czech and Slovak. Both languages are mutually intelligible just like how Turkish and Azerbaijani  are, but Czech has a dictionary, so it got its own forum while all Slovak related questions go under the forum "Other Slavic Languages".


As I stated previously; this is an example of misleading and contorted data you supply us.
Just as an example: WR has an Arabic Dictionary but *Arabic doesn't get its own forum and goes under Semitic Languages clasification*. As well as Russian and Polish *under Slavic Languages; *even others*.* Any one takes a peek at the WR home page and WRF home page may realize this without an effort.



Rallino said:


> Now, the problem is "Is Azeri is a dialect of Turkish?" Even though "Azeri" is a term coined in the USSR period, and prior to that people in Azerbaijan claimed they spoke Turkish, times are different now. The constitution of Azerbaijan states: _Azərbaycanın dövlət dili Azərbaycan dilidir._ (The official language of Azerbaijan is Azerbaijani language). It doesn't say "Turkish".



This is an other incorrect, misleading data, contorted to serve your sacred fight.

First as first; as you see; it is a pure Turkish sentence understood without any little effort by any Turkish speaking people even a seven year old child.
Secondly; *It doesn't say* (The official language of Azerbaijan is Azerbaijani language) but says " The state language of Azerbaijan is the AZERBAIJAN LANGUAGE) without specifying which language or dialect.
*There is no word read as* "Azerbaijani" there; it is just in your mind. It is crystal clear for even an ignorant one.



Rallino said:


> And I think many Azeris would be offended to hear "Azeri is just a dialect of Turkish." No one wants their language to be called _just a dialect_ of some other language.



These are something what I called "flimsy pretexts" previously and are fictive ones.
At nowhere I said Azeri is just a dialect of (Anatolian) Turkish language .
That is the first time; I say that Azerbaijan Azeris, Iranian Azeris, Anatolian Turks, Uyghurs of China, Moldovian Gagause, Kirimian Tatars, peoples of Kazakhistan, Kirghizistan, Turkmenistan, plus dozens of peoples living in Russia, Bulgaria, Greece ... are speaking in dialects of Turk Language =Turkish =Turkic. To be true linguistically; all of these must be classified under Turk or Turkic Language Header.
That is what I demand here; as well as to leave political and/or religious, misleading, deceptive approachs to some languages, words and expressions.

I have never encountered suclike freak in other forums; discriminating some words-expressions and declaring incorrect information; by regarding their etymology and usage.



Rallino said:


> On the other hand, we *could* at least have an "Other Turkic Languages" forum, which I thought about in the past. But *there is a major problem*. The number of threads in all the major Turkic languages are as follows:
> 
> Azeri: 20
> Turkmen: 3
> Uyghur: 2
> Kazakh: 14
> Uzbek: 9
> Kyrgyz: 2
> Tatar: 19
> 
> That's a total of 70 threads *in the past 13 years*. There's just not enough traffic for such a forum to happen unfortunately.



Yes! There is a major problem as you said; but I think this major problem is; again in the  information that you carry it here...
There is nothing called "Other Turkic Languages Forum" here in WRF.
I couldn't see... Where is it?

As for unpopularity of Turkic forums; it is just a statistical data; doesn't prevent us to treat them correctly linguistically.
At the begining of WRF there wasn't even two unique users here, but this didn't keep back its creater puting it online.


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## Rallino

My religious or political views are none of your business.



shafaq said:


> Just as an example: WR has an Arabic Dictionary but *Arabic doesn't get its own forum and goes under Semitic Languages clasification*. As well as Russian and Polish *under Slavic Languages; *even others*.* Any one takes a peek at the WR home page and WRF home page may realize this without an effort.



What the heck are you talking about?
Arabic has a dictionary -> It has its own forum.
Russian has a dictionary -> It has its own forum.
Turkish has a dictionary -> It has its own forum.

Arabic forum is placed under a greater forum called Semitic Languages, because WRF has another Semitic language that has its own forum too: Hebrew.
Same for Russian. There are also Czech and Polish forums, so they are all grouped as Slavic Languages.

There is no Turkic Languages forum, because there is no other Turkic language that has its own forum. What will you group Turkish with?
Chinese is also not under "Sino-Tibetan Languages" or something, because there isn't a forum for Burmese for example. Talk to me when there is.

When only one language in a language family has a forum, it stands alone.



shafaq said:


> This is an other incorrect, misleading data, contorted to serve your sacred fight.
> 
> First as first; as you see; it is a pure Turkish sentence understood without any little effort by any Turkish speaking people even a seven year old child.
> Secondly; *It doesn't say* (The official language of Azerbaijan is Azerbaijani language) but says " The state language of Azerbaijan is the AZERBAIJAN LANGUAGE) without specifying which language or dialect.
> *There is no word read as* "Azerbaijani" there; it is just in your mind. It is crystal clear for even an ignorant one.
> 
> These are something what I called "flimsy pretexts" previously and are fictive ones.
> At nowhere I said Azeri is just a dialect of (Anatolian) Turkish language .
> That is the first time; I say that Azerbaijan Azeris, Iranian Azeris, Anatolian Turks, Uyghurs of China, Moldovian Gagause, Kirimian Tatars, peoples of Kazakhistan, Kirghizistan, Turkmenistan, plus dozens of peoples living in Russia, Bulgaria, Greece ... are speaking in dialects of Turk Language =Turkish =Turkic. To be true linguistically; all of these must be classified under Turk or Turkic Language Header.
> That is what I demand here; as well as to leave political and/or religious, misleading, deceptive approachs to some languages, words and expressions.
> 
> I have never encountered suclike freak in other forums; discriminating some words-expressions and declaring incorrect information; by regarding their etymology and usage.



