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Kurds language group. The meaning of the Kurdish language in the literary encyclopedia. The main methods of word formation

“No is sweeter than the tongue and no sweeter than the tongue,” says the Kurdish proverb. Which Kurdish languages \u200b\u200bare some of the most popular languages \u200b\u200bof the East?

What is Kurdish language?

Kurdish languages \u200b\u200bbelong to the Iranian group. They came from the Mead, but in the Middle Ages they were influenced by Arabic, Persian, and later At the moment, about 20 million people speak Kurdish. But there are significant differences between them, as they speak different dialects and use different alphabets.

This is explained by the fact that the Kurds live in territories belonging to different countries. They are used in Iran in Turkey, Syria and Azerbaijan - and in Armenia - Armenian (until 1946) and Cyrillic (since 1946). The Kurdish language is divided into 4 dialects - Sorani, Kurmanji, Zazai (thought) and Gorani.

Where are Kurdish languages \u200b\u200bspoken?

The Kurdish language is most widely spread in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Azerbaijan, Jordan and Armenia. 60% of Kurds live in Turkey, Northwest Iran, northern Iraq and Syria (Northwest, West, Southwest and Central Kurdistan), speak and write in Kurmanji dialect. About 30% of the Kurdish population lives in West and Southeast Iran, East and Southeast Iraq (South and Southeast Kurdistan) use the Soran dialect. The rest of the dialects used are zazai (thought) and gorani (South Kurdish).

Kurdish: the basics

For those who want to quickly learn the language of the Kurds, the Kurdish language for beginners is suitable, which includes the most basic phrases in Kurmanji, Sorani and South Kurdish.

Dem Bashi / Silav / Silam - Hello.

Choni? / Tu Bashi? / Hasid? - How are you?

Chakim / Bashim / Hasim - Great.

Supas / Seapas / Seas - Thanks.

Weave / Tika wild / That hwa - Please.

Hwa went to bed / Mal ava / Binishte hvash - Goodbye.

Min Tom Hosh Chokes - I Love You.

Does minit hosh give? - Do you love me?

Vere bo ere / Vere - Come here / come.

Bo Qué Herroy - Where are you going?

What is Dekey? / What is Heriki Cheat? - What are you doing?

Echim bo ser car - I'm going to work.

Kay Degerie? / Kay Deute? - When will you be back?

Herikim demeev; eve hatmeve / ez zivrim / le pis tiemesh - I'm coming back.

Kari is karek wild? - What do you work with?

Min Errom / min Devir Birr - I'm going to ...

Min Bashim / Ez Bashim - I'm fine.

Min bashim / ez neye bashim / me hves niyim - I’m not all right / - I have no mood.

Minhosh - I feel bad.

Chi ye / ev chiye / ev ches? - What is it?

Hitch / Chine / Hutch - Nothing.

Birit ekem / min birya te kriye / khurit kirdime - I miss you.

Deytive; degereite / tu ye bi zirvi / tiyedev; herred? - Will you come back?

Naymeve; nahmerremeve / ez on zivrim / nyetiyeev; Nyegerremev - I will not return.

When communicating in an unfamiliar language, one should not forget about sign language, which is almost the same in this world, with the exception of some. They can be clarified before traveling to a country where communication with the Kurds is ahead.

Navi min ... uh - My name is ...

Yek / do / se / dude / punch / shesh / heft / hasht / but / de / yazde / dzzde / sezde / charde / panzde / shanzde / hevde / hezhde / nosde / bist - one / two / three / four / five / six / seven / eight / nine / ten / eleven / twelve / thirteen / fourteen / fifteen / sixteen / seventeen / eighteen / nineteen / twenty.

Ducheme / Duchembe / Ducheme - Monday.

Sheshemme / shesemb / sheshem - Tuesday.

Chuvarshemme / charshemb / chvarsheme - Wednesday.

Pencheshemme / Pinchem / Penscheme - Thursday.

