Kurdish language

Western Iranian language

The Kurdish language (Kurdish: Kurdî) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Kurdish people in an area called Kurdistan, including by Kurdish people in parts of the countries Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.[5] Kurdish has two main dialects and many subs dialects, the two mains are : Kurmanji and Sorani. It belongs to the same language group as the Iranian languages. Another well-known Iranian language is Persian. It is considered an Indo-European language.

Kurdish
كوردی, Kurdî, Kurdí, Кöрди[1]
Native toTurkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, Serbia, Russia
Ethnicity55-60 million Kurds
Native speakers
60 million (2021)[2]
Perso-Arabic (Sorani alphabet) in Iraq and Iran, Latin (Hawar alphabet) in Turkey, Syria and Armenia
Official status
Official language in
 Iraq: status as official language alongside Arabic.
 Iran: constitutional status as a regional language
 Armenia: minority language[3]
 Azerbaijan: minority language in 5 districts[4]
Language codes
ISO 639-1ku
ISO 639-2kur
ISO 639-3kur – inclusive code
Individual codes:
ckb – Sorani
kmr – Kurmanji
sdh – Southern Kurdish
lki – Laki
Linguasphere58-AAA-a (North Kurdish incl. Kurmanji & Kurmanjiki) + 58-AAA-b (Central Kurdish incl. Dimli/Zaza & Gurani) + 58-AAA-c (South Kurdish incl. Kurdi) + Luri dialect

References change

  1. "Kurdish Language – Kurdish Academy of Language". Kurdishacademy.org. Retrieved 2 December 2011.
  2. Only very rough estimates are possible. SIL Ethnologue gives estimates, broken down by dialect group, totalling 60 million, but with the caveat of "Very provisional figures for Northern Kurdish speaker population". Ethnologue estimates for dialect groups: Northern: 37 M (undated; 30 M in Turkey for 2021), Central: 8.75M (2021), Southern: 6 M (2021), Laki: 2 M (2021). Luri:5 m (2021). Zazaki: 3 m (2021). The Swedish Nationalencyklopedin listed Kurdish in its "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), citing an estimate of 20.6 million native speakers.
  3. European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
  4. "Kurdish, Northern". Ethnologue.
  5. "Geographic distribution of the Kurdish language". Archived from the original on 2007-10-18. Retrieved 2007-06-18.