| Kurdish Language |
Article Index for Kurdish |
Website Links For Kurdish |
Information AboutKurdish Language |
The Kurdish language is the language spoken by Kurds . It is mainly concentrated in the region of Kurdistan , which includes parts of Iran , Iraq , Syria and Turkey . Geographic distribution of Kurdish and other Iranic languages The Kurdish language belongs to the western sub-group of the Iranian Languages , which themselves belong to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European Language Family . The most closely related languages to Kurdish are Balochi , Gileki and Talysh , all of which belong to the north-western branch of Iranian languages. Also related to Kurdish is the Persian Language , which belongs to the south-western branch. ORIGIN AND ROOTS From about the 10th century BC, . M.R. Izady (1993) identifies three-quarters of Kurdish clan names and roughly two-third of Toponym s are as deriving from Hurrian. M.R. Izady, ''Exploring Kurdish Origins'', Kurdish Life, No. 7, Summer 1993 , e.g., the names of the clans of Bukhti, Tirikan, Bazayni, Bakran, Mand; rivers Murad, Balik and Khabur, lake Van; the towns of Mardin, Ziwiya, Dinawar and Barzan. HISTORY Although Kurdish has a , Malaye Jaziri and Faqi Tayran . In the beginning of the 20th century the countries that controlled the Kurdish-speaking regions refused to accept Kurdish as an official language and placed restrictions on its use,even in basic right such as naming childern in kurdish. Today, only in Iraq, Kurdish is an official language. In Turkey the use of Kurdish is allowed, though with restrictions; In Iran, Kurdish is used in some publications, but it is not allowed to be taught in schools. Syria still opposes the use of Kurdish in the country. In March 2006, Turkey allowed private Television channels to begin airing Kurdish language programming. However, the Turkish government said that they must avoid showing children's Cartoon s, or educational programs that teach the Kurdish language, and can only broadcast for 45 minutes a day or four hours a week. The programs must carry Turkish-9F30-8D16A9DEE206.htm Turkey to get Kurdish television].Thanks to satalite channel now a day,there are more and more Kurdish satalite available,such as Kurdsat,Kurdistan tv,Zagros,Nawroz,Roj,Mezopotamia,and many more. 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. Today, Kurdish is an official language in has led to prosecution and harassment in 2000 and 2003 [http://www.rsf.org/rsf/uk/html/mo/cplp/cp/000300.html . In Iran , though it is used in some local media and newspapers, it is forbidden in schools The Kurdish Language and Literature , by Joyce Blau, Professor of Kurdish language and civilization at the National Institute of Oriental Language and Civilization of the University of Paris ( INALCO ). The language policy of Iran from State policy on the Kurdish language: the politics of status planning by Amir Hassanpour , University of Toronto. As a result many Iranian Kurds have left for Iraqi Kurdistan where they can study in their native language Neighboring Kurds Travel to Study in Iraq . GRAMMAR The Kurdish language is a typical example of an ergative language. There are many variations of Ergativity such as Split Ergativity or Ergative-absolutive , especially in the past tense forms in the Kurdish language. In the ergative case, the ''subject'' is oblique, and the ''verb'' agrees with the ''object'' and thus is unlike Persian, Turkish and Arabic in which the ''object'' has an accusative marker and the verb in all tenses agrees with the ''subject'' of the sentence. Kurdish also shows Clitic Reversing in all tense forms in sentences. Linguists believe Kurdish has inherited this attribute of ergativity from the language of the Hurrians (Khurrites) who are believed to be one of the main ancestors of the Kurds. :A simple example of ergative-absolutive in Kurdish (Kurmanji):
In the above example, ''wan'' is oblique and ''nan'' is absolute. In the ergative case the verb ''çêkir'' (to make) agrees with the object ''nan''. Furthermore, ergativity only occurs in the past tense when the verb is transitive. When the verb is intransitive, sentence structure follows the standard subject-verb agreement. Lastly, the article ''the'' is automatically assumed if the object is absolute. In addition to these, Kurdish uses various Adposition s i.e. both Preposition s and Postposition s marking at the same time on a head noun. None of its neighbouring languages do so. DIALECTS According to Encyclopaedia Britannica , Kurdish has two main northern and central dialects. The northern dialect, or Kurmanji is spoken in northern half of Iraqi Kurdistan, Caucasus, Turkey, Syria and northwest of Iran. The central group, called Kurdi, or Sorani , is spoken in west of Iran and central part of Iraqi Kurdistan. {Link without Title} . According to Philip Kreyenbroek (1992), it may be misleading to call Kurmanji and Sorani/Kurdi "dialects" because they are in some ways as different from one another as German and English. However, it is useful to comment on the differences between the two varieties. Kurmanji or northern Kurdish is more archaic than the other dialects in both phonetic and morphological structure, and it is conjectured that the differences between central and northern dialects, have been caused by the proximity of central group to the other Iranian languages.D.N. MacKenzie, ''Language'' in ''Kurds & Kurdistan'', Encyclopaedia of Islam.. 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 of northern and central. Northern group (Kurmanji) is spoken in Turkey , Armenia , Azerbaijan , Mosul and Bahdinan regions in Iraq and Kurdish communities in Khorasan (northeast of Iran). Central group (Sorani) is spoken in Arbil , Sulaimaniya , Kirkuk (all in Iraq) , Mahabad and Sanandaj (in Iran). D.N. MacKenzie, ''Language'' in ''Kurds & Kurdistan'', Encyclopaedia of Islam.. INDO-EUROPEAN LINGUISTIC COMPARISON Due to the fact that Kurdish language is an Indo-European language, there are many words that are Cognate s in Kurdish and other Indo-European languages such as Avestan , Persian , Sanskrit , German , English , Latin and Greek . (Source: ''Altiranisches Wörterbuch (1904)'' for the first two and last six.) there are 7 dialects WRITING SYSTEM See Also: Kurdish alphabet The Kurdish language uses three different writing systems. In Iran and Iraq it is written using a modified version of the . There is also a proposal for a unified international recognised Kurdish alphabet based on ISO-8859-1 . The Kurdish Unified Alphabet PHONOLOGY According to the Kurdish Academy of Language, Kurdish has the following phonemes: Consonants #Just as in many English dialects, the velarized lateral does not appear in the onset of a syllable. Vowels The vowel pairs and , and , and and contrast in length and not quality. This distinction shows up in the writing system, for instance in the Kurdish Latin alphabet, short vowels are represented by ''o'', ''u'', ''i'' and ''e'' and long vowels have a circumflex ( ^ ), such as ''û'', ''î'' and ''ê''. Unlike Arabic, all vowels in Kurdish are mandatory and should be written down. DICTIONARIES Kurdish-only dictionaries
:Vol. I, 1960, 380 p. :Vol. II, 1964, 388 p. :Vol. III, 1976, 511 p. Kurdish-English dictionaries
REFERENCES SEE ALSO
EXTERNAL LINKS
Religious texts Kurdish broadcast programs
|
|
|