Jumha / Haney / Jume - Friday.

Shemme / Shemi / Sheme - Saturday.

Yekshemme / eksembi / yeksheme - Sunday.

Zistan / Zivistan / Zimsan - Winter.

Behar / Bihar / Vejar - Spring.

Havin / Havin / Tavsan - Summer.

Payez / payyz / payyh - Autumn.

Resources for Learning Kurdish

The best way to learn Kurdish languages \u200b\u200bis through constant practice, and the best kind of practice is This can be both a teacher and ordinary people for whom Kurdish is native.

You can find such people in groups on social networks dedicated to the Kurdish language and culture. Usually there you can find video tutorials for beginners, a dictionary and a phrasebook, see pictures with inscriptions in Kurdish, read poetry in the original and, if something is not clear, ask native speakers.

If you want to get better acquainted with the culture of Kurds, then you can find groups dedicated to Kurdish music and cuisine.

If there is no opportunity to communicate with a native speaker, then you can find courses for self-study of the Kurdish language.

KURDISH

(Kurmanji) - refers to the Iranian system, or (according to the terminology of the Indo-Europeans still held) the “family” of ideals, namely, to its western branch. The latter is divided into northwestern and southwestern groups of ides, and Kurdish. It belongs to the northwestern group, while the Persian belongs to the southwest. However, the Iranian language. and the dialects are not yet sufficiently studied to give their final classification, and within their western group there is a certain confusion and mutual penetration of the southern and northern elements. In addition, the Iranians in their work on Iranian. and dialects do not sufficiently take into account the possibility of preserving the experiences of the pre-Iranian ethnic layer in them. In particular, some phenomena of articulatory, as well as morphological and syntactic order are among the Kurdish language. common not only with a number of other Iranian dialects and languages, but also with languages. Of the Caucasus. The vocabulary has its own words that are not found in other Iranian dialects (negation - ??, t ?, the preposition 'c' - digel, te? I - full, h? Tin - come,? Nin - bring, n? Rd - send etc.); There are many Persian borrowings to which the Kurdish phonetic laws do not apply. In the dialects territorially bordering the resettlement of the Turks, there are many Turkish words (in particular, participles in mi?). In Kurdish many more words of the Arabic literary dictionary (through Turkish and Persian) have been included; there are also Arabic folk forms and words Armenian and Aramaic; it is possible that some Armenian and Kurdish words go back to the language. local pre-Iranian population. Kurdish dialects are not yet sufficiently explored and studied, and the final unit

754 of them cannot yet be produced. A significant part of the materials of the dialect researcher of the Eastern and Persian groups - O. Mann’a - has not yet been published. A number of Kurdish dialects has the general name “Kurmanji” and can be divided into two groups: eastern (more precisely, southeastern) and western. The border between the two has not yet been clarified. Then, a group of Persian Kurdish dialects should be distinguished (Senne - Kermanshah region), denoted either by the general name “Kurdi” or by the name of the locality (eg zangan, kalkhuri, senna, kermanshahi), as well as small groups scattered in Persia. An attempt to classify Kurdish dialects was made by E. S. Soane in his Grammar of the Kurmanji (L., 1913). Bibliography: II. Justi, Kurdische Grammatik, St. Petersburg, 1880; Socin A., Die Sprache der Kurden, “Grundriss der iranischen Philologie”, B. I, 2 Abt., S. 249–286 (both based primarily on western Kurmanji); Mann O., Die Mundart der Mukri Kurden, Grammatische Skizze, Kurdisch-Persische Forschungen, vol. I, 1906; Soane E. S., Notes on the Phonology of Southern Kurmanji, J. R. A. S., 1922, pp. 199-226. The only dictionary so far: Jaba A. - Justi F., Dictionnaire Kurde-fran? Ais, St. Petersburg., 1879. III. Minorsky W., Kurden, Enzyclop? Die des Islam (comprehensive bibliography). B. Miller

Literary Encyclopedia. 2012

Ethnogenesis and Kurdish

Despite the numerous hypotheses about the origin of the people, the most reliable for many scholars seems to be that according to which, the people are a descendant of the warlike tribe of the Kurtis, who once lived on the Armenian Highlands and Atropatene of the Medes.

