- Official language in
- Iraq
- Also spoken in
- Iran
- Script
- Arabic
Where it's spoken
Sorani is the language of most Kurds in Iraq and Iran. Iraq's constitution names Arabic and Kurdish as the country's two official languages.
Kurdish also has another principal branch, Kurmanji, the language of the vast majority of Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The two are closely related but are not mutually intelligible, and they differ at the basic structural level as well as in vocabulary and idiom.
Sources
- The Permanent Constitution of the Republic of Iraq (2005) — Article 4 (1), English text
- Thackston, W. M. (2006). Sorani Kurdish: A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings. — Preface
Script & pronunciation
Sorani is written in the Kurdo-Arabic alphabet, whose letter table lists, among others, ڵ (ł) and ڕ (ř). In the app, the greeting "سڵاو" ("Hello") is romanized "Sław", where ڵ is the dark l, written ł.
The vowel i is the only vowel not indicated in the writing system, except at the start of a word, where it is written with alif, so a romanization can show an i that has no letter in the Arabic-script text, as in "دەتوانم بێمە ژوور؟" ("May I come in?"), romanized "Detwanim bême jûr?". The vowel û is written with two wâw letters, as in the romanized "jûr", which is "ژوور" in the text.
Sources
- Thackston, W. M. (2006). Sorani Kurdish: A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings. — The Writing System
Grammar essentials
Sorani has no future tense: the future may be expressed by a phrase such as "I want to go," but normally the future sense comes from context.
In the present tense, the modal prefix is دە in most dialects (and ئە in Sulaymani Kurdish), and the negative replaces it with نا. In the app, "ناتوانم" ("I can't") is the negative of "دەتوانم", and "من گۆشت ناخۆم" ("I do not eat meat") uses the same negative.
The linking vowel called the izâfa joins the two parts of a possessive phrase and is equivalent to English "of"; it is written with the letter ی. In "نزیکترین وێستگەی پاس لەکوێیە؟" ("Where is the nearest bus stop?"), the app romanizes this link as "wêstge-î pas".
Sources
- Thackston, W. M. (2006). Sorani Kurdish: A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings. — Present tense and its footnote on the future; Possession: The Izâfa Construction; The Writing System
Politeness & etiquette
Sorani has the independent pronoun تۆ for "you" (singular) and ئێوە for "you" (plural). The app's card for تۆ describes it as the "you" for family, friends, and children, and says to use ئێوە for elders or strangers; ئێوە goes with the verb ending -ن, as in "ئێوە کوردی دەزانن؟" ("Do you speak Kurdish?"), romanized "Êwe kurdî dezanin?".
In the app, "سڵاو" is described as the common greeting, usable at any time of day.
Sources
- Thackston, W. M. (2006). Sorani Kurdish: A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings. — Personal Pronouns; verb paradigms