Central Kurdish (), also called Sorani (), is a
Kurdish
Kurdish may refer to:
*Kurds or Kurdish people
*Kurdish languages
*Kurdish alphabets
*Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes:
**Southern Kurdistan
**Eastern Kurdistan
**Northern Kurdistan
**Western Kurdistan
See also
* Kurd (dis ...
dialect or a language that is spoken in
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
, mainly in
Iraqi Kurdistan
Iraqi Kurdistan or Southern Kurdistan ( ku, باشووری کوردستان, Başûrê Kurdistanê) refers to the Kurdish-populated part of northern Iraq. It is considered one of the four parts of "Kurdistan" in Western Asia, which also incl ...
, as well as the provinces of
Kurdistan
Kurdistan ( ku, کوردستان ,Kurdistan ; lit. "land of the Kurds") or Greater Kurdistan is a roughly defined geo-cultural territory in Western Asia wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population and the Kurdish culture, Kurdish la ...
,
Kermanshah
Kermanshah ( fa, کرمانشاه, Kermânšâh ), also known as Kermashan (; romanized: Kirmaşan), is the capital of Kermanshah Province, located from Tehran in the western part of Iran. According to the 2016 census, its population is 946,68 ...
, and
West Azerbaijan in western
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
. Sorani is one of the two official languages of Iraq, along with
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
, and is in administrative documents simply referred to as "Kurdish".
The term Sorani, named after the former
Soran Emirate
Soran Emirate ( ku, میرنشینی سۆران) was a medieval Kurdish emirate established before the conquest of Kurdistan by Ottoman Empire in 1514 and later revived by Emir Kor centered in Rawandiz from 1816 to 1836. Kor was ousted in an off ...
, is used especially to refer to a written, standardized form of Central Kurdish written in the
Sorani alphabet
The Kurdish languages are written in either of two alphabets: a Latin alphabet introduced by Celadet Alî Bedirxan in 1932 called the Bedirxan alphabet or Hawar alphabet (after the '' Hawar'' magazine) and a Perso-Arabic script called the Sorani ...
developed from the
Arabic alphabet in the 1920s by Sa'ed Sidqi Kaban and
Taufiq Wahby
Taufiq Wahby (1891–1984) was a prominent Kurdish writer, linguist and politician. He first served in the Ottoman army as a colonel, but after the creation of Iraq by the British in 1920, he became an influential officer in the new Iraqi ar ...
.
History
Tracing back the historical changes that Sorani has gone through is difficult. No predecessors of Kurdish are yet known from Old and Middle Iranian times. The extant Kurdish texts may be traced back to no earlier than the 16th century CE. Sorani originates from the
Sulaymaniyah
Sulaymaniyah, also spelled as Slemani ( ku, سلێمانی, Silêmanî, ar, السليمانية, as-Sulaymāniyyah), is a city in the east of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, not far from the Iran–Iraq border. It is surrounded by the Azmar, Go ...
region.
1700s-1918
The oldest written literature in Sorani is reported to have been ''Mahdîname'' (the book of Mahdi) from 1762 by Mulla Muhammed ibn ul Haj. Sorani thus only emerged as a written language after the decline of the
Gorani vernacular, the
Ardalan
Ardalan ( ku, میرنشینی ئەردەڵان) was a hereditary Kurdish vassaldom in western Iran from around the 14th century until 1865 or 1868 with Sanandaj as capital. The territory corresponded roughly to present-day Kurdistan Province ...
state and the rise of
Baban
Baban () was a Kurdish principality existing from the 16th century to 1850, centered around Sulaymaniyah. The Baban principality played an active role in the Ottoman- Safavid conflict and gave significant military support to the Ottomans. They wer ...
around Sulaymaniyah. During the Baban era, Sorani emerged as an important literary vernacular and many poets such as
Nalî
Nalî ( ku, نالی), also known as Mallah Xidir Ehmed Şawaysî Mîkayalî ( ku, مەلا خدر (خضر) کوڕی ئەحمەدی شاوەیسی ئاڵی بەگی میکایلی)Keith Hitchins, "NALÎ" in Encyclaopedia Iranica (1800 Shahrizor - ...
wrote in Sorani despite being proficient in
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
and
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
. Nalî mentioned that he wrote in Sorani knowing his poetry might not receive the same
dissemination
To disseminate (from lat. ''disseminare'' "scattering seeds"), in the field of communication, is to broadcast a message to the public without direct feedback from the audience.
