Qashqai (also spelled
Ghashghai,
Ghashghayi,
Qashqa'i, and
Qashqayi) is a
Turkic languageThe Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken by some...
spoken by the
QashqaiQashqai are a people in Iran speaking a Turkic language. Qashqais mainly live in the provinces of Fars, Khuzestan and southern Isfahan, but especially around the city of Shiraz in Fars.The Qashqai were originally nomadic pastoralists and some remain so today...
, an ethnic group living mainly in the
FarsFārs Fārs Fārs (pronounced /fɑː(ɹ)s/ (Persian: Fārs, Pārs) (Originally Pars) is one of the 30 provinces of Iran. It is in the south of the country and its center is Shiraz. It has an area of 122,400 km²...
region of
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
. Estimates of the number of Qashqai speakers vary,
EthnologueEthnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language.The Ethnologue contains statistics for 7,358 languages...
gives a figure of one and a half million. The Qashqai language is closely related to
AzerbaijaniAzerbaijani is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
, and some linguists consider it to be a dialect of that language.
Like
South AzerbaijaniSouth Azeri is a variety of the Azeri language spoken in northwestern Iran and neighboring regions of Iraq and Turkey. Other communities exist in Afghanistan and Syria. Dialects include Aynallu, Karapapakh, Tabriz, Afshari, Shahsavani, Moqaddam, Baharlu, Nafar, Qaragozlu, Pishagchi, Bayat,...
in Iran, Qashqai uses the Persian modification of the
Arabic alphabetThe Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic and Urdu. After the Latin alphabet, it is the second-most widely used alphabet around the world....
.
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Qashqai (also spelled
Ghashghai,
Ghashghayi,
Qashqa'i, and
Qashqayi) is a
Turkic languageThe Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken by some...
spoken by the
QashqaiQashqai are a people in Iran speaking a Turkic language. Qashqais mainly live in the provinces of Fars, Khuzestan and southern Isfahan, but especially around the city of Shiraz in Fars.The Qashqai were originally nomadic pastoralists and some remain so today...
, an ethnic group living mainly in the
FarsFārs Fārs Fārs (pronounced /fɑː(ɹ)s/ (Persian: Fārs, Pārs) (Originally Pars) is one of the 30 provinces of Iran. It is in the south of the country and its center is Shiraz. It has an area of 122,400 km²...
region of
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
. Estimates of the number of Qashqai speakers vary,
EthnologueEthnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language.The Ethnologue contains statistics for 7,358 languages...
gives a figure of one and a half million. The Qashqai language is closely related to
AzerbaijaniAzerbaijani is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
, and some linguists consider it to be a dialect of that language.
Like
South AzerbaijaniSouth Azeri is a variety of the Azeri language spoken in northwestern Iran and neighboring regions of Iraq and Turkey. Other communities exist in Afghanistan and Syria. Dialects include Aynallu, Karapapakh, Tabriz, Afshari, Shahsavani, Moqaddam, Baharlu, Nafar, Qaragozlu, Pishagchi, Bayat,...
in Iran, Qashqai uses the Persian modification of the
Arabic alphabetThe Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic and Urdu. After the Latin alphabet, it is the second-most widely used alphabet around the world....
. The Qashqai also speak
PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
, and use it as their literary language.