QASHQAI LANGUAGE

Qashqai
Spoken in:	Iran
Region:	Fars
Total speakers:	1,500,000
Language family:	Altaic  Turkic   Oghuz    Azerbaijani     Qashqai
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	tut
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	qxq
Map showing locations of Azerbaijani and related languages: North Azerbaijani (blue), South Azerbaijani (red), Salchuq (green), Qashqa'i (brown), Afshari (purple)

Qashqai (also spelled Ghashghai, Qashqa'i, Qashqay, and Kashkai) is a Turkic language. It is spoken by the Qashqai, an ethnic Turkic ethnic group living mainly in the Fars region of Iran. Estimates of the number of Qashqai speakers varies, but Ethnologue gives a figure of one and a half million. The Qashqai language is closely related to Azerbaijani, and some linguists consider it to be a dialect of that language.

Like Azerbaijani in Iran, Qashqai uses the Persian modification of the Arabic alphabet. The Qashqai also speak Persian, and use it as their literary language like all Iranians.

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