Meaning
Dissemination takes on the theory of the traditional view ...
as it might have done in the more prestigious Arabic or Persian. Contemporaries of Nalî like
Salim
Salim, Saleem or Selim may refer to:
People
*Salim (name), or Saleem or Salem or Selim, a name of Arabic origin
* Salim (poet) (1800–1866)
* Saleem (playwright) (fl. 1996)
*Selim I, Selim II and Selim III, Ottoman Sultans
* Selim people, an e ...
and Mistefa Begi Kurdi also wrote in Sorani and their writings would become the foundation for the standard variety of Sorani. When the Baban dynasty was overthrown in 1850, the golden era of Sorani ended and poets including Nalî left the Sulaymaniyah region.
Haji Qadir Koyi
Haji Qadir Koyi ( ku, حاجی قادری کۆیی, Hacî Qadirî Koyî; c. 1817-1897) was a Kurdish poet. He carried on the nationalistic message of Ahmad Khani in his writings. He wanted to enlighten the people and help them to remedy the probl ...
continued the tradition of writing in Sorani and lamented the lack of promotion of Sorani among the Kurdish clergy and called those who did not do so 'bastards'. Beside Koyi,
Riza Talabani
Sheikh Riza Talabani ( ku, شێخ ڕەزای تاڵەبانی, Şêx Rizayê Talebanî) was a celebrated Kurdish poet from Kirkuk, Iraq. Talabani wrote his poetry in Kurdish, Persian, and Arabic. Most of his poetry consists of Satire, Ribaldry ...
also promoted Sorani as a literary language.
Prior to the 20th century, only three non-poetic Sorani works are known to exist being ''Mawludname'' by Sheikh Husen Qazi (1793-1871), a glossary of Arabic-Kurdish by Ehmedi from 1795 and a translation of the introduction to
Gulistan Gulistan, Golestan or Golastan ( fa, گلستان) means "flower land" in Persian language (''gol'' meaning "flower", and ''-stan'' or meaning "land").
It may refer to:
Places
Iran
"Golestan" most often refers to:
* Golestan province in nor ...
by
Saadi Shirazi
Saadi Shīrāzī ( fa, ابومحمّد مصلحالدین بن عبدالله شیرازی), better known by his pen name Saadi (; fa, سعدی, , ), also known as Sadi of Shiraz (, ''Saʿdī Shīrāzī''; born 1210; died 1291 or 1292), was ...
.
The language of these works heavily relied on Arabic and Persian which prevented Sorani from enjoying further progress beside being a literary language. Only after
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
did this change.
Beside poetry and the few non-poetic works mentioned above, linguistic works on Sorani also existed.
Leonard Chodźko
Leonard Borejko Chodźko (1800–1871) was a Polish historian, geographer, cartographer, publisher, archivist, and activist of Poland's post- November-1830-Uprising Great Emigration.
Life
Chodźko was educated at the University of Vilnius, wher ...
wrote a sketch of the Sulaymaniyah variety of Sorani in 1857, de Morgan wrote his "''Etudea linguistiques: Dialectee kurdea'' " in 1904 in which he compared eleven varieties of Kurdish to each other and with Persian and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
. Later, in 1903,
Soane published a learner textbook and vocabulary list of Sorani in 1903 for British personnel in Kurdistan, while Oskar Mann wrote ''Die Mundart der Mukri Kurden'' containing a grammar sketch of the Sorani variety of
Mukriyan
Mukriyan () or 'Deryaz' was a Kurdish principality from the late 14th century to the 19th century centered around Mahabad. Mukriyan was a neighbor to the Emirate of Bradost.
