(University of Helsinki)
Non-Turkic Languages in a Turkic-Dominant Multilingual Ecology:
Evidence from Azerbaijan
68th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Bangkok 2026
The Republic of Azerbaijan is often described as part of the broader Turkic linguistic and cultural world due to the dominant role of Azerbaijani as the national language and principal medium of interethnic communication. At the same time, the country is home to communities whose heritage languages belong to unrelated linguistic families, including Iranian, Northeast Caucasian, and Slavic. This paper examines how speakers of selected non-Turkic languages participate in and adapt to the “Turkic world”, understood not only genealogically but as a Turkic-dominant sociolinguistic environment.
The study focuses on five languages representing diverse historical and social trajectories: Tat, Juhuri, Lezgian, Khinalug, and the diasporic language Polish. The analysis also considers the role of Russian as a transregional lingua franca. The data are based on qualitative observations collected during a field trip to Azerbaijan in October 2025 (HALS research community, University of Helsinki), including visits to Baku and northeastern regions.
The paper examines patterns of multilingualism and the sociolinguistic functions of minority and majority languages. Particular attention is given to how these languages demonstrate different degrees of sociolinguistic involvement in the Turkic sphere and how speakers negotiate their identities in relation to Azerbaijani, Russian, and their heritage communities.
Preliminary findings suggest that Azerbaijani functions as the central organizing language, while Russian remains prominent in educational, professional, urban, and transregional networks. Tat speakers (Tat–Azerbaijani) show near-complete integration into the Azerbaijani sphere. Khinalug speakers (Khinalug–Azerbaijani) maintain stable diglossia resulting from the geographic isolation of their settlement(s). Lezgian speakers (Lezgian–Azerbaijani– Russian) are largely trilingual in a cross-border context. The Juhuri community (Juhuri–Russian–Azerbaijani, 19with some Hebrew) is more strongly oriented toward Russian, and similar patterns are observed in the Polish diaspora (Polish–Russian–Azerbaijani, variably distributed). These findings demonstrate a layered, multilingual ecology characterised by the functional division of linguistic resources and their unequal distribution. This ecology has been influenced by long-term contact, Soviet language policy, post-Soviet nation-building and the institutional consolidation of Azerbaijani as the dominant state language.