The sociolinguistic situation of the Udi in Azerbaijan

This paper presents the results of sociolinguistic research conducted in March and April 1998 among the 4,000 Udi people living in the village of Nic in north-central Azerbaijan. The goals of the research were to investigate patterns of language use, bilingualism, and language attitudes with regard to the Udi, Russian, and Azerbaijani languages in the Udi community. Of particular interest are the differences between self-perception of proficiency in Russian and the results of testing and the apparent vitality of the language in spite of recent out-migration. Interviews, observations, questionnaires, and a Russian Sentence Repetition Test were employed.