| Kurds are speakers of Kurdish, a member of the northwestern subdivision of the Iranic branch of the Indo-Europian family of languages, which is akin to Persian, and by extension to other Europian languages. It is fundamentally different from Semetic Arabic and Altaic Turkish. Modern Kurdish divides into tow major groups: 1. The Kurmanji group 2. the Dimili-Gurani group. These are suplemented by scores of sub-dialects as well. The most popular vernaculer is that of Kurmanji (or Kurmancha), spoken by about three-quarters of the Kurds today. Kurmanji divided into North Kurmanji (also called Bahdinani, with around 15 million speakers, primarily in Turkey, Syria, and the former Soviet Union) and South Kurmanji (also called Sorani, with about 6 million speakers, primarily in Iraq and Iran). To the far north of Kurdistan along Kizil Irmak and Murat rivers in Turkey, Dimili (less accurately but more commonly known as Zaza) dialect is spoken by about 4 million Kurds. There are small pockets of this language spoken in various corners of Anatolia, northern Iraq, northern Iran and the Caucasus as well. In the far southern Kurdistan, both in Iraq and Iran, the Gurani dialect is spoken by about 3 million Kurds. Gurani along with its tow major subdivisions: Laki and Hawramani, merit special attention for its wealth of sacred and secular litrerature stretching over a millennium. In Iraq and Iran amodified version of the Perso-Arabic alphabet has been adapted to South Kurmanji (Sorani). The Kurds of Turkey have recently embarked on an extensive campaign of publication in the North Kurmanji dialect of Kurmanji (Bahdinani) from their publishing houses in Europe, these employed a modified from of the Latin alphabet in the 1920s, followed by Latin in 1927, then Cyrillic in 1945, and now in both Cyrillic and Latin. Gurani dialects continue to employ the Persian alphabet without any change. Dimili now uses the same modified Latin alphabet as North Kurmanji for print. |
| Language |
| Geopolotics |
 |
|
|
|