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Kurdish Language Facts:

Geographic distribution

The Kurdish language is spoken in the region loosely called Kurdistan including Kurdish populations in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Classification and related languages

The Kurdish language belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. Kurdish dialects are members of the northwestern subdivision of the Iranic branch of this largest family of languages in the world. The Kurdish language is an independent language, having its own historical development, continuity, grammatical system and rich living vocabularies. The Kurdish language was derived from the ancient "Median" language or "Proto-Kurdish". Ca. 35 million people in the high land of the Middle East, Kurdistan, speak different dialects of Kurdish.

Dialects and regional variants

Kurdish dialects can be divided into three primaries groups:

the Northern Kurdish dialects group also called Kurmanji and Bad, Central Kurdish dialects group also called Sorani (see also basic linguistic differences between these two major branches) and

the Southern Kurdish dialects group also called Pehlewan or "Pahlawanik" group in some sources. The two other major branches of Kurdish language are, Dim group also called "Zaza" and Hewram group also called Goran in some sources. These are further divided into scores of dialects and sub-dialects as well.

North Kirmanji (Kurmanji) * In Iran, tribes of Herki, Milan, Shekak, jelali, Heydari in Northern regions and western Azerbaijan province

(Luri) group has been classed as a subgroup of Kurdish language. Although Lurr contains a great number of Kurdish words there are still many unanswered questions regarding the relation between Lurr and the rest of Kurdish language.

There is no standard nomenclature for the divisions of Kurdish dialects, not just in the works of Western scholars but among the Kurds themselves. All the native designators for local language and dialects are based on the way the spoken language of one group sounds to the unfamiliar ears of the other. Dimila and their vernacular, Dimili, are therefore called Zaza by the Bad speakers, with reference to the preponderance of Z sounds in their language (Nikitin 1926). The Dimila call the Bad dialect and its speakers Xerewere. The Gorans refer to the Soran as Kurkure and Wawa. The Soran speakers in turn call the Gorans and their vernacular, Goran, Mec Mec, and refer to the tongue and the speakers of Bad as Ji Babu.

Writing system

Today, Kurds use four different non-standard writing systems.

Kurdish in Iran and Iraq is written using Arabic alphabet. In Turkey and Syria is written using the Latin alphabet.Kurds in formerly USSR use a modified Cyrillic alphabet . In addition to the 26 standard letters

Kurdish Pronunciation

Kurdish has the following consonants roughly like their English counterparts:

[b] as in boy

[h] as in how

[t] as in toy

[ch] as in choose

[j] as in juice

[v] as in voice

[d] as in day

[l] as in loose

[y] as in yes

[f] as in fine

[m] as in mice

[z] as in zoo

[g] as in go

[n] as in nice

[zh] as in pleasure

[p] as in put

[w] as in want

Kurdish also has the following consonants that English does not have:

[x]: like German ach

[gh]: like [x] only pronounced with the vocal cords vibrating

[r]: like the Spanish or Italian [r]

[q]: a k pronounced very far back in the mouth

The Kurdish vowel system is almost the same as English:

[i] close to the vowel in bit

[i:] close to the vowel in beet

[e] close to the vowel in bet, in some dialects closer to bat

[e:] close to the vowel in bait

[a] close to the vowel in box

[u] close to the vowel in put

[u:] close to the vowel in boot

[o] close to the vowel in boat

The vowels [i] and [i:], [e] and [e:], and [u] and [u:] are considered to be short and long pairs, and this is indicated in the spelling systems: in the roman systems, the long vowels are usually spelled with a ^ over them. In the Arabic script, the long vowels are represented by symbols, and the short vowels not represented at all.