Qashqai (قشقایی ديلى, ''Qašqāyī dili'', pronounced in English as , and also spelled Qaşqay, Qashqayi, Kashkai, Kashkay, Qašqāʾī, by Michael Knüppel, by Gerhard Doerfer and Qashqa'i or Kaşkay) is an Oghuz

Turkic language The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

spoken by the Qashqai people, an ethnic group living mainly in the

Fars province Fars Province or Pars Province, also known as Persis or Farsistan (فارسستان), is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. Its capital is the city of Shiraz. Pars province has an area of 122,400 km2 and is located in Iran's southwest, i ...

of Southern

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

. ''

Encyclopædia Iranica ''Encyclopædia Iranica'' is a project whose goal is to create a comprehensive and authoritative English-language encyclopedia about the history, culture, and civilization of Iranian peoples from prehistory to modern times. Scope The ''Encyc ...

'' regards Qashqai as an independent third group of dialects within the Southwestern Turkic language group. It is known to speakers as ''Turki''. Estimates of the number of Qashqai speakers vary. ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...

'' gave a figure of million in 2021. The Qashqai language is closely related to Azerbaijani. However, some Qashqai varieties namely the variety spoken in the Sheshbeyli tribe share features with Turkish. In a sociopolitical sense, though, Qashqai is considered a language in its own right. Like other Turkic languages spoken in

, such as the Azerbaijani language, Qashqai uses a modified version of the Perso-Arabic script.

Phonology

Consonants

* Sounds // and // only occur as loan consonants from Persian and Arabic. * Sounds /, , , / mainly occur phonemically before consonants, but may occur as aspirated before vowels or in word-final position as []. * Sounds /, , / never occur in word-initial position, except in a few loan words. * [] only occurs as an intervocalic allophone of // when occurring between two rounded vowels. It may also occur in vowel diphthongs as []. * // and // can occur phonemically as [] and [] when preceding front vowels. * // may occur as two allophones; as [] before front vowels, or as [] before back vowels. * // can have two allophones; as [] in word-initial and word-medial positions, or as [] in word-final positions. In native words, // rarely occurs word-initially.

Vowels

* Vowels // and // are used rather infrequently. * // only occurs as a word-final variant of //. *// is always realized in word-final position as []. * // can be realized as [] in non-initial positions. * // mainly occurs as a centralized allophone [] when preceding palatal consonants. * Vowel // is in free variation with its rounded equivalent //, when occurring in front syllables.

Syntax

Qashqai follows common Turkic syntax features: dependent marking, head-final within unmarked phrases, free word order with SOV preferred, agglutinative. Grammatical cases in Qashqai Turkic include: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, ablative, terminative, equative and instrumental.

References

, Vol. 5: 104–119. * Csató Éva Ágnes, 2005. ''On copying in Kashkay.'' In: Éva Á. Csató, Bo Isakssons & Carina Jahani (eds.) Linguistic Conversion and areal diffusion: Case studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic, London, Routledge Curzon, 271–283. * Csató Éva Ágnes. 2006''. Gunnar Jaring's Kashkay materials,'' In Lars Johanson & Christiane Bulut (eds.), Turkic-Iranian contact areas. Historical and linguistic aspect. Wiesbaden:

Harrassowitz Verlag Harrassowitz Verlag is a German academic publishing house, based in Wiesbaden. It publishes about 250 scholarly books and periodicals per year on Oriental, Slavic, and Book and Library Studies. The publishing house is part of the company Otto Ha ...

. 209–225. * Doerfer Gerhard, et al. 1990. ''Qašqā’ī-Gedichte aus Fīrūz-ābād (=Südoghusisch).'' In: ''Oghusica aus Iran'', Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, pp. 67–132.
Dolatkhah Sohrab
Csató Éva Á. & Karakoç Birsel. 2016. ''On the marker -(y)akï in Kashkay''. In: Éva Á. Csató, Lars Johanson, András Róna-Tas, and Bo Utas (eds.) ''Turks and Iranians: Interactions in Language and History'', pp. 283–301. Wiesbaden:

. * Dolatkhah Sohrab. 2016. ''Parlons qashqay'' "Let's speak Qashqay"''.'' Paris: L'Harmattan. * Dolatkhah Sohrab. 2016. ''Kashkai'' '': langue turcique d'Iran. (Réédition du titre Qashqay : langue turcique d'Iran).'' Independently published (via Amazon). * Dolatkhah Sohrab. 2015. ''Qashqay Folktales: transcription, translation, glossary.'' CreateSpace Independent publishing platform. * Dolatkhah Sohrab. 2012. ''Elements for a grammar of Kashkay: a Turkic language of Iran.'' PhD dissertation. Paris: Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. * Dolatkhah Sohrab. 2007. ''Présentation et documentation du folklore qashqai : langue turcique du sud d’Iran.'' Master thesis. Paris: Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. * Gharakhalou-Narrei, Mehdi. 1996. Migration and cultural change in urban communities of the Qashqa'i of Iran. PhD thesis. Ottawa:

University of Ottawa The University of Ottawa (), often referred to as uOttawa or U of O, is a Official bilingualism in Canada, bilingual public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on directly to the northeast of Downtown Ot ...

. * Jurie Étienne. 2005. ''Qashqa’i : derniers nomades d’Iran''. Paris : Voyages Zellidja. * Mardâni R. Assadollâh, 2000. ''Asanaklar : Tarânehâye torkiye qašqâ’ī'' "Qashqai folksongs" n Perso-Arabic script Iran: Nakhlhâ-ye Sorkh Publishers. * Mardâni R. Assadollâh, 2007''. Qašqayı sözlügü'' ashqai Dictionary n Azerbaijani and Perso-Arabic script with explications in PersianShiraz: Rahgosha Publishers. * Menges, Karl Heinrich, 1990. ''Drei Qašqā’ī Text''. In: Doerfer et al. (eds.), pp. 135–138. * Shahbâzi, Habib. (ed.). 1989/1368 A.H., ''Qašqâ’ï še’ri'' ashqai poetry n Perso-Arabic script

Shiraz Shiraz (; ) is the List of largest cities of Iran, fifth-most-populous city of Iran and the capital of Fars province, which has been historically known as Pars (Sasanian province), Pars () and Persis. As of the 2016 national census, the popu ...

: Shahbazi. * Soper, John David, 1987. ''Loan Syntax in Turkic and Iranian: The Verb Systems of Tajik, Uzbek, and Qashqai''. Doctoral dissertation, Los Angeles:

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...

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