Kurdish writing appeared in three types of scripts as a result of the occupation and settlement-based colonization of Kurdistan by several nationalities, for which artificial states were created by British and French colonialism after the end of World War I in accordance with the Sykes-Picot Agreement, where the regimes occupying Kurdistan forced the Kurdish people to use their writing alphabets.
The Arabic language is the official language in both Iraq and Syria, where Aramaic scripts are used in writing in both of them, which resulted in the Kurds in southern Kurdistan being forced to adopt the Aramaic (Arabic) alphabet in Kurdish writing without allowing the Kurds to choose a writing alphabet that suits the Kurdish language. As for western Kurdistan, the subordination of the Kurdish alphabet to Arabic was not followed and deviated from the rule, as the Kurds there chose to write in the Latin alphabet due to their being influenced by the Latin writing used in northern Kurdistan, due to the family and social ties between the Kurds of the west and the north and for their sharing in speaking the northern Kurmanji dialect. The Latin alphabet is used in writing the Turkish language in Turkey, therefore northern Kurds were forced to use those letters in Kurdish writing without any consideration for the suitability of this alphabet for the Kurdish language or its need for some necessary changes and modifications to make it harmonize with the sounds present in the Kurdish language. In Armenia and Azerbaijan, which were republics belonging to the former Soviet Union, Sanskrit letters are used in writing the Kurdish language. Thus, the occupation of Kurdistan by different peoples led to the emergence of Kurdish writing in three different alphabets, which in turn led to creating a major problem for unifying the Kurdish language and for the communication of Kurdish citizens with each other, which is a major obstacle in the path of the unity of the Kurdish people and the unification of Kurdistan and its independence.
I would like to emphasize here that we are in the process of discussing finding a unifying language for Kurds in all parts of Kurdistan, which brings together the gathering of Kurds, whether those living in Kurdistan or outside it. We strive and work to determine a common language for the Kurdish people, in which all Kurdish dialects are taken into account. This means that we must care about the Luri and Hawrami dialects just as we care about the northern and southern Kurmanji dialects, because no Kurdish dialectal or regional group can be dispensed with, and we cannot work on neglecting any Kurdish segment and imposing the reality of disengagement from the Kurdish nation on some dialectal groups. Such disengagement works to scatter the Kurdish people and fragment it. Alongside the utmost importance of the human wealth formed by each dialectal segment of the Kurdish people, every Kurdish dialect represents a national linguistic wealth and a historical heritage for the Kurdish people that can never be dispensed with. Likewise, the Kurdish language embracing all its dialects, their interaction and cross-fertilization among each other, and making them a common language works to enrich the Kurdish language and preserves the historical linguistic wealth of this language and its linguistic store, which is the product of civilizational and evolutionary accumulations throughout the ancient history of the Kurdish people from prehistoric ages to our present day.
When an important issue like finding a unified Kurdish language is addressed, which constitutes one of the most important main issues affecting the destiny and future of the Kurdish nation, its unity and perpetuity, we must realize the importance of the subject we are addressing and be aware and deal with it with the utmost level of historical responsibility that a person bears towards his people. National and patriotic interests should be placed above personal whims and subjective desires, moving away from ideological, partisan, and religious starting points, rejecting dialectal, regional, and territorial bias, avoiding the politicization of scientific and cultural issues, stripping away the influences of narrow partisan affiliations, and resorting to scientific research when working to study such a very important issue for unifying the Kurdish language, which is one of the pillars of the conditions for the unity of the Kurdish nation, its perpetuity, and the independence and unity of Kurdistan.
Proceeding on the path taken by totalitarian and dictatorial regimes with the dominance of the opinion of political leaderships in various aspects of life and not giving room to specialists who are the only ones qualified to perform tasks that fall within their specialization, each in his specialty, will cause a major catastrophe for the people of Kurdistan and lead this people towards failure, tearing, and fragmentation, especially since governance and administration in southern Kurdistan are two new experiences for the Kurdistanin, which they are currently experiencing. At the same time, proceeding with the steps of backward regimes in the region by politicizing science and knowledge and the intervention of rulers in their affairs will lead to more backwardness and failure, and let us take lessons from the totalitarian governments in our region that have led and are leading their peoples towards disasters, tragedies, ignorance, and backwardness, one of the main reasons for which is the making of decisions in all fields for state administration by people who are ignorant of those fields and do not invite specialists from scientists and researchers to study those issues and reach scientific results in their studies and find correct solutions for them.
