Guests

I now have two Azerbaijanis helping me with the blog. I'm really grateful to them. I'll post photos soon with their permission. I would love to have other guests on the blog. Write to me if you are interested.

Aynur works at my local hair salon. She is working very hard to improve her English and help me improve my Azerbaijani. We are taking this approach: she writes up a typical conversation that she might have with a friend (in Azerbaijani). Then I translate it into English. She practices the English version and I practice the Azerbaijani. This is much more fun than reading the news or serious literary works! Aynur comes from Göy Göl.

Nigar is a dear friend and also my teacher of voice and piano. She is a brilliant music teacher and a talented musician and singer herself. Nigar is a native Bakuvian. She already speaks excellent English but of course I will correct her when she makes a mistake. This is very important for language learners - tell us about our mistakes! Nigar says I need to improve my inflection in Azerbaijani. This is a very difficult thing for me. I also need to be careful about my pronunciation of course since so many Azerbaijani sounds are not present in English. My husband (who has never studied Azerbaijani) has a beautiful accent because he speaks Irish Gaelic and that language has all those difficult Azerbaijani sounds.