Mapping the Languages of Kohgiluyeh va Boyer Ahmad Province, Iran: Is this Region Uniformly Lori-speaking?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46991/jil/2025.02.03Keywords:
Kohgiluyeh va Boyer Ahmad Province, Linguistic geography, Southern Lori, Persian, Ghashghāi (Qashqāi) Turkic, ArabicAbstract
Kohgiluyeh va Boyer Ahmad Province, which constitutes less than one percent of Iran’s land area and a similar proportion of its population, is located in the mountainous south-west of the country. In the literature as well as in popular discourse in Iran, this region has been regarded as uniformly Lori-speaking. In this paper, we survey the distribution of languages in the province and investigate whether any languages other than Lori are spoken there as a mother tongue. Adopting the methodology outlined in the Atlas of the Languages of Iran, this article presents static and interactive maps showing each of the province’s languages. The results of our survey indicate that in addition to seven distinct varieties of Southern Lori, Ghashghai Turkic, Khuzestani Arabic, and Bakhtiari are spoken as ancestral languages in the southern districts of Kohgiluyeh va Boyer Ahmad. Further, we signal the growing prevalence of Persian, the dominant prestige language across Iran, as a mother tongue.
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