Kurdish languages

The Kurdish languages (Kurdish: زمانی کوردی ,Zimanê kurdî‎)[11][12] constitute a dialect continuum,[13] belonging to the Iranian language family, spoken by Kurds in the geo-cultural region of Kurdistan and the Kurdish diaspora. The three Kurdish languages are Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji), Central Kurdish (Sorani), and Southern Kurdish (Xwarîn). A separate group of non-Kurdish Northwestern Iranian languages, the Zaza–Gorani languages, are also spoken by several million ethnic Kurds.[14][15][16] Studies as of 2009 estimate between 8 and 20 million native Kurdish speakers in Turkey.[17] The majority of the Kurds speak Kurmanji.[18][19] Most Kurdish texts are written in Kurmanji and Sorani. Kurmanji is written in the Hawar alphabet, a derivation of the Latin script, and Sorani is written in the Sorani alphabet, a derivation of Arabic script.

Kurdish
Zimanê kurdî / زمانی کوردی‎
Native to	Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Armenia, Azerbaijan
Region	Kurdistan, Anatolia, Caucasus, Khorasan, Kurdish diaspora
Ethnicity	Kurds
Native speakers	c. 20–30 million (2000–2010 est.)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Northwestern Kurdish
Standard forms	Kurmanji Sorani
Dialects	Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) Central Kurdish (Sorani) Southern Kurdish (Xwarîn, Palewani) Laki[2]
Writing system	Hawar alphabet (Latin script; used mostly in Turkey and Syria) Sorani alphabet (Perso-Arabic script; used mostly in Iraq and Iran) Cyrillic alphabet (former Soviet Union) Armenian alphabet (1921-29 in Soviet Armenia)[3][4][5]
Official status
Official language in	Iraq[6][lower-alpha 1]  Kurdistan Region[7]  Rojava[8][9]
Recognised minority language in	Armenia[10]
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ku
ISO 639-2	kur
ISO 639-3	kur – inclusive code Individual codes: ckb – Sorani kmr – Kurmanji sdh – Southern Kurdish lki – Laki language
Glottolog	kurd1259
Linguasphere	58-AAA-a (North Kurdish incl. Kurmanji & Kurmanjiki) + 58-AAA-b (Central Kurdish incl. Dimli/Zaza & Gurani) + 58-AAA-c (South Kurdish incl. Kurdi)
Map of Kurdish-speaking areas of West Asia
Geographic distribution of Kurdish dialects and other Iranian languages spoken by Kurds   Kurmanji   Sorani   Southern   Zaza   Gorani   mixed areas

The classification of Laki as a dialect of Southern Kurdish or as a fourth language under Kurdish is a matter of debate,[2] but the differences between Laki and other Southern Kurdish dialects are minimal.[20]

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, one of the two official languages of Iraq and is in political documents simply referred to as "Kurdish".[21][22]

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.[23] 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".[24]

Ludwig Paul concludes that Kurdish seems to be a Northwestern Iranian language in origin,[13] 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.[25][26]

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.

He has tried to reconstruct the alleged Persian-Kurdish-Baluchi linguistic unity presumably in the central parts of Iran. According to Mackenzie's theory, the Persians (or Proto-Persians) lived in the province of Fars in the southwest (proceeding from the assumption that the Achaemenids spoke Persian), the Baluchis (Proto-Baluchis) lived in the central areas of Western Iran, and the Kurds (Proto-Kurds), in the wording of G. Windfuhr (1975: 459), lived either in northwestern Luristan or in the province of Isfahan.[27]

Subdivisions

Kurdish is divided into three groups, where dialects from different groups are not mutually intelligible without acquired bilingualism.[28][29]

• Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) is the largest dialect group, spoken by an estimated 15 to 20 million Kurds in Turkey, Syria, northern Iraq, and northwest and northeast Iran.
• Central Kurdish (Sorani) is spoken by an estimated 6 to 7 million Kurds in much of Iraqi Kurdistan and the Iranian Kurdistan Province.[30] 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 of Kurdish as an official language of Iraq.[31]
• Southern Kurdish (Pehlewani) is spoken by about 3 million Kurds in Kermanshah and Ilam provinces of Iran and in the Khanaqin district of eastern Iraq.[32]

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.[30][33] The Kermanshahi group has been influenced by among other things its closer cultural proximity to Persian.[32]

Philip G. Kreyenbroek, an expert writing in 1992, says:[30]

Since 1932 most Kurds have used the Roman script to write Kurmanji.... Sorani is normally written in an adapted form of the Arabic script.... Reasons for describing Kurmanji and Sorani as 'dialects' of one language are their common origin and the fact that this usage reflects the sense of ethnic identity and unity among the Kurds. From a linguistic or at least a grammatical point of view, however, Kurmanji and Sorani differ as much from each other as English and German, and it would seem appropriate to refer to them as languages. For example, Sorani has neither gender nor case-endings, whereas Kurmanji has both.... Differences in vocabulary and pronunciation are not as great as between German and English, but they are still considerable.

