Qashqai (also spelled Ghashghai, Ghashghayi, Qašqāʾī, Qashqa'i, and Qashqayi) is a Turkic language spoken by the Qashqai people, an ethnic group living mainly in the Fars region of Iran. Estimates of the number of Qashqai speakers vary. Ethnologue gives a figure of 1.5 million. The Qashqai language is closely related to Azerbaijani, and some linguists consider it to be a dialect of that language.
Like the South Azerbaijani language in Iran, Qashqai uses the Persian modification of the Arabic script. The Qashqai also speak Persian, and use it as their literary language.
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)