Geography and tribes
Mukriyan encompassed the area south of Lake ...
in 1906. Lastly, Ludvig Olsen Fossum published a grammar book in 1919 based on the Sorani variety spoken around
Mahabad
Mahabad ( fa, مهاباد, ku, مەهاباد, translit=Mehabad), also Romanized as Mihābād and Muhābād and formerly known as Savojbolagh, is a city and capital of Mahabad County, West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its ...
.
1918-1930s
Iraq
After the dissolution of the
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
, much of the Sorani-speaking region came under
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
rule (present-day Iraq). Sorani subsequently became the language for
prose
Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...
, media and journalism and a distinct alphabet was also formed for the language. The language also experienced a Kurdified vocabulary by the 1950s. The Brits started publishing
periodicals
A periodical literature (also called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is a newspaper, but a magazine or a Academic journal, journal ...
in Sorani to mobilize the Kurds since the Sorani-speaking Kurds of Iraq were more urbanized, educated and
nationalist
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Th ...
than the
Kurmanji
Kurmanji ( ku, کورمانجی, lit=Kurdish, translit=Kurmancî, also termed Northern Kurdish, is the northern dialect of the Kurdish languages, spoken predominantly in southeast Turkey, northwest and northeast Iran, northern Iraq, northern Sy ...
-speaking population around
Duhok. Kurdish nationalism was promoted to prevent any Turkish control over
Kirkuk
Kirkuk ( ar, كركوك, ku, کەرکووک, translit=Kerkûk, , tr, Kerkük) is a city in Iraq, serving as the capital of the Kirkuk Governorate, located north of Baghdad. The city is home to a diverse population of Turkmens, Arabs, Kurds, ...
and
Mosul
Mosul ( ar, الموصل, al-Mawṣil, ku, مووسڵ, translit=Mûsil, Turkish: ''Musul'', syr, ܡܘܨܠ, Māwṣil) is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of Nineveh Governorate. The city is considered the second large ...
. For this, the first government press in Sorani was established in Sulaymaniyah in 1920 which propelled Sorani in becoming a language of media, education and administration. The government press had by 1923 published 6 books, 118 issues of the weekly publication ''Pêşkewtin'' (Progress), 14 issues of ''Bangî Kurdistan'' (The Call of Kurdistan) and 16 issues of ''Rojî Kurdistan'' (The Day of Kurdistan). The period also saw the publication of Sorani works for schools, and courts began using the language as well. In 1923,
Taufiq Wahby
Taufiq Wahby (1891–1984) was a prominent Kurdish writer, linguist and politician. He first served in the Ottoman army as a colonel, but after the creation of Iraq by the British in 1920, he became an influential officer in the new Iraqi ar ...
was instructed to produce school books in Sorani by the Iraqi government and his modified
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
of Sorani would be implemented as the official Sorani orthography in school textbooks two decades later. His orthography included the purge of the Arabic letters () from the Kurdish alphabet, while creating new letters () Wahby also supported moving over to the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
however this was not accepted among the literary society nor the state.
In the 1930s, the
League of Nations
The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...
urged Iraq to draft a law guaranteeing the use of the Kurdish language. The Iraqi authorities reluctantly agreed but the British knew the law would not be implemented once they left Iraq. This pushed the Brits to implement the law themselves in May 1931 which made Kurdish an official language in the governorates of Sulaymaniyah, Kirkuk, and Erbil. Kurds were however dissatisfied with this since Kurdish was only allowed to be used in elementary schools and Iraq had also fully Arabized the education and administration in Kirkuk and Mosul. In subsequent years, linguistic rights for Kurds were either ignored or reluctantly implemented.
