Kurdish (, ) is a language or a group of languages spoken by

Kurds ug:كۇردلار Kurds ( ku, کورد ,Kurd, italic=yes, rtl=yes) or Kurdish people are an Iranian peoples, Iranian ethnic group native to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Ir ...

in the geo-cultural region of

Kurdistan Kurdistan ( ku, کوردستان ,Kurdistan ; lit. "land of the Kurds") or Greater Kurdistan is a roughly defined geo-cultural territory in Western Asia wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population and the Kurdish culture, languages ...

and the Kurdish diaspora. Kurdish constitutes a

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...

, belonging to

Western Iranian languages The Western Iranic languages are a branch of the Iranic languages, attested from the time of Old Persian (6th century BC) and Median. Languages The traditional Northwestern branch is a convention for non-Southwestern languages, rather than a ...

in the

Indo-European language family The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, ...

. The main three dialects or languages of Kurdish are

Northern Kurdish Kurmanji ( ku, کورمانجی, lit=Kurdish, translit=Kurmancî, also termed Northern Kurdish, is the northern dialect of the Kurdish languages, spoken predominantly in southeast Turkey, northwest and northeast Iran, northern Iraq, northern S ...

(),

Central Kurdish Central Kurdish (), also called Sorani (), is a Kurdish dialect or a language that is spoken in Iraq, mainly in Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as the provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and West Azerbaijan in western Iran. Sorani is one of the two ...

(), and

Southern Kurdish Southern Kurdish ( ku, کوردی باشووری ,کوردی خوارگ, Kurdî Başûrî, Kurdî Xwarig) is one of the dialects of the Kurdish language, spoken predominantly in northeastern Iraq and western Iran. The Southern Kurdish-speaking r ...

(). A separate group of non-Kurdish Northwestern Iranian languages, the Zaza–Gorani languages, are also spoken by several million ethnic Kurds.Kaya, Mehmet. The Zaza Kurds of Turkey: A Middle Eastern Minority in a Globalised Society. The majority of the Kurds speak Kurmanji, and most Kurdish texts are written in Kurmanji and Sorani. Kurmanji is written in the Hawar alphabet, a derivation of the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greece, Greek city of Cumae, in southe ...

, and Sorani is written in the Sorani alphabet, a derivation of Arabic script. The classification of Laki as a dialect of

or as a fourth language under Kurdish is a matter of debate, but the differences between Laki and other Southern Kurdish dialects are minimal. The literary output in Kurdish was mostly confined to poetry until the early 20th century, when more general literature became developed. Today, the two principal written Kurdish dialects are Kurmanji and Sorani. Sorani is, along with

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...

, one of the two official languages of

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

and is in political documents simply referred to as "Kurdish".

Classification and origin

The Kurdish languages belong to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. They are generally classified as Northwestern Iranian languages, or by some scholars as intermediate between Northwestern and Southwestern Iranian.Gernot Windfuhr, ed., 2009. ''The Iranian Languages''. Routledge. Martin van Bruinessen notes that "Kurdish has a strong South-Western Iranian element", whereas "Zaza and Gurani ..do belong to the north-west Iranian group". Ludwig Paul concludes that Kurdish seems to be a Northwestern Iranian language in origin, but acknowledges that it shares many traits with Southwestern Iranian languages like Persian, apparently due to longstanding and intense historical contacts. Windfuhr identified Kurdish dialects as Parthian, albeit with a Median substratum. Windfuhr and Frye assume an eastern origin for Kurdish and consider it as related to eastern and central Iranian dialects. The present state of knowledge about Kurdish allows, at least roughly, drawing the approximate borders of the areas where the main ethnic core of the speakers of the contemporary Kurdish dialects was formed. The most argued hypothesis on the localisation of the ethnic territory of the Kurds remains D.N. Mackenzie's theory, proposed in the early 1960s (Mackenzie 1961). Developing the ideas of P. Tedesco (1921: 255) and regarding the common phonetic isoglosses shared by Kurdish, Persian, and Baluchi, Mackenzie concluded that the speakers of these three languages may once have been in closer contact.

