Qashqai language


Qashqai is an Oghuz Turkic language spoken by the Qashqai people, an ethnic group living mainly in the Fars province of Southern Iran. Encyclopædia Iranica 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 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 Iran, 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.