Iran
The development of Sorani was slow in Iran and experienced many challenges. The earliest use of Sorani was during the
Simko Shikak revolt Simko, Šimko or Simkó is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* David Simko (born 1954), American racing driver
* Imre Simkó (1939–2021), Hungarian sport shooter
* Ivan Šimko (born 1955), Slovak politician
*Joe Simko, American ...
from 1918 to 1922 which saw the use of Sorani side by side with Kurmanji as official languages in the area controlled by the rebels. After the defeat of the revolt, formal use of Sorani ceased until 1946. During the rule of
Reza Shah
Reza Shah Pahlavi ( fa, رضا شاه پهلوی; ; originally Reza Khan (); 15 March 1878 – 26 July 1944) was an Iranian Officer (armed forces), military officer, politician (who served as Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics (Iran), ...
from 1925 to 1941, Iran was extremely centralist and
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
was the dominant language to the detriment of other languages. A decree issued by the government in 1935 suppressed Kurdish and marked the end of Kurdish as a written language. Only a dozen handwritten poetry manuscripts in Sorani exist from this period. This included poems by Hassan Saifulquzzat, Said Kamil Imani and Khalamin Barzanji.
1940s-1950s
By the 1940s, the Sulaymaniyah variant of Sorani had become the standard variant of Sorani and even
Kurds in Iran accepted this. The 1940s also saw the use of Sorani in radio broadcasting which elevated its prestige but also the urgency in proficiency since it was linked to current events.
Iraq
The 1940s experienced an intermittent suppression of Kurdish but Sorani still succeeded in becoming considerably standardized by the end of the period. By the time the
14 July Revolution
The 14 July Revolution, also known as the 1958 Iraqi coup d'état, took place on 14 July 1958 in Iraq, and resulted in the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq that had been established by Faisal I of Iraq, King Faisal I in 1921 under the ...
took place in 1958, Sorani had incorporated the norms of a standard language which had given it legitimacy. During the new
Iraqi Republic from 1958 to 1968, the number of journals in Sorani increased fast and a Kurdish department was established at the
University of Baghdad
The University of Baghdad (UOB) ( ar, جامعة بغداد ''Jāmi'at Baghdād'') is the largest university in Iraq, tenth largest in the Arab world, and the largest university in the Arab world outside Egypt.
Nomenclature
Both University ...
and moreover a Directorate General of Kurdish Studies was established to answer the growing Kurdish demands for mother tongue education.
In 1960, the first Sorani-Arabic dictionary was published.
Iran
After the ousting of Reza Shah in 1941 and the
Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran, nationalist movements among Kurds gained strength and Sorani became the formal language again, especially in Mukriyan where the ''Komeley Jiyanewey Kurd'' (KJK) used Sorani as their official language. Sorani was also introduced in schools, administration and in mosques.
Kurds in Iraq
Iraqi Kurds ( ar, العراقيين الكرد, ku, کوردەکانی عێراق) are people born in or residing in Iraq who are of Kurdish origin. The Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Iraq, comprising between 15% and 20% of the count ...
aided with this, for example by exporting school books to Iran.
Language planning
In sociolinguistics, language planning (also known as language engineering) is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure or acquisition of languages or language varieties within a speech community.Kaplan B., Robert, and Richard ...
was also in the works but rudimentary. When the Republic of Mahabad fell, formal use of Sorani also ceased in Iran, however the new Pahlavi state under
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
, title = Shahanshah Aryamehr Bozorg Arteshtaran
, image = File:Shah_fullsize.jpg
, caption = Shah in 1973
, succession = Shah of Iran
, reign = 16 September 1941 – 11 February 1979
, coronation = 26 October ...
would become more tolerant than that of Reza Shah. Researcher Hassanpour argues that the reason for this was the vulnerability of the new central government which had to approach the Kurds more relaxed. For this, some developments did take place including the publication of periodicals in Sorani but also state-sponsoed radio broadcasting and teaching Kurdish at the
University of Tehran
The University of Tehran (Tehran University or UT, fa, دانشگاه تهران) is the most prominent university located in Tehran, Iran. Based on its historical, socio-cultural, and political pedigree, as well as its research and teaching pro ...
.
In the 1950s, the Iranian authorities began restricting and controlling the tolerance towards Kurdish which continued towards the
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynas ...
in 1979. No
positive rights
Negative and positive rights are rights that oblige either inaction (''negative rights'') or action (''positive rights''). These obligations may be of either a legal or moral character. The notion of positive and negative rights may also be ap ...
were given and any written use was controlled. However, the restrictions had to be loosen since Kurds in Iran were receiving radio broadcasting from Iraq and
Soviet Armenia
The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic,; russian: Армянская Советская Социалистическая Республика, translit=Armyanskaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika) also commonly referred to as Soviet A ...