Subdivisions

Kurdish is divided into three or four groups, where dialects from different groups are not mutually intelligible without acquired bilingualism.Postgate, J.N., Languages of Iraq, ancient and modern, raq British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 2007, , p.139 *

(Kurmanji) is the largest dialect group, spoken by an estimated 15 to 20 million Kurds in

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

, Syria, northern Iraq, and northwest and northeast Iran. *

(Sorani) is spoken by an estimated 6 to 7 million Kurds in much of Iraqi Kurdistan and the Iranian Kurdistan Province.Philip G. Kreyenbroek, "On the Kurdish Language", a chapter in the book ''The Kurds: A Contemporary Overview''. The book is previewable a
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. Sorani is a written standard of Central Kurdish developed in the 1920s (named after the historical Soran Emirate) and was later adopted as the standard

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mo ...

of Kurdish as an official language of Iraq. *

(Pehlewani) is spoken in the Kermanshah, Ilam and Lorestan provinces of Iran and in the Khanaqin district of eastern Iraq. Laki and Kurdali (Palai) are often included in Southern Kurdish, but they have some distinct features. In historical evolution terms, Kurmanji is less modified than Sorani and Pehlewani in both phonetic and morphological structure. The Sorani group has been influenced by among other things its closer cultural proximity to the other languages spoken by Kurds in the region including the Gorani language in parts of Iranian Kurdistan and Iraqi Kurdistan.D.N. MacKenzie, ''Language'' in ''Kurds & Kurdistan'', Encyclopaedia of Islam.

Philip G. Kreyenbroek Philip G. Kreyenbroek (born 1948) is a Dutch academic specialising in Iranian studies. Throughout his career, he has published several books and articles on the Zoroastrian, Kurdish, and Yazidi traditions. Education From 1966 he studied Persia ...

, an expert writing in 1992, says: According to ''

Encyclopaedia of Islam The ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'' (''EI'') is an encyclopaedia of the academic discipline of Islamic studies published by Brill. It is considered to be the standard reference work in the field of Islamic studies. The first edition was published ...

'', although Kurdish is not a unified language, its many dialects are interrelated and at the same time distinguishable from other

. The same source classifies different Kurdish dialects as two main groups, northern and central. The reality is that the average Kurmanji speaker does not find it easy to communicate with the inhabitants of Sulaymaniyah or Halabja. Some linguistic scholars assert that the term "Kurdish" has been applied extrinsically in describing the language the Kurds speak, whereas some ethnic Kurds have used the word term to simply describe their ethnicity and refer to their language as ''Kurmanji'', ''Sorani'', ''Hewrami'', ''Kermanshahi'', ''Kalhori'' or whatever other dialect or language they speak. Some historians have noted that it is only recently that the Kurds who speak the Sorani dialect have begun referring to their language as ''Kurdî'', in addition to their identity, which is translated to simply mean Kurdish. Mokriani dialect of Central Kurdish is widely spoken in Mokrian. Piranshahr and Mahabad are two principal cities of the Mokrian dialect area.

Zazaki and Gorani

Zaza–Gorani languages, which are spoken by communities in the wider area who identify as ethnic Kurds, are not linguistically classified as Kurdish. Zaza-Gorani is classified as adjunct to Kurdish, although authorities differ in the details. groups Kurdish with Zaza Gorani within a "Northwestern I" group, while Glottolog based on ''

Encyclopædia Iranica ''Encyclopædia Iranica'' is a project whose goal is to create a comprehensive and authoritative English language encyclopedia about the history, culture, and civilization of Iranian peoples from prehistory to modern times. Scope The ''Encycl ...

