Afshar dialect

{{Short description|Oghuz Turkic variety spoken primarily in Iran}}

{{Infobox language

| name = Afshar

| nativename = {{lang|azb|{{nq|افشر}}}}, {{lang|azb|Əfşar}}

| image = Afshar.svg

| states = Iran, Afghanistan

| region =

| ethnicity = Afshars

| ref =

| familycolor = Altaic

| fam1 = Turkic

| fam2 = Common Turkic

| fam3 = Oghuz

| fam4 = Southern

| fam5 = South Azerbaijani?

| dia1 = Hamadān Afshar{{cite web|url=http://iranatlas.net/index.html?module=module.classification|title=Atlas of the Languages of Iran A working classification|publisher=Carleton University|location=Ottawa}}

| dia2 = Kermān Afshar

| dia3 = Kabul Afshar

| script = Perso-Arabic script, Latin script

| iso3 = none

| iso3comment = (included in {{ISO 639|azb|link=yes}} [azb])

| glotto = afsh1238

| glottorefname = Afshari

| notice = IPA

}}

Afshar or Afshari ({{langx|az|Əfşar}}) is a Turkic dialect spoken in Iran and Afghanistan by the Afshars. Ethnologue and Glottolog list it as a dialect of the South Azerbaijani language.{{e25|azb|Azerbaijani, South}}{{cite web |title=Glottolog 4.6 - Afshari |url=https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/afsh1238 |website=Glottolog |access-date=1 December 2022}} The Encyclopædia Iranica lists it as a separate Southern Oghuz language.{{cite encyclopedia |last=Michael Knüppel |first=E. | title= TURKIC LANGUAGES OF PERSIA: AN OVERVIEW | encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Iranica | accessdate=2021-03-28|url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/turkic-languages-overview|quote=1.4. Southern-Oghuz. 1.4.1. Afšār. The Afšār language was once spoken in a wide area in western and southwestern Persia from Kermānšāh to the shores of the Persian Gulf. }}

According to the third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam:{{EI3|last=Stöber|first=Georg|title=Afshār|url=https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-3/afshar-COM_23658?s.num=15&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book.encyclopaedia-of-islam-3&s.q=Azeri|year=2010}}

{{blockquote|Linguistically, Afshārī is classified as a dialect belonging to the South Oghuz group of Turkic languages (southwestern branch of Turkic) (Johanson, History of Turkic, 82–3), or else as a dialect of South Azerbaijani (Azeri). As they were embedded in a Fārsī-speaking environment, however, in many cases Fārsī became the mother tongue of the Afshārs. Other groups became bilingual (as in Kirmān). Additionally, the contact between the different languages seems to have transformed the original dialect (cf. Johanson, Discoveries, 14–6). In 2009 a linguistic comparison of different Afshār groups remains outstanding.}}

Afshar is distinguished by many loanwords from Persian and a rounding of the phoneme {{IPA|/a/}} to {{IPA|[ɒ]}}, as occurred in Uzbek. In many cases, vowels that are rounded in Azerbaijani are not rounded in Afshar. An example of this is {{IPA|/jiz/}} (meaning 100), which is {{IPA|/jyz/}} in standard Azerbaijani.{{cite book |last1=Robbeets |first1=Martine |title=Diachrony of Verb Morphology |date=24 July 2015 |publisher=De Gruyter Mouton |page=10}}

According to Lars Johanson, emeritus professor of Turcology and linguistics at the University of Mainz, and Eva Csato, professor emeritus in Turkic languages at Uppsala University, state that the Afshar dialect as SW^S; Southwestern South Oghuz group that includes the dialects of Iran (such as Qashqai, Sonqori, Aynallu, etc.) and Afghanistan (e.g., Afshar).{{sfn|Johanson|Csato|2024|p=82}}