The Azerbaijani language is the official language of the Azerbaijan Republic. Azerbaijani is spoken by about 8 million people in Azerbaijan Republic and generally by 50 million people all over the world. Azerbaijani is a member of the Turkic branch of the Altaic language family, which includes about 20 languages. Close to 150 million people speak these languages in the area that stretches from the Adriatic Sea in the west to Mongolia, Siberia and China in the east. Specifically, Azerbaijani belongs to the Oghuz Seljuk sub-group, along with (Osmanli) Turkish. 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.
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