Clarification of the question of the origin of the Kurds is also complicated by the fact that in Iranian literature any Iranian-speaking tribe that lived on the territory of the empire could be called Kurds.

It is believed that the Kurds are alien people and have their origin from the Scythians and Sarmatians. In any case, this people, apparently, always represented a rather variegated set of tribes, each of which was named according to the territory of its residence, and often had its own language.

Iranian languages

All languages \u200b\u200bspoken by the Kurds belong to the northwestern Iranian languages, which, in turn, include the Indo-European language family. The diversity of Kurdish languages \u200b\u200bis great and there is no understanding between some of them, despite their common origin and a large number of identical roots.

Any Kurdish language has numerous borrowings from the dominant language of the country in which the community resides. And since Kurds have long lived in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, borrowing from these languages \u200b\u200bis very significant, and the process of creating cripples from foreign words continues to this day.

The Kurds never had their own written language and for a long time used the Arabic alphabet until the Turkish authorities translated them into Latin in the 20th century. At the same time, the Latin language was adapted for the Soviet Kurds, who compactly lived in Armenia and Azerbaijan.

However, in 1946, the USSR changed their minds and translated the Kurmanji language into the Cyrillic alphabet, this was probably due to a nationalist turn and coincided with the deprivation of autonomy of the North Caucasian peoples.

Language evolution

The most common, both geographically and by the number of carriers, among Kurds is Kurmanji. This language is found in southeast and east of Turkey, in the north of Syria and north-west of Iran.

But, despite its wide distribution and the long history of its study in relation to other Kurdish languages, the evolution of Kurmanji does not seem obvious to scientists.

Today, native Kurds of southern languages \u200b\u200bare deprived of the opportunity to understand their northern counterparts, since the lexical languages \u200b\u200bdiffer too much, in addition, there are significant differences in the morphology of words and also in pronunciation.

Some scholars allow themselves to argue that the differences between Kurmanji and Sorani - another very common Kurdish language - are similar to those observed between English and German. However, this statement, being quite colorful, is not entirely true.

Such significant differences in the development of languages \u200b\u200bare associated, not least, with political reasons. Indeed, without their own state, the Kurds cannot contribute to the development of their languages \u200b\u200band in any way control this development.

Southern languages

In the Russian-language scientific literature, the South Kurdish language does not have an established name, but the name pehlewani is common in Western historiography. This language is native to three million people who live mainly in the north-west of the Islamic Republic of Iran and in eastern Iraq.

In general, it is worth saying that various Kurdish tribes living in various provinces tend to name their languages \u200b\u200baccording to their area of \u200b\u200bresidence, and the word Kurmanji indicate their ethnicity.

Returning to the Pahlavan language, it is worth saying that he experienced a very strong influence of the Persian language. This also applies to grammar and, of course, vocabulary, as well as pronunciation.

Like other Iranian languages, Pahlavani is quite old and has a history of up to three thousand years. In this regard, it is difficult to trace the history of its development in its entirety, since it experienced a wide variety of influences, because the region of its distribution has a very eventful political life.

Politics and Language

Starting from the XlX century, the Kurds thoroughly took up the cause of national liberation and began to attempt to create a national state, getting rid of Ottoman rule.

A convenient case, it would seem, was introduced after the First World War, when the Ottoman Empire weakened, and then completely collapsed. However, the small Kurdish states created on its fragments did not last long, and the chance was missed.

After that, the history of the Kurds of Turkey is a series of unsuccessful attempts to achieve at least cultural autonomy. In the mid-eighties, Kurdish independence supporters decided to move on to the active phase of the struggle for liberation and began an open armed confrontation, which, after twenty years, ended in a ceasefire.

