Baku, Azerbaijan by Teuchterlad
Ethnologue estimates Azerbaijani (Azeri) as being spoken by about 6.1 million people in Azerbaijan, over 11.2 million in Iran, and 1.9 million people in surrounding Caucasian and Asian countries. The total estimate of 19.1 million worldwide speakers is a conservative figure.
I became interested in learning Azerbaijani, after meeting Professor Gubad Ibadoglu Bayramov, Chair of the Economic Research Center, Baku while he was a visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Professor Bayramov studies the use on state oil revenues and economic developmental. He suggested that I learn Azerbaijani (Azeri) in conjunction to doing research in Baku.
I assumed learning Azerbaijani would be more difficult than my previous studies in Spanish, German and Hebrew. I did not realize that only a handful of American universities teach the language on a limited basis, and It is not covered by language software programs.
Shared Talk, which is ran by Rosetta Stone, has a great language partner matching tool. The website lets users set up a simple profile of what language(s) one knows and what language(s) one wants to learn, email potential partners, chat and voice tools. SharedTalk.com works because it provides an easy to use platform for people to connect.
The system advertises for Rosetta Stone's software, but it is not invasive or overbearing. A simple banner at the top links to the main corporate site which sells software for 30 languages. Shared Talk advertises for Rosetta Stone, bit it is tasteful.
On Sunday I had my first Azerbaijani session with Leli, a brilliant medical student in Baku via Skype.
Cheers to learning a language with a tutor from 10,071 kilometers (5438 nautical miles, 6258 road miles).
