Balochi language

Balochi, also rendered as Baluchi, is a Northwestern Iranian language, spoken by the Baloch people in the Balochistan region of Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. In addition, there are speakers in Oman, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Turkmenistan, East Africa, and in diaspora communities of other parts of the world. The total number of speakers, according to Ethnologue, is 8.8 million. Balochi varieties constitute a dialect continuum and collectively at least have 10 million native speakers. The main varieties of Balochi are Eastern (Soleimani), Southern (Makrani) and Western (Rakhshani). Koroshi is a dialect of the Balochi language, spoken mainly in the provinces of Fars and Hormozgan of Iran. However, Josef Elfenbein of Encyclopædia Iranica divides the dialects of the Balochi language into six categories: Rakhshani, Panjguri, Saravani, Lashari, Kechi, and the "Coastal Dialects". According to Brian Spooner:"Literacy for most Baloch-speakers is not in Balochi, but in Urdu in Pakistan and Persian in Afghanistan and Iran. Even now, very few Baloch read Balochi in any of the countries, regardless of the alphabet in which it is printed."Balochi belongs to the Western Iranian subgroup, and its original homeland is suggested to be around the central Caspian region. Balochi uses the letter Waw with a diacritic in its spelling (ۏ).