Some people, especially Kurdish Islamists, drag the Islamic religion and politics into determining a unified Kurdish language, in an attempt to impose the southern Kurmanji dialect and the Aramaic alphabet as a common language. It appears clear that Kurdish Islamists are trying to exploit Kurdish symbols and the Islamic religion to impose the Aramaic alphabet on the Kurdish people, impose Arab culture upon them, and link the Kurds to the Arabs so that they live like them in the Middle Ages in backwardness, ignorance, and isolation from human progress, and incapable of contributing to building human civilization, but rather working to sabotage human civilization, without conducting any scientific study to compare the extent of the suitability of both the Aramaic and Latin alphabets for Kurdish pronunciation and without regard for the patriotic Kurdistanin interest. A person is free to express his views and observations and visions on any subject presented for research and discussion or to put forward his ideas and initiatives and discuss them, however, he has no right to drag in the names of political Kurdish leaders and symbols in an attempt to influence the determination of the fate of a fateful issue like the unified Kurdish language, to impose his views and subjective and ideological desires on the Kurdish people, especially in a very important subject like choosing a common Kurdish language, given that specialized linguists are the only ones qualified to determine it after a comprehensive and deep scientific study, otherwise the intervention of religion and politics in finding a unified Kurdish language will result in failure and backwardness and lead us to disasters and tragedies.
There are people and Kurdish entities that want to keep Arabic vocabulary in the Kurdish language for religious motives despite the existence of authentic alternative Kurdish vocabulary for them. To name a few, words like “حيوان” (animal), which is matched in Kurdish by the word (ئاژەڵ = Ajeł), and the word “حبيبة” (beloved) matched by (دڵدار Diłdar, يار YAR, and خۆشەویست XOŞEWÎST), and the word “غاردان” (running), whose synonym in Kurdish is (ڕاكردن = Ŕakirdin), and so on for the rest of the Arabic vocabulary entered into the Kurdish language, which these people consider to be Kurdified words.
It is also useful to point out that the entry of Arabic vocabulary into the Kurdish language occurs through two channels; which are through the direct Arabic occupation of parts of Kurdistan and through the Islamic religion, given that the majority of Kurds are Muslims. In southern and western Kurdistan, this linguistic invasion takes place as a result of the occupation of these two regions by Arabs and also as a result of the influence of the Islamic religion, which is the official religion in both Syria and Iraq, whereas in northern and eastern Kurdistan, occupied by “Turkey” and Iran respectively, Arabic vocabulary enters the Kurdish language, whether directly or indirectly through the Islamic religion, and at the same time the Kurdish language in northern and eastern Kurdistan is exposed to Turkish and Persian linguistic invasions respectively. For these reasons, we clearly notice the effects of these linguistic invasions on the Kurdish language in Kurdistan, and the fingerprints of the influences of the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish languages are reflected on the Kurdish language, and a person can know the regional affiliation of any Kurdish citizen through the Arabic, Turkish, or Persian words entered into the Kurdish language.
Some writers suggest imposing a specific dialect and making it a unified Kurdish language and cite the experiences of other peoples in this field, in an attempt by them to copy the experiences of others, without taking into consideration the differences between the conditions of those peoples and the conditions experienced by the Kurds, and the time intervals separating the Kurdish experience from the previous experiences of peoples who suffered from a similar problem and succeeded in creating a unified language. Foremost among those differences is that those peoples had their political entities and central governments that helped the success of those peoples’ experiences in unifying their languages, whereas we see Kurdistan occupied by several countries, and three languages and cultures (Arabic in southern and western Kurdistan, Turkish in northern Kurdistan, and Persian in eastern Kurdistan) are imposed on the Kurdish people, and the Kurds lack a political entity that sets long-term programs to implement such a fateful national project. Also, Kurdish history differs from others, and there is a very rich Kurdish linguistic wealth that is neglected, abandoned, and exposed to loss, especially in the Luri dialect, which was the dialect of all Kurdish civilizations, as those civilizations were built upon the arms of the descendants of the speakers of this dialect.
