The Azeri language, also known as Azerbaijani, is official language of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The Azeri language is also spoken in parts of eastern Turkey, northern Iraq and in the southeastern area of the Republic of Georgia. There are approximately 27 million native speakers of the Azeri language.

The Azeri language is derived from the Oghuz family of languages and is most closely related to the Turkish, Persian and Arabic languages. It was brought from central Asia by the Seljuk Turks and was greatly influenced by the vocabulary, cadence and grammar of Persian and Arabic.

In its early formative stages, the Azeri language made use of various loanwords and phrases of Persian and Turkish origin The Azeri language eventually developed its own vocabulary and syntax.

While the Azeri language has many different dialects, speakers of these dialects tend to be mutually intelligible to each other. The main difference derives from the separation of Azeri-speakers in Iran and those found in the Caucasus region. The Iranian Azeri dialect contains many more loan words from Persian and Arabic than does the Caucasus dialect.

It is worth noting that the Azeri language has been written in several ways. Presently, the Republic of Azerbaijan officially uses the Latin alphabet. Until 1929, the Azeri language was only written using the Arabic alphabet. The Latin alphabet was used although less than a decade later the use of Cyrillic was also implemented.

Finally, in 1991, the Latin alphabet was reintroduced to write down Azeri, though all three alphabets- Cyrillic, Latin and Arabic- may still be seen in use throughout the regions that utilize the Azeri language.