However, in 2016, the Kurdistan Workers' Party announced the end of the ceasefire and a wave of terrorist attacks swept again across the country, with police and military casualties.

Along with the military pressure on the Kurdish community, the Turkish authorities tried in every possible way to limit the cultural realization of the Kurds by prohibiting teaching at schools and universities.

Kurmanji in the USSR

The first Kurds ended up on the territory of the Russian Empire after it conquered lands in Transcaucasia. After that, immigrants from Iran and the Ottoman Empire began to appear on the territory of the empire, speaking different dialects of Kurmanji and Sorani.

However, after the collapse of the empire, and the formation of the USSR, authorities took control of the cultural sphere and the reform of the Kurdish language, which was first translated into Latin, and then into Cyrillic.

In the USSR, newspapers appeared in Kurmanji, research was conducted and dictionaries were compiled, which, however, were not of high quality. Soviet Kurds farther and farther away from their counterparts in the west, and this process stopped only after the liquidation of the USSR.

According to Kurdish scholars, the Kurdish language has undergone changes over the course of its history. According to some sources, the Proto-Slavonic dialect was replaced by Kartvelian, and then Indo-European. But despite all these changes, the Kurds retained about 6 thousand Slavic words in our language (Kurmanjian dialect) to this day.
The overwhelming majority of the Kurdish people use the Kurmandjian dialect. According to Marr, in the north, western Kurds have the words of the Cimmerian-Scythian dialect in everyday life, while they do not exist in the southern Kurds of the same range.
Kurds for a long time did not have an alphabet. In Turkey, the Latin alphabet was used, in Iran, Iraq and Syria - Arabic, and in the Soviet Union at different times, the Kurds used either Latin or Cyrillic.

The modern Kurdish language belongs to the northwestern subgroup of Iranian languages \u200b\u200bbelonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages, which has nothing to do with Arabic and Turkic languages. It is similar to the Persian and other languages \u200b\u200bof the Iranian group as the Russian language is similar to Polish or Norwegian to German.
As an independent language, according to the information available in Kurdish studies, the Kurdish language has existed from the Ahmedinsky period (VI-IV centuries BC).

The common name for the Kurdish people is “Kurds”, which is a derivative of the geographical name “Kor Didi”, is found in the form of “Korduenu (Gordienu)” in Greek sources as the name of the current central part of Kurdistan, later renamed “Bakhtinan” - “the place of the best faith”, "Shrine."

There are also names and self-names of certain groups of the Kurdish people, speaking different dialects: “Kurmanj”, calling their dialect “Kurmanji”; “Soran”, calling their dialect “Sorani”; "Lur", a dialect of which is called "luris"; "Goran", calling their dialect "goran". They are followed by the names and self-names of individual tribal and religious associations: “Muslim Kurds” and “Yezidi Kurds (Ezdi)”, related to Kurmanj and speaking the Kurmanji dialect; “Kurds-Badzhalan” and “Kurds-Zaza”, referring to the mountains and speaking two different dialects of the dialect of Gorani-Badzhalani and Zazai, etc.

Over the past decades, due to the significant growth of the national liberation movement in Kurdistan and the recognition of it by the wider world community, various tendencies towards a split in the ethnic unity of the Kurdish people have especially intensified. There are attempts to represent the Kurds as a conglomerate of representatives of various peoples - Turks, Persians, Arabs, etc., and their language - as a mixture of the languages \u200b\u200bof these peoples. There is a clear desire of the colonialists of Kurdistan (especially Turkey) and other dark circles to exclude some tribes and religious associations from the composition of the Kurdish people and define them as independent nations, supposedly having their own independent languages. These include Lur Kurds, Zaza Kurds, and Yezidi Kurds, who, together with the majority of Muslim Kurds, are Kurmanjs, speak the same Kurmanji dialect and differ from them only by the Yezidi religion - the ancient historical religion of the whole Kurdish people, in the Middle Ages, supplanted by Islam among the bulk of the people - the ancestors of the present Muslim Kurds.

