The Kurdish Language

Abstract

Kurds call their language Kurdî (كوردی) in Kurdish. This chapter first provides some historical and sociocultural information about the language such as the family of languages it belongs to, its variety groups, and its current status and vitality. This will be followed by a linguistic description of Central Kurdish (Sorani, henceforth CK), for it is beyond the scope of this chapter to cover the linguistic properties of all Kurdish variety groups. We will focus on CK because it is the variety that is spoken by the vast majority of Kurds in Iraq where Kurdish has an official status. Some basic vocabulary and expressions in both Central and Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji, henceforth NK) will be presented followed by a sample text in CK. The chapter concludes with a list of books and resources on the language.