Some Kurdish linguists compare the use of the Aramaic alphabet for Kurdish writing with the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean languages, which have their own special writing alphabets. These people mention that despite the use of special alphabets for these languages, that did not stand as an obstacle in front of the progress and development of the languages of the peoples of these countries, but rather Japan, China, and South Korea, for example, became developed and advanced countries in the world. We cannot compare Kurdish writing with Japanese, Chinese, and South Korean writing for many reasons. First: The three countries are independent countries and their populations are large, and these two factors create a good ground for developing the mentioned languages and for assuming advanced positions alongside developed global languages. Second: The peoples of countries like Japan, China, and South Korea are not exposed to the risks of cultural and linguistic hegemony by other peoples, whereas the Kurdish people, due to the occupation of its homeland and its division and due to the Islamic religion spread among its citizens, has lost a large part of its identity, culture, and heritage, and its language is written with three different alphabets, and the Arabic language has affected the Kurdish language significantly, and Kurdish thinking has become a copy of Arab thinking. In other words, the Kurdish language and culture face great challenges due to the dominance of the Arabic language and culture over them.
These people also see that Kurdish writing in Aramaic letters has started for a long time and huge books and publications were published in it, and this writing was developed and improved during that period, and therefore these people believe that choosing the Latin alphabet for writing the unified Kurdish language will lead to the loss of a great Kurdish cultural and heritage wealth represented by those published and printed in Aramaic letters. If the Latin alphabet is more suitable for the Kurdish language and Latin letters are chosen to write the unified Kurdish language, then all Kurdish productions written in the Aramaic alphabet can be rewritten in the Latin alphabet, and the technological progress witnessed by the world today will greatly facilitate accomplishing the rewriting of Kurdish publications written in Aramaic letters. Also, the time period during which Kurdish writing was done using the Aramaic alphabet is very short compared to the time period during which the Latin alphabet is used to write a unified Kurdish language, as the Kurds will continue to use Latin letters in unified Kurdish writing for millions of years or for an endless eternal period.
Some believe that the southern Kurmanji Kurdish dialect circulated in southern and eastern Kurdistan, which uses Aramaic letters in its writing, is characterized by ease and flexibility in addition to the breadth and antiquity of its use. The Aramaic alphabet and the letters derived from it lack some Kurdish sounds, which are written with letters whose sounds do not match Kurdish sounds. For example: the letters (و) and (ێ) are used in Kurdish writing to represent the letter (Ö), as in the word “ڴوێ GÖ”, which means “ear”. These two letters are incapable of giving the correct sound for the Latin letter (Ö), as they give the sound “WÊ” instead of the sound “Ö”. The Kurdish reader easily distinguishes the great difference between the two sounds. The Arabic damma is written in Kurdish writing with Aramaic letters with the letter “و”, which gives the sound of waw in Arabic instead of the sound of damma, as in the word “كورد”, whereas in Latin Kurdish writing, the letter “U” gives the correct sound for the Arabic damma as in the word “KURD”. The sound of the Arabic “kasra” is missing in Kurdish writing with Aramaic letters, such as for example in the word “كوردستان”, where the sound of the “kasra” present between the letters “Dal” and “Sin” in the word “كوردستان” is not represented by any letter in Kurdish writing with Aramaic letters, whereas in Latin Kurdish writing the sound of the “kasra” is represented by the letter “I” as in the word (KURDISTAN). Also, Kurdish spelling in Aramaic letters suffers from great chaos, as it is written in many forms not governed by a unified law.
