Spring 2001 (9.1)
Page 11

Reader's Forum
Azeri As a Hobby

I'm from Turkey, presently living in Brazil. Recently I came across your Web site - AZERI.org - and was particularly impressed with the series, "Sociolinguistically Speaking" by Jala Garibova and Betty Blair. As a matter of fact, I've read every single article. I found your Web site while looking for some Azeri in order to study the similarities and differences with the Turkish language.

Languages are like a hobby for me: I speak Turkish, English, Portuguese and German fluently (although my German is becoming worse by the day because of lack of practice). I can also speak Persian and some Arabic (though not read or write) and have learned some Guarani while here in Brazil.

When I was a kid, we didn't have TV in Turkey (I'm 37), so I spent hours listening to Voice of America on the radio, trying to understand Turkic languages like Azeri and Uzbek. Later I wanted to research American Indian languages to identify similarities between them and Turkish. Unfortunately, my dream remains but a wish.

Well, time has passed and now I'm trying to maintain my interest of languages as a hobby, reading books and articles on the Internet whenever I can, in between family duties and working for a computer-related company during the day and doing translations for extra income at night.

That's why I enjoy your Web site so much. Keep up the good work! I'll be checking AZERI.org every week for new articles, which means you have another fan now. The material is so fascinating and very well written. Thanks again.

Demir Goknel Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

P.S. Could you provide links of other Web sites in Azeri? By the way, is the "upside-down e" (schwa) functional yet?

Editor: For other Web sites in Azeri, see the feature article in this issue. We found about 30 of them. This past year, quite a few sites have been created in Azeri Latin despite the fact that there is no standardized font for Azeri. So the "schwa" is still very troublesome (see article in this issue).

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From Azerbaijan International (9.1) Spring 2001.
© Azerbaijan International 2001. All rights reserved.

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