Alexei Lund
With few speakers in the United States outside of Los Angeles, one hoping to learn Azeri has little choice but to go abroad (and if you’re from Northern California like me, just about any foreign country sounds more attractive than LA). As the only student in an intensive Azeri language program held at the Azerbaijan Language University (with a three to one faculty to student ratio, the Language University’s program should be in good shape if any one from the US News and World Report shows up in Baku), this summer provided an excellent opportunity not only to learn Azeri quickly, but to test out some of the truisms of immersive learning.
The first truism, of course, is that immersion in a local culture is the best way to learn a language. While this holds for many monolingual environments (especially ones where rudeness to foreigners is raised to the level of an art- St. Petersburg comes to mind), Baku, among other former Soviet cities proves an exception to this rule. Few Azeris exclusively speak Azeri, and as you work your way up to the more educated stratum (i. e. the types that are willing to put up with foreign grad students), this becomes even more prominent. A possible antidote to this, of course, would be listening to the radio and watching TV- a line of action most suitable for someone such as myself whose main insights into Russian culture were gleaned from DDT, Zemfira and Shchastlivy vmeste (the Russian adaptation of Married with Children). This all sounds great until one realizes that the best Azeri music today is largely instrumental- at its best, Baku’s jazz scene rivals that of any other city. Most of the vocal music, however, falls within the tradition of Estrada- the bland disco-pop supported by the Kremlin to the exclusion of rock in the 1970s and 1980s. A few run-throughs of the local radio stations and you’ll be relieved to hear the odd former winner of a recent Eurovision contest. The situation with regard to television is even bleaker; a few hours of talk shows and comedies that left me with a new found appreciation of the comedic range of Dave Coullier and Tony Danza sent me running to the comforts of Russian channels like NTV and TNT, where Steven Siegal and Mickey Rourke continue to enjoy stardom. As a last resort, I took to reading the classics of Azeri modern literature, and sensing a dissertation in the works, spent much of my summer in my room reading the satires of Jalil Mammedguluzade and Mirza Alakbar Sabir. So it looks like immersion isn’t the way to go to learn Azeri, unless of course immersion entails staying in a sweltering apartment and reading.
Another truism is that discomfort gives rise to some of the most productive language learning. Usually this pertains to the banalities of everyday life- learning how to order food in a restaurant, ask for directions, and engaging in small talk with a limited vocabulary. The problem, however, is that most Azeris are so polite that talking to a random Azeri is likely to be more pleasant and comfortable than a fair amount of the conversations one finds oneself in while in grad school. If the quotidian provides precious little discomfort, this is made up for in spades whenever you find yourself talking about history or politics with an Azeri. As most Azeris tell it, their history consists of little beyond their heroic attempts to overcome the depravity and genocidal intentions of Armenians- several of my teachers told me variously that ninety-five percent of Armenians are sociopaths or that cannibalism is a common practice amongst Karabagh Armenians- a sort of discomfort that can put even the rudest Russian police officer to shame. But lo and behold, this truism about language learning did not fail me. After eight weeks of questions like this, I came up with more conversational dodges in Azeri than in English (recognizing this tendency of mine, my language instructors spent quite a bit of time telling me how to steer my way out of conversations, especially useful whenever my host-mother was inquiring why I wasn’t married.)
Despite this, and Azerbaijan’s lack of any sort of tourism industry (the only souvenirs available are the Putin and Osama bin Laden nesting dolls one finds in Izmailovskii Park), this summer turned out to be very rewarding for me. With no contacts among the expat community, I had little choice but to speak Russian or Azeri. While I couldn’t always get Azeris to speak to me in Azeri, there was no lack of encouragement to speak Azeri. If I “learned” more about Armenians than I could have possibly wanted to, most Azeris I met were excited to talk to a foreigner and spared no effort in showing me around. Even if Azerbaijan does not have the tourist profile of even neighboring Armenia and Georgia, I found that life isn’t complete until you’ve swam in one of the most polluted bodies of water in the world (the Caspian), seen some of the oldest cave paintings in the world and fallen into a mud volcano (see picture).