The Kurdish language is a single, popular language, a means of communication for the entire Kurdish people. It retains independence and color in the entire territory of distribution regardless of the fragmentation of parts of the people speaking it.
Since the second half of the XIX century. - the period of rapid upsurge of national life throughout Kurdistan, the Kurdish language is increasingly gaining the status of a national language developing at all levels. This is facilitated by: the publication in various dialects of the Kurdish language of monuments of oral folk art, which widely reflect the idea of \u200b\u200bthe unity of the people; publication of fiction, scientific and socio-political literature; participation of representatives of different tribal and religious associations, carriers of different dialects in the struggle for national rights.

The Kurdish language operates in two forms: spoken and written. The main means of communication for the whole people is the oral-colloquial form. It is used in everyday everyday and labor communication in the following three widespread functional variants: in everyday vernacular, special high-style speech (culturally worthy speech) and folklore narrative speech. They differ from each other in their specific structural and functional features.

On the basis of the oral-colloquial form, in connection with the emergence of Kurdish writing, a written (written-book) form arose, developing in fiction, educational, socio-political and periodical literature. It differs from the oral-colloquial form in a number of features and, first of all, in the great complexity of the syntax and the presence of a significant number of compound names and terms, including international ones.
The modern Kurdish language represents an extremely rich vocabulary, phraseology and paremiology, has rich stylistic resources, and has a wide range of functional styles. An indicator of its perfection is high-quality translations into this language of the best examples of Russian and world literature: “Mother” by M. Gorky, “The Fate of a Man” by M. Sholokhov, works by A. Pushkin, A. Chekhov, N. Gogol, L. Tolstoy, M. Lermontov, I. Turgenev, F. Dostoevsky, T. Shevchenko and others.

Mostly Kurds use only their native Kurdish language. At the same time, bilingualism is observed in certain groups of the Kurdish people - Kurdish-Iranian (in Iranian Kurdistan), Kurdish-Turkish (in Turkish Kurdistan), Kurdish-Arab (in Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan), Kurdish-Armenian, Kurdish-Georgian, Kurdish Azerbaijani, Kurdish-Russian (in some CIS republics).

Kurdish is currently not taught anywhere. As a separate subject, it is taught in schools in the Kurdish villages of the Republic of Armenia and in some schools in Kazakhstan.
The first written monument that has reached us in the Kurdish language in Aramaic, reflecting the events of the Arab invasions of Kurdistan and Iran and containing valuable data on the language and history of the Kurdish people of that time, dates back to the 7th century. The formation of the written tradition in Kurdistan becomes especially noticeable starting from the X - XI centuries. This period includes the work of the Kurdish educator and poet Ali Hariri in the Kurdish language based on Arabic graphics. Subsequently, representatives of all early and medieval Kurdish classical literature use these graphics in their works - prominent Kurdish poets and writers: Melae Jiziri (1101-1169), Fakiye Tayran (1302-1375), Ahmed Hani (1591-1652), Ismail Bayazedi ( 1642-1709), Khan Kubadi (d. 1699), Nali (1800-1856), Salim (1805-1869), Kurdi (1812-1850), Haji Kadir Koyi (1816-1894), Mir Shakar Ali Dinarvand (1825- 1865), Abas Khan Azadi (1858-1899), etc.

In the chaotic period after Chaldyran, the Kurds, reacting to someone else's Turkish (Rumian) or Persian (Ajamian) occupation, began to show national identity, creating classical literature in the Kurdish language, developing epic, patriotic, lyrical and mystical feelings.