Latin letters contain the Kurdish sounds that Kurdish writing with Aramaic letters lacks, and the spelling of Kurdish in Latin writing is easy and unified, unlike writing with Aramaic letters. Also, both the Kurdish and Latin languages belong to the Indo-European language family, therefore the Kurdish language is much closer to Latin than to the Arabic language, which belongs to the Semitic language family. The Turkish researcher Dr. Ismail Besikci mentions on page 316 in his book titled “Kurdistan: An International Colony”, translated by Zuhair Abdul Malik, APEC Printing and Publishing House, 1998, that linguistic experts believe that the Latin alphabet is the most suitable for Kurdish pronunciation.
Another good reason for adopting the Latin alphabet in Kurdish writing is to enable the Kurdish language to keep pace with technological and scientific progress in the advanced Western world and to create writing capable of benefiting from this global development, which writing with the Aramaic alphabet is incapable of doing. The Arabic language itself has become a backward and submerged language in the era of globalization in which we now live, and many conferences and meetings are organized and held to study the challenges facing the Arabic language and find ways to develop it so that it can keep pace with the requirements of the era.
Another very important reason for preferring the Latin alphabet over the Aramaic alphabet is to save the Kurdish language and culture from subordination to the Arabic language and culture, especially if we take into consideration the danger of this linguistic and cultural dominance over the Kurds as a result of the occupation of a part of Kurdistan by Arabs and due to the fact that the majority of Kurdistanin are Muslims, where the Islamic religion is exploited to Arabize the Kurdish language, culture, and Kurdish thought due to the Islamic religion being an Arab religion in its philosophy, ideas, culture, books, and rituals.
Linguists put forward three options to find or discover new vocabulary for a language. The first option that the linguist begins with is searching for authentic words for the relevant language in the dialects belonging to that language and in the regions where it spreads, to find the authentic words that this language lacks and needs. As for this choice, the Kurdish language is a very rich language, and regions like Luristan, Ilam, and Khuzestan, which are the home of ancient Kurdish civilizations, are a strategic store for Kurdish vocabulary. I believe that the Kurdish language lacks new technological and scientific terms due to Kurdistan being an occupied and backward agricultural country, following the scientific and technical achievements of advanced industrial countries. If a person fails to find authentic linguistic words, he moves to the second option, where he works to derive new words that fit the pronunciation of that language. If it is difficult to invent new vocabulary, the last option for the linguist is to borrow foreign words and modify them in a way that responds to the pronunciation of the relevant language.
Kurdistan is the cradle of civilizations and languages, and the Sumerians, the ancestors of the Kurds, are the ones who invented writing and numbers, therefore the Kurdish language is a very rich language and all that Kurdish linguists need is to collect the vocabulary of Kurdish dialects and conduct field surveys, especially in remote areas that preserve their authentic Kurdish vocabulary, and resort to the book (Avesta), which carries within it ancient Kurdish vocabulary, and seek the help of books of other ancient Kurdish religions, such as the Yazidi and Yarsani religions, which are considered authentic sources for Kurdish vocabulary, and search within the folds of ancient Kurdish documents and books and Kurdish writings in the antiquities landmarks that spread widely throughout Kurdistan, instead of trying to Arabize the Kurdish language and introduce foreign vocabulary and sounds strange to the Kurdish language, which leads to distorting our beautiful language. We must not forget that the Kurdish language is one of the most ancient languages in the world and that all Indo-European languages, without exception, are influenced by it and borrowed thousands of words from it, and Kurdish linguistic researchers are invited to conduct studies and research to know the impact of the Kurdish language on Indo-European languages and the languages of the neighboring peoples of the Kurds from Arabs, Turks, and Persians.