. Iran thus allowed for limited radio broadcasting in Mahabad,
Sanandaj and
Kermanshah
Kermanshah ( fa, کرمانشاه, Kermânšâh ), also known as Kermashan (; romanized: Kirmaşan), is the capital of Kermanshah Province, located from Tehran in the western part of Iran. According to the 2016 census, its population is 946,68 ...
which legitimized and popularized Sorani further.
1960s-1980s
Iraq
The Kurdish Scientific Academy was established in
Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...
in 1968 which devoted a significant part of their job to develop
neologism
A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
s, grammar books, writing style guide-lines, a modified orthography and research in linguistics subjects. The
Kurdistan Democratic Party
The Kurdistan Democratic Party ( ku, Partiya Demokrat a Kurdistanê; پارتی دیموکراتی کوردستان), usually abbreviated as KDP or PDK, is the largest party in Iraqi Kurdistan and the senior partner in the Kurdistan Regional Gov ...
and its media also used Sorani as their official language despite its leader
Mustafa Barzani
Mustafa Barzani ( ku, مەلا مستهفا بارزانی, Mistefa Barzanî; 14 March 1903 – 1 March 1979) also known as Mela Mustafa (Preacher Mustafa), was a Kurdish leader, general and one of the most prominent political figures in mod ...
being a Kurmanji-speaker. Despite the deterioration of relations between the Kurds and Iraq in the 1970s, the state still sponsored the implementation of Sorani as language in secondary schools. However, this ended by 1978 when the Iraqi authorities embarked on an
Arabization
Arabization or Arabisation ( ar, تعريب, ') describes both the process of growing Arab influence on non-Arab populations, causing a language shift by the latter's gradual adoption of the Arabic language and incorporation of Arab culture, aft ...
to quell Kurdish nationalism. On this, Hassanpour wrote in 1992 that:
Sorani continued as the main language in elementary and secondary schools in Iraqi Kurdistan. In the 1980s, the state sponsored publications in Sorani despite warring with the Kurds.
Iran
In the 1960s, schooling in Kurdish or teaching Kurdish was unthinkable, even in private. However, the University of Tehran began offering two courses in Kurdish even though one had to refrain from discussing Kurdish and had to call it a 'dialect'. The policy of the Pahlavi state in regard to Kurdish was like that of
safety valve
A safety valve is a valve that acts as a fail-safe. An example of safety valve is a pressure relief valve (PRV), which automatically releases a substance from a boiler, pressure vessel, or other system, when the pressure or temperature exceeds ...
where rights were restricted when the state felt threatened. After the
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynas ...
in 1979, the new Iranian constitution was ambiguous towards Kurdish but the new regime discouraged the use of Sorani both in private and in public. Limited media in Sorani was allowed in the subsequent years. The policy of safety valve continued throughout the 1980s.
1990s
Iraq
Kurdistan Region Parliament
The Parliament of Kurdistan ( ku, پەرلەمانی كوردستان ,Perlemanê Kurdistanê or simply Perleman, ar, برلمان كردستان, links=https://www.parliament.krd/arabic/), also called the Kurdish Parliament (IKP), is the parl ...
passed a provisional constitution in 1992 making Kurdish the official language of
Kurdistan Region
Kurdistan Region ( ku, هەرێمی کوردستان, translit=Herêmî Kurdistan; ar, إقليم كردستان), abbr. KRI, is an autonomous region in Iraq comprising the four Kurdish-majority governorates of Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Duhok, ...
. 'Kurdish' would refer to Sorani which also became the language of instruction in Kurmanji– and Gorani–speaking areas until these linguistic communities demanded education Kurmanji and Gorani, respectively. Sorani ceased as language of instruction in these areas in the mid–2000s. In 1997, the Kurdistan Sciency Academy was established in Erbil with the goal of creating a unitary language in the autonomous region.