Ahmed Hani (1591-1652), a Kurdish poet and philosopher, was born in Central Kurdistan. His grave, located at the foot of great Ararat, is a place of pilgrimage. He is a “poet of poor people,” as he called himself. In the preface to his epic work “Mom u Zin”, he reports that he wrote it in Kurdish so that other nations would not say that the Kurdish people have no culture. This truly Kurdish kobzar dreamed of an independent Kurdistan, urged the Kurds to unity and a united nationwide struggle.

Until recently, literature in Kurdish was published in the Republic of Armenia - on the basis of Russian graphics, in Switzerland, Germany and some other countries - on the basis of Latin graphics.
The written-book, literary form of the Kurdish language operates in two versions: northwestern - based on the northwestern Kurmanji dialect, and southeastern - based on the southeastern dialect of Sorani. The literature published in these dialects, presented in different graphic systems, is not sufficiently accessible for general use. At the same time, as the results of specific observations on the dialect structure of the Kurdish language show, the Kurdish people, in the corresponding socio-political situation in Kurdistan, can avoid the bilingualism of the literary language and have a single nationwide literary language based on only one dialect of Kurmanji in its Bahdin variety, the most understandable, accessible to all native speakers.

Each of the four dialectal forms of the Kurdish language (Kurmanji, Sorani, Gorani and Lori) has variations in the degree of distribution in the form of dialects, accusations, etc. (feyli, kelhori, zaza, etc.).

The Kurmanji dialect is spoken by the Kurdish population of areas west of Lake Rezaye in Iranian Kurdistan, all the Kurds of the CIS and Turkish Kurdistan (with the exception of Zaza Kurds settled in Erzrum, Kharput, Diarbekir and Dersim regions), Kurds of Syrian Kurdistan and areas of Acre, Amedi, Respiration, Zakho and Sheikhan of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Sorani dialect is spoken by the Kurdish population of the areas of Kirkuk, Suleimaniyah, Revanduz and Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan and the districts of Mehabad, Saqqiz, Bokan, Bane and Seine of Iranian Kurdistan. Next to them from the south is the Goran dialect, distributed in the strip from the Seine to the south-west along the Iran-Iraq border to the line passing from Mandali (Iraq) to Esedabad. To the south and southwest of this line there is a Lori dialect (a group of dialects lekki, feyli, kalkhori, mamesani, bakhtyari), whose carriers compactly inhabit the areas located in the strip between Sultanabad, Dau-Latabad and Khanekin in the north to the line passing from Shiraz via Kazerun to the Persian Gulf in the south.

Speakers of all dialects of the Kurdish language, despite their significant territorial fragmentation, have a single ethnic and national identity. The dialects themselves, having a single grammatical system and a common vocabulary, in some cases sharply differ from each other in their phonetic, lexical and syntactic features. Among them, in comparative comparative terms, only the main dialects have been specifically studied so far - Kurmanji, Sorani and, to some extent, Goran.

Learning Kurdish begins in the second half of the 18th century. The first elementary grammar of the Kurdish language of the Italian missionary M. Garzoni, written on the material of the Kurmanji dialect, belongs to this period. In 1856 - 58 years.

the works of the Russian scientist P. Lerch are published, in which dialects of Kurmanji and Zazai are considered, and in 1864, the work of the Viennese scientist F. Müller, devoted to the description of the Kurdish dialect Zazai. In 1865, his own short grammar essay on the dialects of Kurmanji and Zazai was published. Following him, in 1857, a short essay by M. Khodzko was published on the morphology of Sorani, and in 1872, the Kurdish grammar of the American missionary A. Rhee with a dictionary of Hakrian dialect. In 1880, the Kurdish grammar of F. Justi was published, and in 1891, the work of S. A. Egiazarov, containing valuable information on the grammar of the Kurdish language.

Orientalists' interest in the Kurdish language significantly increased in the first half of the 20th century. The works of O. Mann, E. Soane, L. Fossum, R. Jardin, P. Beidar devoted to the grammar of the Kurdish language, a description of its dialects belong to this period.
The Kurdish language has been studied more intensively and thoroughly since the late 50s. In 1956, Ali Badirkhan Kamuran’s grammar of the Kurdish language was published, and in 1957, studies of the English Kurdologist D.N. McKenzie devoted to a comparative study of the Kurdish dialects were published.