Kurds need to search for authentic Kurdish words in all Kurdish dialects, from Luri, northern and southern Kurmanji, and Hawrami to enrich the Kurdish language and rid it of foreign vocabulary and sounds not present in the Kurdish language such as the letters (ع), (غ), and (ح). If we go back a little to browse ancient Kurdish history, we see that the peaks of Mount Judi in northern Kurdistan were the cradle of the second human civilization and that all ancient Kurdish civilizations appeared in Luristan, Ilam, and Mesopotamia, starting from the Sumerian civilization, passing through the Elamite and Median civilizations, and ending with the Sasanian Empire. From the antiquity of Kurdish civilizations, we realize that the land of Kurdistan, its flat plain regions, was the cradle of languages, cultures, sciences, religions, and beliefs, and that the Arab, Persian, Turkish, and European peoples took a lot of Kurdish vocabulary and enriched their languages with it and used it to develop their languages and fill their shortcomings. The English professor “Waddell” mentions in the introduction of his Sumerian-Aryan Dictionary that more than 50% of the words of the current English language, which is the official language of planet Earth at the present time, are taken from the Sumerian language, the language of the ancestors of the Kurds (1).
I like here to touch upon the word “هەفت”, which means “seven” in Kurdish and which was distorted to “حەوت” or “حەفت” in the southern Kurmanji dialect, while the northern Kurmanji, Luri, and Hawrami dialects and the inhabitants of (Germyan) who speak the southern Kurmanji dialect still use the authentic word (هەفت). It is truly regrettable that some Kurdish writers and intellectuals adopt strange and alien foreign words and sounds into the Kurdish language that transferred to the Kurdish language as a result of the occupation of Kurdistan and the cultural invasion that the Kurdish people was and is subjected to due to its political, cultural, and economic subordination to the peoples occupying Kurdistan, instead of searching for authentic Kurdish words present in other Kurdish dialects.
I would like here to talk about the history of the word (هەفت) to see together the antiquity and authenticity of this Kurdish word which is being subjected to distortion by the Arabic linguistic invasion in limited regions of Kurdistan, to turn into (حەوت or حەفت). More than six thousand years ago, the Sumerians, the ancestors of the Kurds, pointed to (هەفت) and placed the number seven (هەفت HEFT) as a reference to the seven gods whose names are as follows: the god of the sky (ANUS), the god of the earth (ENLIL), the god of waters (EA), the god of the moon (SIN), the god of the sun (SHAMSHA), the god of winds (ADAD), and the god of wisdom (MARDUK). At the time of the Median Empire, during which the Kurds professed the Zoroastrian religion, they had seven sacred fires. The number seven (هەفت) symbolized bad omen and evil among the gods of evil (Ahriman) in the Zoroastrian religion, while (Ahura Mazda) was the goddess of good among them. The belief of Zoroastrians that the number seven is a symbol of evil still lives alive in Kurdistanin society up to the present time. This number represents evil in both ancient Kurdish religions, Yazidism and Zoroastrianism, and the evils of the number seven are mentioned in Zoroaster’s book, Avesta. Also, Kurds still use the word (هەفت) as a symbol of evil as it is said in Kurdish (هه فت به رد له پشتت), meaning (let there be seven stones behind you), which means (to hell or a one-way trip). From the traces of Zoroastrian beliefs about the indication of the number (seven) on evil is that it is a tradition of the Kurds to this day to plant wheat seeds in seven pots before the dawn of the Kurdish New Year, Nowruz, and keep them until Nowruz day and after that they leave them in remote places to die there, believing that they ward off evils from them. During the performance of Nowruz holiday ceremonies, a table is brought and placed on it are (seven) types of food items whose names begin with the letter (س), such as (سێو – apple), (سەوزى – vegetables), (سير – garlic), (سماق – sumac), and others. The pitcher is called in Kurdish (هەفتاوە), which means (washing with water seven times), as it is no secret that the Zoroastrian religion is a religion of purity, so it is not permissible in this religion to desecrate soil, water, air, and fire because these four components are sacred to Zoroastrians, therefore things must be washed seven times with water to purify them from impurity, believing that impurity brings evils to them. It is worth mentioning that the Arabic word “إبريق” (pitcher) is taken from the Persian word “آبريز”, which means in Persian (pouring water) and the Kurdish “آورش”, which means (water pourer). As long as we are talking about purity in the Zoroastrian religion, the dead among Zoroastrians were not buried to avoid desecrating the soil, therefore they left the corpses of the dead on mountain tops to be eaten by birds of prey and wild animals. What is also worth mentioning is that the word “هَفتَق” is an Arabized word for the Kurdish word (هەفته), which means (week) (refer to the book “Lughatnameh” by its author Ali Akbar Dehkhoda, volume 15, year 1377 AH – solar, page 23479, the book is written in the Persian language). Arabic vocabulary may constitute about 60% of the vocabulary of the Persian language, therefore if the word (هەفت) were (حەفت or حەوت), the Persians would have been more entitled than the Kurds to borrow this word, yet they still retain the authentic word (هەفت). In the Yarsani religion, the word “هەفتتەن HEFTTEN”, which means “seven persons”, is a group of people composed of seven individuals in whom the divine self is embodied and they have existed since creation and continue in life until the end of the world. The souls of these individuals can migrate into human bodies to manifest the divine self. These are Bunyan BINYAMîN, Dawud DAWÛD, Pirmusa PÎRMÛSA, Rezbar REZBAR, Mustafa MUSTEFA, Şabrayim ŞABRAYIM, Yadgar YADGAR.
