| Afshar | |
| Nativename: | {{nq|افشر, Əfşar |
| States: | Iran, Afghanistan |
| Ethnicity: | Afshar people |
| Familycolor: | Altaic |
| Fam1: | Turkic |
| Fam2: | Common Turkic |
| Fam3: | Oghuz |
| Dia1: | Hamadān Afshar[1] |
| Dia2: | Kermān Afshar |
| Dia3: | Kabul Afshar |
| Script: | Perso-Arabic script, Latin script |
| Iso3: | none |
| Iso3comment: | (included in [azb]) |
| Glotto: | afsh1238 |
| Glottorefname: | Afshari |
| Notice: | IPA |
Afshar or Afshari (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.[2] The Encyclopædia Iranica lists it as a separate Southern Oghuz language.[3]
According to the third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam:
Afshar is distinguished by many loanwords from Persian and a rounding of the phoneme pronounced as //a// to pronounced as /[ɒ]/, as occurred in Uzbek. In many cases, vowels that are rounded in Azerbaijani are not rounded in Afshar. An example of this is pronounced as //jiz// (meaning 100), which is pronounced as //jyz// in standard Azerbaijani.[4]
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 SWS; Southwestern South Oghuz group that includes the dialects of Iran (such as Kashkay, Sonqori, Aynallu, etc.) and Afghanistan (e.g., Afshar).