The leading centers for the study of the Kurdish language continue to be: the Institute of Oriental Studies and the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Republic of Armenia. Among the most important works on the Kurdish language written by the employees of these institutes are the following: “The Kurdish language of the USSR” by C. X. Bakaev (M., 1973), “Grammar of the Kurdish language based on the dialects of Kurmanji and Sorani” by K. K. Kurdoev (M ., 1978). “Essays on Kurdish Grammar” by I. I. Tsukerman (M.-L., 1962), “Fundamentals of the Kurdish Language Phraseology” by M. U. Khamoyan (Yerevan, 1982), etc.

Kurdish belongs to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of Indo-European languages. In fact, the “Kurdish language” is the collective name of a group of dialects spoken by 16-35 million people in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Caucasus. Kurdish literature began to appear only at the beginning of the 20th century.

A systematic comparison with other Iranian languages \u200b\u200bshows that the Kurdish language belongs to the northwestern Iranian languages. According to the theory of D. Mackenzie (1961), the historical homeland of the Kurds could be located in the central part of Iran. Although the Kurdish language has a long history, almost nothing is known about the pre-Islamic period of its existence. One of the first written monuments in Kurdish is the Black Book, a collection of sacred texts from the Yezidis. It is believed that it was written by Sheikh Ali ibn Musafir, the founder of this religion, in the 13th century.

The first Kurdish grammar was published in Rome in 1787. Its author is the Italian priest Maurizio Garzoni, 18 years of missionary work in Kurdistan. This book played a very important role in Kurdish history, as it became the first scientific recognition of the identity of the Kurdish language. In a large territory of Kurdistan, the Kurdish language was banned for some time. So, in Turkey, it was banned after the coup in 1980 until 1991.

Today, the Kurdish language has an official status in Iraq. In Syria, by contrast, the publication of books, newspapers and magazines in Kurdish is prohibited. Until 2002, the use of the Kurdish language in Turkey was also very limited: for example, it was forbidden to use it in educational institutions and in the media. In Turkey, the Kurdish letter is still not recognized and Kurdish names that contain the letters X, W, Q that are not in the Turkish alphabet are prohibited. In 2006, the Turkish government allowed private television channels to broadcast in Kursk, but the duration of these broadcasts was limited: 45 minutes a day or 4 hours a week. The first Turkish state television channel in Kurdish began broadcasting around the clock on January 1, 2009 under the slogan “We live under the same sky,” and the letters X, W, Q are used in its programs.

Today, the Kurdish literary language exists in the form of two regional standards: the central (Sorani), which is spoken in western Iran and the main part of Iraqi Kurdistan, and northern (Kurmanji), spoken in Turkey, Syria and parts of Iraq and Iran. During its development, Kurmanji underwent fewer changes than sorani, both in phonetics and in morphological structure. Gorani language stands apart: it is clearly different from Kurmanji and Sorani, however, common vocabulary is related to them, and from Sorani it has a number of common features in grammar. Despite the differences, Gorani is classified as a dialect of the Kurdish language. This is partly due to the fact that its carriers, who inhabit the south and southeast of Kurdistan, identify themselves as Kurds.

Vowels in the Kurdish language, as in most modern Iranian languages, are contrasted in quality: they can have a secondary difference in longitude, which does not affect the overall length of the syllable. However, this difference is reflected in the writing systems used in the Kurdish language, and therefore three “short” vowels and five “long” are distinguished.

The bulk of Kurdish vocabulary is of Iranian origin. Quite a lot of words are borrowed from Farsi and the Arabic language, which is associated with the adoption of Islam. An insignificant part of foreign vocabulary is made up of borrowings from Armenian, Turkish and Western European languages. There are also Kurdish words with an incomprehensible etymology.