Talysh language

Talysh
Tolışi Толыши تالشی زَوُن
Native to	Azerbaijan, Iran
Region	The Western and Southwestern Caspian Sea coastal strip
Native speakers	900,000 (1993–1996)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Northwestern II Tatic Talysh
Writing system	Persian alphabet in Iran Latin script in Azerbaijan Cyrillic script in Russia
Official status
Regulated by	Academy of Persian Language and Literature
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	taly1247
Linguasphere	58-AAC-ed

The Talysh language (Tolışi / Толыши / تالشی زَوُن) is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken in the northern regions of the Iranian provinces of Gilan and Ardabil and the southern regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Talysh language is closely related to the Tati language. Historically, the language and its people can be traced through the middle Iranian period back to the ancient Medes. It includes many dialects usually divided into three main clusters: Northern (in Azerbaijan and Iran), Central (Iran) and Southern (Iran). There are a wide variety of estimates for the number of Talyshi speakers with reliable estimates running anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million. Talyshi is partially, but not fully, intelligible with respect to Persian. Talysh is classified as "vulnerable" by UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

The origin of the name Tolish is not clear but is likely to be quite old. The name of the people appears in early Arabic sources as Al-Taylasân and in Persian as Tâlišân and Tavâliš, which are plural forms of Tâliš. Northern Talysh (in the Republic of Azerbaijan) was historically known as Tâlish-i Guštâsbi. Talysh has always been mentioned with Gilan or Muqan. Writing in the 1340s, Hamdallah Mostowfi calls the language of Gushtaspi (covering the Caspian border region between Gilan to Shirvan) a Pahlavi language connected to the language of Gilan. Although there are no confirmed records, the language called in Iranian linguistics as Azari can be the antecedent of both Talyshi and Tati. Miller’s (1953) hypothesis that the Âzari of Ardabil, as appears in the quatrains of Shaikh Safi, was a form of Talyshi was confirmed by Henning (1954). In western literature the people and the language are sometimes referred to as Talishi, Taleshi or Tolashi. Generally speaking, written documents about Taleshi are rare.