According to Encyclopaedia of Islam, although Kurdish is not a unified language, its many dialects are interrelated and at the same time distinguishable from other Western Iranian languages. The same source classifies different Kurdish dialects as two main groups, northern and central.[33] The reality is that the average Kurmanji speaker does not find it easy to communicate with the inhabitants of Sulaymaniyah or Halabja.[29]

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.[34]

Mokriani dialect of Central Kurdish is widely spoken in Mokrian. Piranshahr and Mahabad are two principal cities of the Mokrian dialect area.[35]

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.[14][15][16] Zaza-Gorani is classified as adjunct to Kurdish, although authorities differ in the details. Windfuhr (2009) groups Kurdish with Zaza Gorani within a "Northwestern I" group, while Glottolog based on Encyclopædia Iranica prefers an areal grouping of "Central dialects" (or "Kermanic") within Northwest Iranic, with Kurdish but not Zaza-Gorani grouped with "Kermanic".[36]

Gorani is distinct from Northern and Central Kurdish, yet shares vocabulary with both of them and there are some grammatical similarities with Central Kurdish.[37] 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.[38]

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.[39]

Gorani is classified as part of the Zaza–Gorani branch of Indo-Iranian languages.[40] 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,[41] as well as speakers of the closely related Shabaki dialect spoken in parts of Iraqi Kurdistan, identify themselves as ethnic Kurds.[14][42][43][44][45][46]

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.[47]

The notable professor Zare Yusupova, has carried out a lot of work and research into the Gorani dialect (as well as many other minority/ancient Kurdish dialects).[48]

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.[49]

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 and Eve and the major prohibitions of the faith.[50] 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 in 1787 after eighteen years of missionary work among the Kurds of Amadiya.[51] 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.[52] The Kurdish language was banned in a large portion of Kurdistan for some time. After the 1980 Turkish coup d'état until 1991 the use of the Kurdish language was illegal in Turkey.[53]

Current status

Road signs near Diyarbakır showing the place names in Turkish and Kurdish

Today, Sorani is an official language in Iraq. In Syria, on the other hand, publishing materials in Kurdish is forbidden,[54] though this prohibition is not enforced any more due to the Syrian civil war.[55]

Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish, prohibiting the language in education and broadcast media.[56][57] 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.[58] 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".[59] 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.[60] In 2010, Kurdish municipalities in the southeast began printing marriage certificates, water bills, construction and road signs, as well as emergency, social and cultural notices in Kurdish alongside Turkish. Also Imams began to deliver Friday sermons in Kurdish and Esnaf price tags in Kurdish. Many mayors were tried for issuing public documents in Kurdish language.[61] 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, was not allowed.[62][63] In 2012, Kurdish-language lessons became an elective subject in public schools. Previously, Kurdish education had only been possible in private institutions.[64]

In Iran, though it is used in some local media and newspapers, it is not used in public schools.[65][66] In 2005, 80 Iranian Kurds took part in an experiment and gained scholarships to study in Kurdish in Iraqi Kurdistan.[67]

In Kyrgyzstan, 96.21% of the Kurdish population speak Kurdish as their native language.[68] In Kazakhstan, the corresponding percentage is 88.7%.[69]

Phonology

Grammar

Writing system

Kurdish restaurant sign in West Yorkshire, England written in Arabic script

The Kurdish language has been written using four different writing systems. In Iraq and Iran it is written using an Arabic script, composed by Sa'id Kaban Sedqi. More recently, it is sometimes written with a Latin alphabet in Iraq. In Turkey, Syria, and Armenia, it is now written using a Latin script. 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[70] called Yekgirtú. Kurdish in the former USSR is written with a Cyrillic alphabet. Kurdish has even been written in the Armenian alphabet in Soviet Armenia and in the Ottoman Empire (a translation of the Gospels in 1857[71] and of all New Testament in 1872).

See also

• Kurdish alphabets
• Kurdish people
• Kurdish culture
• Kurdish literature
• Kurdish Wikipedia
• Kurdish Institute of Paris
• Kurdish Institute of Istanbul
• List of countries by Kurdish-speaking population