'' prefers an areal grouping of "Central dialects" (or "Kermanic") within Northwest Iranic, with Kurdish but not Zaza-Gorani grouped with "Kermanic". Gorani is distinct from Northern and Central Kurdish, yet shares vocabulary with both of them and there are some grammatical similarities with Central Kurdish. The Hawrami dialects of Gorani includes a variety that was an important literary language since the 14th century, but it was replaced by Central Kurdish in the 20th century. European scholars have maintained that Gorani is separate from Kurdish and that Kurdish is synonymous with the Northern Kurdish group, whereas ethnic Kurds maintain that Kurdish encompasses any of the unique languages or dialects spoken by Kurds that are not spoken by neighbouring ethnic groups. Gorani is classified as part of the Zaza–Gorani branch of Indo-Iranian languages. The Zaza language, spoken mainly in Turkey, differs both grammatically and in vocabulary and is generally not understandable by Gorani speakers but it is considered related to Gorani. Almost all Zaza-speaking communities, as well as speakers of the closely related Shabaki dialect spoken in parts of Iraqi Kurdistan, identify themselves as ethnic Kurds. Geoffrey Haig and Ergin Öpengin in their recent study suggest grouping the Kurdish languages into Northern Kurdish, Central Kurdish, Southern Kurdish, Zaza, and Gorani, and avoid the subgrouping Zaza–Gorani. The notable professor

Zare Yusupova Zare Alievna Yusupova (Russian: Заре Алиевна Юсупова; born 1934) is a Russian philologist specializing in the Kurdish language. Yusupova holds a Doctor of Philological Sciences degree and works as a professor at the Saint Peter ...

has carried out a lot of work and research into the Gorani dialect (as well as many other minority/ancient Kurdish dialects).

History

During his stay in Damascus, historian Ibn Wahshiyya came across two books on agriculture written in Kurdish, one on the culture of the vine and the palm tree, and the other on water and the means of finding it out in unknown ground. He translated both from Kurdish into Arabic in the early 9th century AD. Among the earliest Kurdish religious texts is the '' Yazidi Black Book'', the sacred book of Yazidi faith. It is considered to have been authored sometime in the 13th century AD by ''Hassan bin Adi'' (b. 1195 AD), the great-grandnephew of Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir (d. 1162), the founder of the faith. It contains the Yazidi account of the creation of the world, the origin of man, the story of

Adam Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

and Eve and the major prohibitions of the faith. From the 15th to 17th centuries, classical Kurdish poets and writers developed a literary language. The most notable classical Kurdish poets from this period were Ali Hariri, Ahmad Khani, Malaye Jaziri and Faqi Tayran. The Italian priest Maurizio Garzoni published the first Kurdish grammar titled ''Grammatica e Vocabolario della Lingua Kurda'' in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

in 1787 after eighteen years of missionary work among the Kurds of

Amadiya Amedi or Amadiya ( ku, ئامێدی, Amêdî, ; Syriac: , Amədya), is a town in the Duhok Governorate of Kurdistan Region of Iraq. It is built on a mesa in the broader Great Zab The Great Zab or Upper Zab ( (''al-Zāb al-Kabīr''), or , ...

. This work is very important in Kurdish history as it is the first acknowledgment of the widespread use of a distinctive Kurdish language. Garzoni was given the title ''Father of Kurdology'' by later scholars. The Kurdish language was banned in a large portion of Kurdistan for some time. After the

1980 Turkish coup d'état The 1980 Turkish coup d'état ( tr, 12 Eylül Darbesi), headed by Chief of the General Staff General Kenan Evren, was the third coup d'état in the history of the Republic of Turkey, the previous having been the 1960 coup and the 1971 coup ...

until 1991 the use of the Kurdish language was illegal in Turkey.

Current status

Today, Sorani is an official language in

. In Syria, on the other hand, publishing materials in Kurdish is forbidden, though this prohibition is not enforced any more due to the Syrian civil war. Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish, prohibiting the language in education and broadcast media. In March 2006, Turkey allowed private television channels to begin airing programming in Kurdish. However, the Turkish government said that they must avoid showing children's cartoons, or educational programs that teach Kurdish, and could broadcast only for 45 minutes a day or four hours a week. The state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) started its 24-hour Kurdish television station on 1 January 2009 with the motto "we live under the same sky". The Turkish Prime Minister sent a video message in Kurdish to the opening ceremony, which was attended by Minister of Culture and other state officials. The channel uses the ''X'', ''W'', and ''Q'' letters during broadcasting. However, most of these restrictions on private Kurdish television channels were relaxed in September 2009. In 2010, Kurdish municipalities in the southeast began printing marriage certificates, water bills, construction and

road sign Traffic signs or road signs are signs erected at the side of or above roads to give instructions or provide information to road users. The earliest signs were simple wooden or stone milestones. Later, signs with directional arms were introduce ...

