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Central Kurdish
Central Kurdish, also known as Sorani Kurdish, is a Kurdish dialect or a language spoken in Iraq, mainly in Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as the provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and West Azerbaijan in western Iran. Central Kurdish is one of the two official languages of Iraq, along with Arabic, and is in administrative documents simply referred to as "Kurdish".
The term Sorani, named after the Soran Emirate, refers to a variety of Central Kurdish based on the dialect spoken in Slemani. Central Kurdish is written in the Kurdo-Arabic alphabet, an adaptation of the Arabic script developed in the 1920s by Sa'ed Sidqi Kaban and Taufiq Wahby.
Tracing back the historical changes of Central Kurdish is difficult. No predecessors of Kurdish are yet known from Old and Middle Iranian times. The extant Kurdish texts may be traced back to no earlier than the 16th century CE. Cebtral Kurdish originates from the Silêmanî region.
The oldest written literature in Central Kurdish is reported to have been Mehdîname ("The book of Mahdi") from 1762 by Mulla Muhammed ibn ul Haj. Central Kurdish thus only emerged as a written language after the decline of the Gorani vernacular, the Ardalan state and the rise of Baban around Silêmanî. During the Baban era, Sorani emerged as an important literary vernacular and many poets such as Nalî wrote in Sorani despite being proficient in Arabic and Persian. Nalî mentioned that he wrote in Kurdish knowing his poetry might not receive the same dissemination as it might have done in the more prestigious Arabic or Persian. Contemporaries of Nalî like Salim and Mustefa Bêgî Kurdî also wrote in Sorani and their writings would become the foundation for the standard variety of Central Kurdish. When the Baban dynasty was overthrown in 1850, the golden era of Sorani ended and poets including Nalî left the Silêmanî region. Hacî Qadirî Koyî continued the tradition of writing in Sorani and lamented the lack of promotion of Sorani among the Kurdish clergy and called those who did not do so 'bastards'. Beside Koyi, Riza Talebanî also promoted Sorani as a literary language.
Prior to the 20th century, only three non-poetic Central Kurdish works are known to exist being Mewlûdname by Şêx Husên Qazî (1793-1871), a glossary of Arabic-Kurdish by Ehmedî from 1795 and a translation of the introduction to Gulistan by Saadi Shirazi.
The language of these works heavily relied on Arabic and Persian, which prevented Central Kurdish from enjoying further progress besides being a literary language. Only after World War I did this change.
Besides poetry and the few other texts mentioned above, linguistic works on Central Kurdish also existed. Leonard Chodźko wrote a sketch of the Silêmanî variety (Soran)i in 1857; de Morgan wrote his "Etudea linguistiques: Dialectee Kurdea" in 1904, in which he compared eleven varieties of Kurdish to each other and with Persian and Sanskrit. Later, in 1903, Ely Bannister Soane published a learner textbook and vocabulary list on Sorani for British personnel in Kurdistan, while Oskar Mann wrote Die Mundart der Mukri Kurden containing a grammar sketch of the Central Kurdish variety of Mukriyan in 1906. Lastly, Ludvig Olsen Fossum published a grammar book in 1919 based on the Central Kurdish variety spoken around Mahabad.
After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, much of the Central Kurdish-speaking region came under British rule in present-day Iraq. Central Kurdish subsequently became the language for prose, media, and journalism, and a distinct alphabet was created for the vernacular. Sorani also gained a kurdified vocabulary by the 1950s. The British began publishing periodicals in the language to mobilize Kurds, since the Central Kurdish-speaking contingent of Iraq was more urbanized, better educated, and more inclined towards Kurdish nationalism than the Kurmanji-speaking population around Duhok. Such nationalism was promoted to prevent any Turkish takeover of Kirkuk and Mosul. To this end, the first government press in Sorani was established in Sulaymaniyah in 1920, which propelled Central Kurdish into becoming a language of media, education, and administration. The government press had by 1923 published six books, 118 issues of the weekly publication Pêşkewtin (Progress), fourteen issues of Bangî Kurdistan (The Call of Kurdistan), and sixteen issues of Rojî Kurdistan (The Day of Kurdistan). The period also saw the publication of Central Kurdish works for schools, and courts began using the language as well. In 1923, Taufiq Wahby was instructed to produce school books in Central Kurdish by the Iraqi government, and his modified orthography for the language would be implemented as the official Central Kurdish script in school textbooks two decades later. His orthography included purging the Arabic letters (ث/ذ/ص/ض/ط/ظ) and creating the new letters (پ/ژ/چ/گ/ڤ/ڕ/ڵ/وو/ێ). Wahby also supported switching to the Latin alphabet, but this idea was not accepted by the literary society or the state.
