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Kurdish (Kurdish: Kurdî or کوردی) is the language spoken by Kurds in western Asia. Unlike many other languages it does not have a single standardized linguistic entity with the status of an official or state language. On the contrary, it is a continuum of closely related dialects that are spoken in a large geographic area spanning several national states, in some of these states forming one, or several, regional substandards (e.g., Kurmanji in Turkey; Sorani in northern Iraq).[3] Today the term Kurdish language is a term used for several languages spoken by Kurds. It is concentrated mainly in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.[4] The Kurdish languages belong to the northwestern sub-group of Iranian languages, which themselves belong to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. The languages related to Kurdish are Balochi, Gileki and Talysh, all of which belong to the north-western branch of Iranian languages. There are also transitional dialects between Southern Kurdish and the Lori and Bakhtiari dialects which are in the south-western branch of Iranian.
[edit] Origin and rootsThe Kurdish language belongs to the Indo-European family. The older Hurrian language of the people inhabiting the Kurdish areas was replaced by Indo-European around 850 BCE, with the arrival of the Medes to Western Iran [5][dubious ] [edit] HistoryAlthough Kurdish has a long history, little is known about Kurdish in pre-Islamic times. Among the earliest Kurdish religious texts is the Mashafa Rash/Mishefa Reş (The Black Book) the sacred book of Yazidi faith. It is considered to have been authored by Hassan bin Adi (b. 1400 AD), the great-grandnephew of the founder of the faith (Shiekh Adi), sometime in the 13th century AD. 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[6]. From the 15th to 17th centuries, classical Kurdish poets and writers developed a literary language. The most famous 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 Amadiyah[7]. This work is very important in Kurdish history as it is the first acknowledgment of the originality of the Kurdish language on a scientific base. Garzoni was given the title Father of Kurdology by later scholars[8]. The Kurdish language was banned in a large portion of Kurdistan for some time. After the 1980 Turkish coup until 1991 the use of the Kurdish language was illegal in Turkey.[9] [edit] Current statusToday, Kurdish is an official language in Iraq, while it is banned in Syria, where it is forbidden to publish material in Kurdish.[10] Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish, prohibiting the language in education and broadcast media.[11][12]. The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized in Turkey, and the use of Kurdish names containing the letters X, W, and Q, which do not exist in the Turkish alphabet, is not allowed. Kurdish education in private institutions is allowed in Turkey, but there has been little demand for these courses. In Iran, though it is used in some local media and newspapers, it is not used in schools [13] [14]. In 2005, 80 Iranian Kurds took part in an experiment and gained scholarships to study in Kurdish in Iraqi Kurdistan [15]. In March 2006, Turkey allowed private television channels to begin airingprogramming in the Kurdish language. However, the Turkish government said that they must avoid showing children's cartoons, or educational programs that teach the Kurdish language, and could broadcast only for 45 minutes a day or four hours a week.[16] However, most of these restrictions on private Kurdish television channels were relaxed in September 2009.[17] 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.”[18] 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 controversial X, W, Q letters during broadcasting. Other Kurdish satellite televisions are available in the Middle East and Europe. Kurdish blogs have emerged in recent years as virtual fora where Kurdish-speaking Internet users can express themselves in their native Kurdish or in other languages. [edit] Kurmanji Kurdish versus Sorani KurdishKurdish has two standardized versions, which have been labelled 'Northern' and 'Central'. The northern version, commonly called Kurmanji, is spoken in Turkey, Syria, and the northern part of the Kurdish-speaking areas of Iraq and Iran[19], and it accounts for a little over three-quarters of all Kurdish speakers. The central version, commonly called Sorani, is spoken in west Iran and much of Iraqi Kurdistan.[20] In historical evolution terms, Kurmanji is less modified than Sorani in both phonetic and morphological structure. The Sorani group has been influenced by among other things its closer cultural proximity to the other Iranian languages including the Gorani language of Iran.[21][20] Philip G. Kreyenbroek, an expert writing in 1992, says:
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.[21]. The reality is that the average Kurmanji speaker does not find it easy to communicate with the inhabitants of Suleymania or Halabja.[22] Sorani differs on six grammatical points from Kurmanji. This appears to be a result of Gorani (Haurami) influence.[citation needed]
Some linguistic scholars assert that the term "Kurdish" has been applied extrinsically in describing the language the Kurds speak, while Kurds have used the word "Kurdish" to simply describe their ethnic or national identity and refer to their language as Kurmanji, Sorani, Hewrami, 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.[23] [edit] PhonologyAccording to the Kurdish Academy of Language, Kurdish has the following phonemes: [edit] Consonants
[edit] Vowels
As in most modern Iranian languages, Kurdish vowels contrast in quality; they often carry a secondary length distinction that does not affect syllabic weight.[26] This distinction appears in the writing systems developed for Kurdish. The three "short" vowels are ə, ɪ and ʊ and the five long vowels are a, e, i, o and u. [edit] Historical phonology
[edit] Indo-European linguistic comparisonSee also: Template:Iranian languages word table Because the Kurdish language is an Indo-European language, there are many words that are cognates in Kurdish and other Indo-European languages such as Avestan, Persian, Sanskrit, German, English, Norwegian, Latin and Greek. (Source: Altiranisches Wörterbuch (1904) for the first two and last six.)
[edit] VocabularyThe bulk of the vocabulary in standard Kurdish is of Iranian origin, especially of northwestern Iranian; there are also Persian (southwestern) loanwords in Kurdish, entered mainly through poetry. A smaller number of loanwords come from Semitic, mainly Arabic, which are mostly religious terms. Yet, a smaller group of loanwords which are of Armenian, Caucasian and Turkic origins are used in standard Kurdish, besides some European words. There are also Kurdish words with no clear etymology. [edit] Writing systemMain article: Kurdish alphabet The Kurdish language uses three different writing systems. In Iran and Iraq it is written using a modified version of the Arabic alphabet (and more recently, sometimes with the Latin alphabet in Iraqi Kurdistan). In Turkey and Syria, it is written using the Latin alphabet. As an example, see the following online news portal published in Iraqi Kurdistan. [2] Also see the VOA News site in Kurdish. [3] Kurdish in the former USSR is written with a modified Cyrillic alphabet. There is also a proposal for a unified international recognised Kurdish alphabet based on ISO-8859-1[27] called Yekgirtú. [edit] Dictionaries[edit] Kurdish-only dictionaries
[edit] Kurdish-English dictionaries
As a main program, Iranian Kurdish-speaker scholar Hamid Hassani is supposed to be preparing a Soranî Kurdish Language Corpus, consisting of one million words. [edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links Kurdish language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[edit] Religious texts[edit] Kurdish broadcast programs
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