Iran
More leniency was given towards Kurdish, especially Sorani Kurdish in the 1990s, but use of Sorani in administration and education was still not allowed. The debate on mother tongue education entered the public sphere in the 2000s.
2000s-2010s
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
has had a significant impact on Sorani as thousands of Sorani-speakers have gotten free access to literature. It also became easier to listen to radio and watch television. The Internet moreover fostered the use of Sorani in Iran and the diaspora, where the language had no official status.
Orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
remains a challenge for Sorani. In Iraq, Sorani orthography is moving towards being based on a single
morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology.
In English, morphemes are ...
while Sorani-speakers in Iran make longer words. An example is the word ''to review'' which can be spelled both ''pêdaçûnewe and'' ''pê da çûnewe.''
Arabic and Persian words continue to be purged from written Sorani and are getting replaced by neologisms. Conversely, Sorani is borrowing words from the
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...
.
Iraq
After the fall of
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...
in 2003, Iraq declared Sorani Kurdish as the official language of the country beside Arabic. The first section of Article 4 secures this. In 2006,
Duhok Governorate
ar, محافظة دهوك
, image_skyline = Collage_of_Dohuk_Governorate.jpg
, imagesize =
, image_caption =
, image_flag =
, image_seal = ...
began using Kurmanji as their official language as a way of resisting Sorani. Fearing the loss of hegemony, 53 academics, writers and poets pushed the Kurdish Parliament to declare Sorani as the official language of the autonomous region. This attempt failed multiple times and Kurmanji remains the official Kurdish language in Dohuk Governorate. In the 2010s, criticism arose due to the quality of the Sorani school textbooks, media texts and
signage
Signage is the design or use of signs and symbols to communicate a message. A signage also means signs ''collectively'' or being considered as a group. The term ''signage'' is documented to have been popularized in 1975 to 1980.
Signs are any ...
. In 2011, two journalism professors from
Salahaddin University criticized the state of Sorani in Kurdistan Region which could affect its use among the people. They also expressed dismay over the method of the Parliament in using the language, since the institution wrote their bills and laws in Arabic and then translated to Sorani.
Iran
More flexibility was shown to Kurdish in the mid-2000s by the
reformists
Reformism is a political doctrine advocating the reform of an existing system or institution instead of its abolition and replacement.
Within the socialist movement, reformism is the view that gradual changes through existing institutions can e ...
, likely to win the Kurdish vote. Kurds used the opportunity and began publishing more in Sorani, set up private language learning courses and also advocated for the implementation of Article 15 of the Constitution which would allow the use of regional languages. The use of Sorani in Iran has since then been revitalized by Kurdish book publishers like ''Mang''. Nonetheless, the use of Sorani in the public school system is not supported by Iranian nationalists and
conservatives
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
who believe it could damage the unity of the nation-state.
Writing system
Sorani is written with a modified
Arabic alphabet.
In the Sorani writing system almost all vowels are always written as separate letters. This is in contrast to the original Arabic writing system and most other writing systems developed from it, in which certain vowels (usually "short" vowels) are shown by diacritics above and under the letters, and usually omitted.
The other major point of departure of the Sorani writing system from other Arabic-based systems is that the Arabic letters that represent sounds that are non-existent in Sorani are usually (but not always) replaced by letters that better represent their Kurdish pronunciation.
Media and education
Iraq is the only country in which a Kurdish language has enjoyed official or semi-official rights during the last few decades. Kurdish media outlets in Iraq mushroomed during the 1990s, spurred by the semi-autonomous status the region has enjoyed since the uprising against the Saddam regime in 1991. The use of Kurdish in media and education is prevalent in Iraqi Kurdistan. Seven of the top 10 TV stations viewed by Iraqi Kurds are Kurdish-language stations, and the use of Arabic in Kurdistan schools has decreased to the extent that the number of Iraqi Kurds who speak Arabic fluently has dropped significantly over the past decades.