Notes

1. Official at state level

References

1. SIL Ethnologue gives estimates, broken down by dialect group, totalling 31 million, but with the caveat of "Very provisional figures for Northern Kurdish speaker population". Ethnologue estimates for dialect groups: Northern: 20.2M (undated; 15M in Turkey for 2009), Central: 6.75M (2009), Southern: 3M (2000), Laki: 1M (2000). The Swedish Nationalencyklopedin listed Kurdish in its "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), citing an estimate of 20.6 million native speakers.
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27. Professor Garnik Asatrian (Yerevan University) (2009)."Prolegomena to the Study of the Kurds", Iran and the Caucasus, Vol.13, pp. 1–58, 2009 Published in 2009, Iran and the Caucasus, 13, pp.1-58.
28. Hassanpour, A. (1992). Nationalism and language in Kurdistan. San Francisco: Mellon Press. Also mentioned in: kurdishacademy.org Archived 9 July 2016 at the Wayback Machine
29. Postgate, J.N., Languages of Iraq, ancient and modern, [Iraq]: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 2007, ISBN 978-0-903472-21-0, p.139
30. Philip G. Kreyenbroek, "On the Kurdish Language", a chapter in the book The Kurds: A Contemporary Overview. The book is previewable at Google Book Search.
31. Joyce Blau, Methode de Kurde: Sorani, Editions L'Harmattan (2000), p. 20
32. Ranjbar, Vahid. Dastur-e Zaban-e Kurdi-ye Kermanshahi. Kermanshah: Taq-Bostan. 1388
33. D.N. MacKenzie, Language in Kurds & Kurdistan, Encyclopaedia of Islam.
34. Archived 1 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine
35. "BACKGROUND TO THE LANGUAGE, COMMUNITY, AND FIELDWORK 1.1 Introduction The present work is a grammatical description of the Mukri variety of Central". www.dissertation.xlibx.info. Archived from the original on 5 March 2017.
36. Glottolog 2.3, Subfamily: Central Iran Kermanic Archived 13 December 2014 at the Wayback Machine. "The Central dialects thus constitute the southernmost group of the so-called Northwest Iranian dialects," Central Dialects Archived 5 September 2013 at the Wayback Machine (iranicaonline.org)
37. Philip G. Kreyenbroek, "On the Kurdish Language", a chapter in the book The Kurds: A Contemporary Overview.
38. Meri, Josef W. Medieval Islamic Civilization: A-K, index. p444
39. Edmonds, Cecil. Kurds, Turks, and Arabs: politics, travel, and research in north-eastern Iraq, 1919–1925. Oxford University Press, 1957.
40. J. N. Postgate, Languages of Iraq, ancient and modern, British School of Archaeology in Iraq, [Iraq]: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 2007, p. 138.
41. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 October 2015. Retrieved 15 October 2015.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
42. Abd al-Jabbar, Falih. Ayatollahs, sufis and ideologues: state, religion and social movements in Iraq. University of Virginia 2008.
43. Sykes, Mark. The Caliphs' last heritage: a short history of the Turkish Empire
44. O'Shea, Maria. Trapped between the map and reality: geography and perceptions of Kurdistan. ISBN 0-415-94766-9.
45. Library Information and Research Service. The Middle East, abstracts and index
46. Meiselas, Susan. Kurdistan: in the shadow of history. Random House, 1997.
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49. Ibn-Waḥšīya, Aḥmad Ibn-ʿAlī (1806). Ancient Alphabets and Hieroglyphic Characters Explained: With an Account of the Egyptian Priests, Their Classes, Initiation, and Sacrifices. Translated by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. Bulmer. p. 53. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
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62. Karakaş, Saniye (March 2004). "Submission to the Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights: Working Group of Minorities; Tenth Session, Agenda Item 3 (a)". United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Archived from the original (MS Word) on 28 June 2007. Retrieved 7 November 2006. Kurds have been officially allowed since September 2003 to take Kurdish names, but cannot use the letters x, w, or q, which are common in Kurdish but do not exist in Turkey's version of the Latin alphabet. [...] Those letters, however, are used in Turkey in the names of companies, TV and radio channels, and trademarks. For example Turkish Army has company under the name of AXA OYAK and there is SHOW TV television channel in Turkey.
63. Mark Liberman (24 October 2013). "Turkey legalizes the letters Q, W, and X. Yay Alphabet!". Slate. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
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External links

• Wîkîferheng (Kurdish Wiktionary)
• VejinBooks, collection of Kurdish literary and historical texts
• Vejin Dictionaries, collection of Kurdish dictionaries (written in Arabic script)
• The Kurdish Academy of Language (unofficial)
• Kurdînûs, a tool for writing in Kurdish and to convert texts from Arabic script to Latin script and vice versa
• 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)
• History of Kurdish Written Literature, at Encyclopedia Iranica (article written by Philip G. Kryeenbroek)
• Kurdish Language Initiative of Seywan Institute
• Kurdish Institute of Istanbul
• KAL: The Kurdish Academy of Language
• Kurdish languages at Curlie
• Grammar of a Less Familiar Language (MIT OpenCourseWare)
• Southern Kurdish phonetic
• Gorani Influence on Central Kurdish
• "Writing Kurdish Alphabetics in Java Programming Language". IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2016.