Bashkir language

Bashkir
башҡорт теле, başqort tele, باشقۇرت تئلئ
Native to	Russia
Region	mainly in Bashkortostan
Ethnicity	Bashkirs
Native speakers	1.2 million (2010 census)
Language family	Turkic Common Turkic Kipchak North Kipchak Bashkir
Writing system	Cyrillic, Latin, Arabic
Official status
Official language in	Russia  Bashkortostan
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ba
ISO 639-2
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	bash1264
Geographic distribution of Bashkir language in the Russian Empire according to 1897 census
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 Russia

The Bashkir language (Башҡорт теле, başqort tele, باشقۇرت تئلئ, pronounced [ˈbaʂqʊrt teˈle]) is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak branch. It is co-official with Russian in the Republic of Bashkortostan and has approximately 1.2 million speakers in Russia. Bashkir has three dialects: Southern, Eastern and Northwestern.

Speakers of Bashkir mostly live in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan. Many speakers also live in Tatarstan, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk and Kurgan Oblasts and other regions of Russia. Minor Bashkir groups also live in Kazakhstan and other countries.

The Bashkirs in ancient times used the Old Turkic alphabet. After the adoption of Islam, which began in the 10th century and lasted for several centuries, the Bashkirs began to use Turki as a written language. Turki was written in a variant of the Arabic script.