Abstract
THE PROCESS OF QASHQAI TURKISH BECOMING A LATIN ALPHABET WRITTEN LANGUAGE
The Qashqai Turks, whose majority of the population live in Shiraz and its environs in the southern region of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and who express their identity with the Turkish name, are a community that belong to the Oghuz tribe. Qashqai Turkish, which is included in the southern subgroup of the Oghuz literary language, is a dialect spoken by the Turkish communities living in Qashqai.
In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the official written language is Persian and the official alphabet is the Arabic alphabet. In order for the Qashqai Turks to preserve and maintain their own culture and language, they need to bring their literary language to the level of the official language. Between 2007 and 2010, we first witness the efforts of a group of Qashqai Turks who wrote in Latin letters among themselves.
In this article, obtained from a social communication network of approximately 240 Qashqai Turks named “Kaşkay Merkez”, based on the verse and prose texts of Qashqai Turkish written in Latin letters and the conversations with Qashqai Turks who were contacted specifically, the efforts of Qashqai Turks to exist through the written language of Latin letters and the process of Qashqai Turkish becoming a written language will be revealed. How the Qashqai Turks wrote or tried to write their own language in Latin letters will be examined in the context of "spelling and pronunciation characteristics" through approximately 300 sample texts, and this effort will be evaluated in terms of language and alphabet continuity.
Keywords
Islamic Republic of Iran, Qashqai Turks, Qashqai Turkish, Latin alphabet, common written language.