Some Kurdish media in Iraq seem to be aiming for constructing a cross-border Kurdish identity. The Kurdish-language satellite channel
Kurdistan TV
Kurdistan TV ( ku, کوردستان تیڤی) is the first satellite television station in Iraqi Kurdistan that started broadcasting in 1999. It belongs to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and is based in Erbil, Kurdistan Region.
The channe ...
(KTV), owned by the
Kurdistan Democratic Party
The Kurdistan Democratic Party ( ku, Partiya Demokrat a Kurdistanê; پارتی دیموکراتی کوردستان), usually abbreviated as KDP or PDK, is the largest party in Iraqi Kurdistan and the senior partner in the Kurdistan Regional Gov ...
(KDP), for example, employs techniques that expose audiences to more than one Kurdish variety in the same show or program.
It has been suggested that continuous exposure to different Kurdish varieties on KTV and other satellite television stations might make Kurdish varieties increasingly mutually intelligible.
In Iran, state-sponsored regional TV stations air programs in both Kurdish and Persian. Kurdish press are legally allowed in Iran, but there have been many reports of a policy of banning Kurdish newspapers and arresting Kurdish activists.
Phonology
Sorani has 9 phonemic vowels and 26 to 28 phonemic consonants (depending on whether the pharyngeal sounds /ħ/ and /ʕ/ are counted or not).
Vowels
The following table contains the vowels of Sorani.
Vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s in parentheses are not
phonemic
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
, but have been included in the table below because of their ubiquity in the language. Letters in the
Sorani alphabet
The Kurdish languages are written in either of two alphabets: a Latin alphabet introduced by Celadet Alî Bedirxan in 1932 called the Bedirxan alphabet or Hawar alphabet (after the '' Hawar'' magazine) and a Perso-Arabic script called the Sorani ...
take various forms depending on where they occur in the word. Forms given below are letters in isolation.
Some Vowel Alternations and Notes
The vowel
is sometimes pronounced as
(the sound found in the first syllable of the English word "above"). This
sound change
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chang ...
takes place when
directly precedes
or when it is followed by the sound
(like English "y") in the same syllable. If it, instead, precedes
in a context where
is a part of another syllable it is pronounced
(as in English "bet").
The vowels
and
both of which have slight
off-glides in English, do not possess these
off-glides in Sorani.
Consonants
Letters in the Sorani alphabet take various forms depending on where they occur in the word. Forms given below are letters in isolation.
As in certain other Western Iranian languages (e.g. Kurmanji), the two pharyngeal consonants /ħ/ and /ʕ/ exist in most Iraqi dialects of Sorani. However, they are rare in the dialects of Central Kurdish in Iran.
An important allophonic variation concerns the two velar sounds /k/ and /g/. Similar to certain other languages of the region (e.g. Turkish and Persian), these consonants are strongly palatalized before the close and mid front vowels (/i/ and /e/) in Central Kurdish.
Syllable
Sorani allows both complex onsets (e.g. spî: "white", kwer: "blind") and complex codas (e.g. farsh: "carpet"). However, the two members of the clusters are arranged in such a way that, in all cases, the
Sonority Sequencing Principle The Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP)Selkirk, E. (1984). On the major class features and syllable theory. In Aronoff & Oehrle (eds.) Language Sound Structure: Studies in Phonology. Cambridge: MIT Press. 107-136.Clements, G. N. (1990). The role of ...
(SSP) is preserved.
In many loanwords, an epenthetic vowel is inserted to resyllabify the word, omitting syllables that have codas that violate SSP. Originally mono-syllabic words such as /hazm/ ("digestion") and /zabt/ ("record") therefore become /ha.zim/ and /za.bit/ respectively.
Primary stress always falls on the last syllable in nouns,
but in verbs its position differs depending on tense and aspect. Some have suggested the existence of an alternating pattern of secondary stress in syllables in Sorani words.
Grammar
Absolute State
A noun in the absolute state occurs without any suffix, as it would occur in a vocabulary list or dictionary entry. Absolute state nouns receive a generic interpretation,
as in "qâwa rash a." ("Coffee is black.") and "wafr spî a." ("Snow is white").