As long as we are talking about the unified Kurdish language, I conclude this article by putting forward some suggestions for writing in the Latin alphabet to Kurdish linguists to discuss them and study their extent of response to Kurdish pronunciation. I see that it is necessary to work on getting rid of Latin letters that do not exist in the English language as much as possible to bring it closer to it, as it is no secret that the English language has become the most widespread and used language in the world and has become the language of science, culture, and journalism. By bringing the Kurdish alphabet closer to the English alphabet, the Kurdish language can keep pace with global scientific and technological development. Some Latin letters used in the Kurdish language can be canceled and made in the following form:
HC → Ç
E → Ê
X → Ĥ
Y → Î
LL → Ł
RR → Ř
HS → Ş
W → Û
GH → Ẍ
KH → X
The letter (Å) can be chosen to match the Arabic (Fatha) and thus the Latin Kurdish alphabet will contain this letter and the letter (Ö) which do not exist in the English language. It must be said that these suggestions need extensive study to ensure that the proposed digraphs, each pair of which gives a single sound in the Kurdish language, do not disrupt the Kurdish pronunciation of the words in which these digraphs enter, for example, the letters (KH) give the sound of the letter (خ) in the Arabic language, neither of the mentioned letters should give two independent sounds in any Kurdish word, and in other words they must not act as two independent letters when they enter into the structure of a word, but rather they must together form the sound of the letter (خ) in all words in which they enter into their structure as double letters.
In conclusion, I attach the proposed Latin alphabet for use in the Kurdish language so that Kurdish readers can view it and for those who wish to learn it, and they will find out for themselves the ease of learning Kurdish writing in Latin and its responsiveness to Kurdish pronunciation, unlike Aramaic letters.
Pîtî Kurdî Latînî
A a ا : Nan
B b ب : Ba
C c ج: Bac
Ç ç چ : Çav
D d د : Dar
E e ە : Dem
Ê ê ێ : Dê
F f ف : Fêr
G g گ : Ga
H h ه : Hêz
Ĥ ĥ ح : Ĥez
Mil —- I i :
Î îی : Çî
J jژ : Jin
K kك : Kurd
L lل : Luř
Ł łڵ : Guł
M mم : Mał =
N nن : Naz
O oۆ : Bon
Ö öوێ Gö =
P pپ : Pak
Q qق : Qaz
R rر : Berz
Ř ř ڕ : Řê
S sس : Ser
Ş şش : Şîr
T tت : Teř
U uو : Guĺ
Û ûوو : Dûr
V vڤ : Mirov
W wو : Were
X xخ : Xeĺat
Ẍ ẍغ : ẍembar
Y yي : Yek
Z zز Zor:
(1) Waddell, L. Austin (1927). Sumer – Aryan Dictionary. London.
2013 / 5 / 8
Note: This text is translated from the original Arabic version… Read the Arabic version:Click here
