Qashqai (قشقایی ديلى, Qašqāyī dili; also spelled Qaşqay, Qashqayi, Kashkai, Kashkay, Qašqāʾī and Qashqa'i or Kaşkay) 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 in 2019. 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. Morphology The suffixes are similar to Azerbaijani. Syntax Qashqai follows common Turkic syntax features: dependent marking, head-final within unmarked phrases, free word order with SOV preferred, agglutinative. References Further reading Csató Éva Ágnes, 2001. Present in Kashkay. In: Turkic Languages, 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