Kurdish languages

Kurdish (کوردی, Kurdî) is a continuum of Northwestern Iranian languages spoken by the Kurds in Western Asia. Kurdish forms three dialect groups known as Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji), Central Kurdish (Sorani), and Southern Kurdish (Pehlewani). A separate group of languages, Zaza-Gorani, is also spoken by several million Kurds, but is linguistically not Kurdish. Recent (as of 2009) studies estimate between 20 and 30 million native speakers of Kurdish in total.

The literary output in Kurdish was mostly confined to poetry until the early 20th century, when more general literature began to be developed. Today, there are two principal written Kurdish dialects, namely Kurmanji in the northern parts of the geographical region of Kurdistan, and Sorani further east and south. The standard Sorani form of Central Kurdish is, along with Arabic, one of the two official languages of Iraq and is in political documents simply referred to as Kurdish.

Classification and origin

The Kurdish languages belong to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. They are generally classified as Northwestern Iranian languages, or by some scholars as intermediate between Northwestern and Southwestern Iranian.Martin van Bruinessen notes that "Kurdish has a strong south-western Iranian element", whereas "Zaza and Gurani [...] do belong to the north-west Iranian group".