Soranî

All you want to know about Soranî

For the Romanian commune, see Surani, Prahova.

Soranî (Kurdish: سۆرانی) is the name of a Kurdish dialect that is spoken in Iran and Iraq and is member of the Iranian languages. Soranî belongs to one of the main Kurdish dialects that make up the Kurdish language.

Contents

Name

To refer to southern Kurmanji dialects as Soranî is a recent naming by linguists after the name of the former principality of Soran. Mackenzie writes that the present Kurdish standard called Soranî is in fact an idealized version of the Silêmanî dialect, which uses the phonemic system of the Píjhdar and Mukrî dialects. Objections have been made to the name Soranî on the grounds that the name of one dialect, Soranî, spoken in the region Soran should not be extended to cover a group of dialect (E. M. Rasul, Núserí Kurd, No. 4, Nov. 1971).

History

In Sulaymaniyah, the Ottoman Empire had created a secondary school (Rushdíye), the graduates from which could go to Istanbul to continue to study there. This allowed Soranî, which was spoken in Silémaní, to progressively replace Hewrami as the literary vehicle.

Alphabet

Sorani Kurdish is written in a modified Arabic script; such modern literature as exists in Kurdish is usually in Sorani, because there has been more opportunity to publish in Iraq than in other countries in recent times. This is in contrast to the other Kurdish dialect, Kurmanji which is spoken mainly in Turkey and is usually written in the Latin alphabet.[1]

However, since the recent decade, official TV in Iraqi Kurdistan mostly use Latin script for Sorani.

Demographics

Areas where Sorani is spoken.
Areas where Sorani is spoken.

The exact number of Sorani speakers is a hard thing to find but it is generally thought Sorani is spoken by a total of approximately 7-15 million people in Iraq and Iran.[2]It is the most widespread speech form of Kurds in Iran and Iraq.

Around 3-7 Million of the Kurds in Iran. Located south of the Urmia Lake that stretches roughly to the city of Kermanshah.
Around 3.5 million of the Kurds in Iraq. Most of them in the vicinity of Hewlêr (Arbil) , Sulaymaniyah (Silêmanî) , Kerkuk and Diyala governates.

A line can be drawn to divide Soranî-speaking areas into a Persianized southeastern section and a more orthodox northwestern section, running from Bíjar to Kifrí,The ergative construction in the Persianized Soranî has begun to disappear, while it is being retained in the non-Persianized northwestern section.

Colloquial subdivisions

Following includes a traditional internal subdivisions of Soranî however nowadays due to media and communications most of them are regarded as an accent of standard Soranî:

  • Mukrî; it is the language spoken in south of Lake Urmia with Mehabad as its center including cities: Bokan, Sardasht, Piranshahr, Oshnowiya, Naxede. A region traditionally called Mukrian.
  • Erdelanî, the region coresponding to modern Kurdistan province of Iran
  • Germíyanî, Kirkuk area
  • Xoşnaw
  • Píjhder
  • Wermawe
  • Hewlêrî, It is spoken around and/or in the city of Hewlêr (Arbil) in Iraqi Kurdistan. Its main particularity is changing consonant /l/ into /r/ in many words.

As an official language

A recent proposal was made for Soranî to be the official language of the Kurdistan Regional Government. This idea has been favoured by Soranî-speaking Kurds but it has disappointed Kurmanjis.[3]

Grammatical features

In Sorani the basic word order in a sentence is: subject:-verb-object (SVO) .There are also no pronouns to distinguish between masculine and feminine and no verb inflection to signal gender.[4]


After publishing The Persian Today Corpus (The Most Frequent Words of Today's Persian), as a main program, th writer, Iranian Kurdish-language scholar, Hamid Hassani, is supposed to prepare a Soranî Kurdish Language Corpus, consisting of one-million words.


See also

Notes

  1. ^ Iraqi Kurds
  2. ^ Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iraq
  3. ^ Kurdish language issue and a divisive approach | Kurdish Academy of Language
  4. ^ Kurdish Sorani language developmental features

References

  • Hassanpour, Dr. A. (1992). Nationalism and Language in Kurdistan 1918 - 1985. USA: Mellen Research University Press. 
  • Nebez, Jemal (1976). Toward a Unified Kurdish Language. 
  • Izady, Prof. M. (1992). The Kurds. A Concise Handbook. USA: Dep. of Near Easter Languages and Civilization Harvard University. 

External links

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Iranian languages
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Bartangi · Ishkashmi  · Khufi · Munji · Oroshori · Ossetic · Parachi · Pashto · Roshani (Roshni) · Sanglechi · Sarikoli · Shughni · Wakhi · Vanji · Yaghnobi · Yidgha · Yazgulami · Zebaki
W = Western · E = Eastern · Italics indicate extinct languages
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soran%C3%AE"

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