s, as well as emergency, social and cultural notices in Kurdish alongside Turkish. Also Imams began to deliver Friday sermons in Kurdish and

Esnaf Esnaf is a Turkish word which means “corporation”. During the Early Modern Period belonging to a guild gave people a voice and was an important part of one's identity. Handicraft producers were linked to one another by a range of social, poli ...

price tags in Kurdish. Many mayors were tried for issuing public documents in Kurdish language. The Kurdish alphabet is not recognized in Turkey, and prior to 2013 the use of Kurdish names containing the letters ''X'', ''W'', and ''Q'', which do not exist in the

Turkish alphabet The Turkish alphabet ( tr, ) is a Latin-script alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which ( Ç, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ş and Ü) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirem ...

, was not allowed. In 2012, Kurdish-language lessons became an elective subject in public schools. Previously, Kurdish education had only been possible in private institutions. In

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkm ...

, though it is used in some local media and newspapers, it is not used in public schools. In 2005, 80 Iranian Kurds took part in an experiment and gained scholarships to study in Kurdish in Iraqi Kurdistan. In

Kyrgyzstan Kyrgyzstan,, pronounced or the Kyrgyz Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the south, and the People's Republic of China to the ea ...

, of the Kurdish population speak Kurdish as their native language. In Kazakhstan, the corresponding percentage is 88.7%.

Phonology

Grammar

Writing system

The Kurdish language has been written using four different writing systems. In

and

it is written using an Arabic script, composed by Sa'id Kaban Sedqi. More recently, it is sometimes written with a

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

in Iraq. In Turkey, Syria, and

Armenia Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ...

, it is now written using a

. Kurdish was also written in the Arabic script in Turkey and Syria until 1932. There is a proposal for a unified international recognized Kurdish alphabet based on ISO-8859-1 called ''Yekgirtú''. Kurdish in the former

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

is written with a

Cyrillic alphabet The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking coun ...

. Kurdish has even been written in the

Armenian alphabet The Armenian alphabet ( hy, Հայոց գրեր, ' or , ') is an alphabetic writing system used to write Armenian. It was developed around 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader. The system originally ha ...

in Soviet Armenia and in the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

(a translation of the Gospels in 1857 and of all New Testament in 1872).

Notes

References

External links

Wîkîferheng
(Kurdish

Wiktionary Wiktionary ( , , rhyming with "dictionary") is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary of terms (including words, phrases, proverbs, linguistic reconstructions, etc.) in all natural languages and in a number ...

)
VejinBooks, collection of Kurdish literary and historical texts

Vejin Dictionaries, collection of Kurdish dictionaries
(written in Arabic script)
The Kurdish Academy of Language
(unofficial)

* ttp://egerin.com/ Egerîn, Kurdish (Kurmanji) search engine
inKurdish: English–Kurdish Translation

Dictio: English–Kurdish (Sorani) Dictionary

The Kurdish Institute of Paris: Language and Literature

Kurdish Language and Linguistics, at Encyclopedia Iranica
(article written by Ludwig Paul)
Reference Grammar with Selected Readings both for Sorani and Kurmanji, written by W. M. Thackston (Harvard University)

(article written by Philip G. Kryeenbroek)
Kurdish Language Initiative
o
Seywan Institute

Kurdish Institute of Istanbul

KAL: The Kurdish Academy of Language
*
Grammar of a Less Familiar Language
(MIT OpenCourseWare)
Southern Kurdish phonetic

Gorani Influence on Central Kurdish
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kurdish Language * Languages of Armenia Languages of Azerbaijan Languages of Turkey Languages of Iran Languages of Iraq Languages of Israel Languages of Lebanon Languages of Syria Subject–object–verb languages Iranian languages Articles citing Nationalencyklopedin Languages of Kurdistan