Kurdish

At Newroz, as fires are lit on hillsides from Sanandaj to Diyarbakır, the songs are sung in Kurdish, Kurdî. Kurdish is a Northwestern Iranian language, or rather a group of closely related varieties, spoken across a region the Kurds call Kurdistan, stretching over Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, with communities in Khorasan, the Caucasus and a large diaspora in Europe.

Linguists usually describe three main groups. Kurmanji, or Northern Kurdish, is spoken by most Kurds in Turkey and Syria, in the Badinan area of northern Iraq, in north-western Iran around Urmia and Maku, among the Kurds of North Khorasan, and among Kurds and Yezidis in Armenia and Georgia. Sorani, or Central Kurdish, is the language of Sulaymaniyah and Erbil in Iraq and of Sanandaj and Mahabad in Iran. Southern Kurdish, including Kalhori and Feyli, is spoken around Kermanshah and Ilam and across the border in Iraq. Laki, spoken in parts of Lorestan and Kermanshah, is usually placed with Southern Kurdish, though some of its speakers identify as Lurs.

Zaza and Gorani

Two further languages, Zaza (also called Dimilî or Kirmanckî) in eastern Turkey and Gorani, including Hawrami, on the Iran–Iraq border, are the subject of long debate. Many linguists classify them as a separate Zaza–Gorani group within the Northwestern Iranian languages, distinct from Kurdish proper. Many of their speakers identify as Kurds and call their speech a form of Kurdish; others regard it as a language of its own. Gorani has a special place in Kurdish culture: it was the literary language of the Ardalan court in Sanandaj and is the language of the sacred hymns of the Yarsan faith.

Alphabets and poets

Kurdish is written in more than one script. Sorani uses an adapted Perso-Arabic alphabet that writes its vowels fully. Kurmanji in Turkey and Syria uses a Latin alphabet devised by Celadet Bedirxan and published in his journal Hawar in Damascus in the 1930s; in the Soviet Union, Kurmanji was written for decades in Cyrillic. Kurdish poetry goes back centuries. Ahmad Khani’s Mem û Zîn, a tragic romance completed in the late seventeenth century, is often called the national epic. Nali, Mahwi and Mawlawi wrote in Sorani and Gorani in the nineteenth century, and in the twentieth Hêmin and Hejar, both from Mukriyan in Iranian Kurdistan, wrote poetry that is still sung.

Kurdish has known long periods of restriction. In Turkey, its public use was banned by law until 1991, and broadcasting and private teaching were permitted only in the 2000s. In Iraq, Kurdish was recognised as an official language alongside Arabic in the 2005 constitution. Iran’s constitution allows regional languages in the press and in teaching literature, alongside Persian, but Amnesty International and other human rights organisations have documented the imprisonment of Kurdish-language teachers and cultural activists. Kurdish meanwhile thrives in music, satellite television and publishing, and in kitchens and wedding halls from Mahabad to Malmö.