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Central Kurdish
Central Kurdish, also known as Sorani Kurdish, is a Kurdish dialect or a language spoken in Iraq, mainly in Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as the provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and West Azerbaijan in western Iran. Central Kurdish is one of the two official languages of Iraq, along with Arabic, and is in administrative documents simply referred to as "Kurdish".
The term Sorani, named after the Soran Emirate, refers to a variety of Central Kurdish based on the dialect spoken in Slemani. Central Kurdish is written in the Kurdo-Arabic alphabet, an adaptation of the Arabic script developed in the 1920s by Sa'ed Sidqi Kaban and Taufiq Wahby.
Tracing back the historical changes of Central Kurdish is difficult. No predecessors of Kurdish are yet known from Old and Middle Iranian times. The extant Kurdish texts may be traced back to no earlier than the 16th century CE. Cebtral Kurdish originates from the Silêmanî region.
The oldest written literature in Central Kurdish is reported to have been Mehdîname ("The book of Mahdi") from 1762 by Mulla Muhammed ibn ul Haj. Central Kurdish thus only emerged as a written language after the decline of the Gorani vernacular, the Ardalan state and the rise of Baban around Silêmanî. During the Baban era, Sorani emerged as an important literary vernacular and many poets such as Nalî wrote in Sorani despite being proficient in Arabic and Persian. Nalî mentioned that he wrote in Kurdish knowing his poetry might not receive the same dissemination as it might have done in the more prestigious Arabic or Persian. Contemporaries of Nalî like Salim and Mustefa Bêgî Kurdî also wrote in Sorani and their writings would become the foundation for the standard variety of Central Kurdish. When the Baban dynasty was overthrown in 1850, the golden era of Sorani ended and poets including Nalî left the Silêmanî region. Hacî Qadirî Koyî continued the tradition of writing in Sorani and lamented the lack of promotion of Sorani among the Kurdish clergy and called those who did not do so 'bastards'. Beside Koyi, Riza Talebanî also promoted Sorani as a literary language.
Prior to the 20th century, only three non-poetic Central Kurdish works are known to exist being Mewlûdname by Şêx Husên Qazî (1793-1871), a glossary of Arabic-Kurdish by Ehmedî from 1795 and a translation of the introduction to Gulistan by Saadi Shirazi.
The language of these works heavily relied on Arabic and Persian, which prevented Central Kurdish from enjoying further progress besides being a literary language. Only after World War I did this change.
Besides poetry and the few other texts mentioned above, linguistic works on Central Kurdish also existed. Leonard Chodźko wrote a sketch of the Silêmanî variety (Soran)i in 1857; de Morgan wrote his "Etudea linguistiques: Dialectee Kurdea" in 1904, in which he compared eleven varieties of Kurdish to each other and with Persian and Sanskrit. Later, in 1903, Ely Bannister Soane published a learner textbook and vocabulary list on Sorani for British personnel in Kurdistan, while Oskar Mann wrote Die Mundart der Mukri Kurden containing a grammar sketch of the Central Kurdish variety of Mukriyan in 1906. Lastly, Ludvig Olsen Fossum published a grammar book in 1919 based on the Central Kurdish variety spoken around Mahabad.
After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, much of the Central Kurdish-speaking region came under British rule in present-day Iraq. Central Kurdish subsequently became the language for prose, media, and journalism, and a distinct alphabet was created for the vernacular. Sorani also gained a kurdified vocabulary by the 1950s. The British began publishing periodicals in the language to mobilize Kurds, since the Central Kurdish-speaking contingent of Iraq was more urbanized, better educated, and more inclined towards Kurdish nationalism than the Kurmanji-speaking population around Duhok. Such nationalism was promoted to prevent any Turkish takeover of Kirkuk and Mosul. To this end, the first government press in Sorani was established in Sulaymaniyah in 1920, which propelled Central Kurdish into becoming a language of media, education, and administration. The government press had by 1923 published six books, 118 issues of the weekly publication Pêşkewtin (Progress), fourteen issues of Bangî Kurdistan (The Call of Kurdistan), and sixteen issues of Rojî Kurdistan (The Day of Kurdistan). The period also saw the publication of Central Kurdish works for schools, and courts began using the language as well. In 1923, Taufiq Wahby was instructed to produce school books in Central Kurdish by the Iraqi government, and his modified orthography for the language would be implemented as the official Central Kurdish script in school textbooks two decades later. His orthography included purging the Arabic letters (ث/ذ/ص/ض/ط/ظ) and creating the new letters (پ/ژ/چ/گ/ڤ/ڕ/ڵ/وو/ێ). Wahby also supported switching to the Latin alphabet, but this idea was not accepted by the literary society or the state.