You're being delusional. All right it says "Azerbaijan Language". Where does it say that Azerbaijan Language = Turkish?
Does the constitution of Austria say "Austria Language"? No. It says German.
Why doesn't the Azerbaijan constitution say "Turkish"? Because it has a different written standard. And it's not like Hindi vs. Urdu where the only difference is the alphabet. No. The grammar isn't the same. The syntax isn't the same. And the mutual intelligibility isn't even 100%. It's capped around 80%.

Plus, even Azeri people say they speak *Azərbaycanca*. So who are we to claim it's "the same language"?
And even if it is the same language, why should it be called Turkish? Why don't we call our language Azerbaijani?

Turks understand Azeris. This doesn't automatically mean that their languages are the same. There is a dialect continuum.
Let's say there are three languages: *A*, *B* and *C*. And there is a dialect continuum. So;
Speakers of *A* understand speakers of *B*;
Speakers of *B* understand speakers of *C.*
But, *A* and *C* are geographically so far apart that, speakers of *A* don't understand speakers of *C*.

So if we go by your logic and say 'if two languages are mutually intelligible, they're the same language' because that's clearly what you think, then we have:
*A* and *B* are the same language. *B* and *C* are the same language. But at the same time, *A *and *C* are different languages. So what is *B*? A language or a dialect?

See? Mutual intelligibility isn't a full-proof criterion to decide if the two languages are the same. They're all in the same language family, but that's all. Yes Turks and Kazakhs are Turkic, but "Kazakh=Turkish" is wrong. The mutual intelligibility between Kazakh and Turkish is lower than 10%. So it's your Panturkist feelings talking here.



shafaq said:


> Yes! There is a major problem as you said; but I think this major problem is; again in the information that you carry it here...
> There is nothing called "Other Turkic Languages Forum" here in WRF.
> I couldn't see... Where is it?



Did you even read what I said? Let me repeat. *There is not enough traffic*. 70 threads in 13 years. And that's the total number of threads in 7 languages. That's a horrible traffic. That forum would look completely deserted. You might as well forget about having such a forum for now. I dreamt it once, but I got back to reality. It's not happening. Maybe in the far future.

And by the way, ultimately, I'm not the one who decides if a new forum should be opened or not. Feel free to contact the WRF admin for that.


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## kraftwerk

Rallino said:


> My religious or political views are none of your business.
> 
> Did you even read what I said? Let me repeat. *There is not enough traffic*. 70 threads in 13 years. And that's the total number of threads in 7 languages. That's a horrible traffic. That forum would look completely deserted. You might as well forget about having such a forum for now. I dreamt it once, but I got back to reality. It's not happening. Maybe in the far future.



Maybe there's no traffic because there isn't a forum. Just my guess, which I believe is the most rational one.


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## Rallino

Maybe. Or maybe because there are too few learners.


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## cherine

From experience, the number of threads is not related to the existence or not of a forum. Most of the smaller forums started in the Other Languages forum. The Indo-Iranian forum, for example, was created when the number of threads about Hindi, Urdu and Persian grew to the point they almost burried the threads about other languages, so we needed to split those in their own forum to give a chance to threads about other languages to remain on the forum's first page. The same happened with the threads about Hungarian, Tagalog, Turkish....etc. And I'm only talking about the forums that I witnessed being discussed and created. I wasn't here when the Arabic forum was established, but this one too started in the Other Languages forum. (Here's a thread with the history of the WR forums, for whoever's interested  ).

So, to repeat what I've said before: once there's enough demand and traffic for whichever language, there will be a great chance for it to have its own forum.


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## mkellogg

Hello, everybody.  Last year, I put together virtual forums based on tags.  Here it is for Azeri.  People can click "Watch Tag" to get email notifications whenever a new post is made.

This is what you can do to make it successful:

 - Find 5-10 friends who have an interest in making the forum succeed *by answering questions*.  If all of you subscribe to the tag/forum, we will have a healthy group of people ready to answer any questions.
 - The other half of it is finding people to ask questions.  That doesn't seem to be the problem right now, but it is needed for a healthy forum.

I think, if we have a core group of Azeri speakers who can answer questions, there will be no need to put Azeri "inside" the Turkish forum.

Seeing this discussion, it is obvious that I need to put more effort into making this virtual forum visible.  I will take a look at it and see what I can do.


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## jamila ishtar

kraftwerk said:


> Wouldn't "well in Turkish it would be..." responses actually be useful?


it wouldn't be useful, even so azeri and turkish are very close and akin, they aren't single and same language, they have their own features, also if you go by that you can take tatar uzbek and few others dowm the same pot, as we all know together they form turkic language family,


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