Indefinite State
Indefinite nouns receive an interpretation like English nouns preceded by ''a, an'', ''some'', or ''any''.
Several modifiers may only modify nouns in the indefinite state. This list of modifiers includes:
* ''chand''
and"a few"
* ''hamu''
amu"every"
* chî
i"what"
* har
aɾ"each"
* ... i zor
zoɾ"many"
Nouns in the indefinite state take the following endings:
A few examples are given below showing how nouns are made indefinite:
* پیاو pyâw 'man' > پیاوێک pyâwèk 'a man'
* نامه nâma 'letter' > نامهیهک nâmayèk 'a letter'
* پیاو pyâw 'man' > پیاوان pyâwân '(some) men'
* دهرگا dargâ 'door' > دهرگایان dargâyân '(some) doors'
Definite state
Definite
In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those which are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical d ...
nouns receive an interpretation like English nouns preceded by ''the''.
Nouns in the definite state take the following endings:
When a noun stem ending with
is combined with the definite state suffix the result is pronounced
ka ( i + aka → eka)
Verbs
Like many other Iranian languages, verbs have a present stem and a past stem in Sorani. The present simple tense, for example, is composed of the aspect marker "da" ("a" in Sulaymaniyah dialect) followed by the present stem followed by a suffixed personal ending. This is shown in the example below with the verb نووسین / nûsîn ("to write"), the present stem of which is نووس / nûs.
Note that the personal endings are identical for the second person plural (Plural "you") and third person plural ("they").
Similarly, the simple past verb is created using the past stem of the verb. The following example shows the conjugation of the intransitive verb هاتن hâtin ("to come") in the simple past tense. The past stem of "hâtin" is "hât".
Sorani is claimed by some to have split
ergativity, with an ergative-absolutive arrangement in the past tense for transitive verbs. Others, however, have cast doubt on this claim, noting that the Sorani Kurdish past may be different in important ways from a typical ergative-absolutive arrangement.
[Samvelian, P. "A lexicalist account of Sorani Kurdish prepositions." Proceedings of the HPSG07 Conference. Stanford: CSLI Publications. 2006.] In any case, the transitive past tense in Sorani is special in that the agent affix looks like the possessive pronouns and usually precedes the verb stem (similar to how accusative pronouns in other tenses). In the following example, the transitive verb نووسین / nûsîn ("to write") is conjugated in the past tense, with the object "nâma" ("letter"). The past stem of the verb is "nûsî".
Note in the example above that the clitics attaching to the objects are otherwise interpreted as possessive pronouns. The combination "nâma-m" therefore is translated as "my letter" in isolation, "nâma-t" as "your letter", and so on.
The agent affix is a clitic that must attach to a preceding word/morpheme. If the verb phrase has words other than the verb itself (as in the above example), it attaches to first word in the verb phrase. If no such pre-verbal matter exists, it attaches to the first morpheme of the verb. In the progressive past, for example, where the aspect marker "da" precedes the verb stem, the clitic attaches to "da".
See also
*
Kurdish alphabets
The Kurdish languages are written in either of two alphabets: a Latin alphabet introduced by Celadet Alî Bedirxan in 1932 called the Bedirxan alphabet or Hawar alphabet (after the '' Hawar'' magazine) and a Perso-Arabic script called the Sorani ...
*
Sorani grammar Sorani is a Central Kurdish dialect. Sorani Kurdish is often written with the Arabic alphabet, and has eight vowels: î û i u ê o e a shush
Nouns
A Kurdish noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific ...
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
*
External links
VejinBooks, collection of Kurdish literary and historical textsVejin Dictionaries, collection of Kurdish dictionaries(written in Arabic script)
The Kurdish Academy of Language(unofficial)
Yagey Ziman, the Kurdish language school(Sorani)
inKurdish: English–Kurdish TranslationDictio: English–Kurdish (Sorani) Dictionary
{{Authority control
Kurdish language
Languages of Kurdistan
Kurdish Sorani
Kurdish Sorani