I want to learn kurdish! But where and how?

[Kecefinlandiya]

Roş baş everybody!
I am a Finnish student who would be really eager to learn Kurdish (primarily Kurmanji, but sorani could also be an option)!
The problem is that resources for that appear to be quite limited.
There are some places that seem to have some sort of teaching:
-Kurdish Institute in Istanbul
-SOAS university in London
-One university in Paris
-Some places in northern Iraq?(If there are, are they working in today´s situation and is it safe enough for a foreigh girl to go there?)

If you have any experience of any of these or if you know some more I would be really thankful for advice!
And about books and material to learn it by myself (and being in touch with native speakers)- any recommendations? (Or advice which books are not worth buying). I can understand teaching in Finnish, English, Swedish and Spanish (and hopefully in Arabic in the future as I´m a beginner Arabic student), in emergency in French, too.
And if there are other non-kurdish learning kurdish tell me about your experiences and techniques!
And if you happen to live in Finland and know a person who would be good in teaching, give me a hint..

[Diri]

Welcome...

Just ask if you need any help at all... We are more than willing to discuss and help out!

But please - "North Iraq" is South Kurdistan...

[Fortuna]

Hi Kecefinlandiya, I too want to learn kurdish, and there is nothing much available on the internet sadly , though the people in here seems very happy to help out, Im just about to do a thread asking for basic translations from English, and these guys have offered to help, hows that for good service?

[Diri]

Hi Kecefinlandiya, I too want to learn kurdish, and there is nothing much available on the internet sadly , though the people in here seems very happy to help out, Im just about to do a thread asking for basic translations from English, and these guys have offered to help, hows that for good service?

LOOOOL

I wonder if you are as cute in real life as on here! LOOL

[Fortuna]

Diri, its you who is cute, i know that

[daristani]

In response to the question about learning Kurdish (Kurmanci dialect), here's the text of a posting I had written elsewhere some months ago regarding materials for learning Kurmanci:

Materials to learn Kurmanci Kurdish - Various people in this group have asked about materials to learn Kurdish. Having first gotten interested in learning Kurdish a number of years ago, before the days of the internet, and when the language was forbidden by law in Turkey and next to no materials were available, I can appreciate your frustration, but believe me the situation has improved immensely since the days of my initial struggles. So in the hope of being helpful to those of you seeking materials, I’ll try to list some of the more useful materials, as well as how to get hold of them.

The first thing to focus on is which “dialect” you’re interested in learning. As much as the Kurds insist on treating Kurdish as one language, the dialect difference is very big. One (European) writer described the differences between Kurmanci and Sorani as equivalent to those between English and German. He wasn’t far wrong, and so you have to decide which you’re going to start with. Although there are similarities once you’ve learned one of them well, you’ll go crazy trying to learn both at the same time, and so you have to choose your study materials accordingly.

Kurmanci is the dialect with the greater number of speakers. It’s the dialect spoken by the Kurds of Turkey, Syria, the former Soviet Union, the northernmost Kurds in Iranian Kurdistan, and the northwestern Kurds in Iraq (i.e., the Kurds in the Barzani-run region of Iraqi Kurdistan, where it’s known as Bahdini or Bahdinani and is a bit different from “standard” Kurmanci.) It’s written in the Latin script in Turkey and Syria, in Arabic script in Iran and Iraq, and in Cyrillic in the former Soviet Union. Sorani is the southern dialect, written in the Arabic script, and is spoken (with variations) by most Iranian Kurds and by the “Talabani” Kurds in Iraq. (There are other variants of Kurdish spoken further south in both Iran and Iraq, which are not normally written, and there is also Zaza/Dimili, spoken in Turkey, which really isn’t Kurdish but is often considered as such by Kurds and others.)

In this posting, I’m going to list some sources for Kurmanci, which is the dialect I know, and the one for which materials are most plentiful. I’ll try to follow up later with one for Sorani, but it will be more limited.

In English: There is a very good textbook for learning Kurmanci Kurdish, entitled “Learn Kurdish/Dersen Kurdi”, by Baran Rizgar, available from Amazon in the UK. (From the regular Amazon site in the US, you can jump to the other Amazon sites from the bottom of the page.) This book is 299 pages long, has excellent grammatical explanations and lots of exercises, and is a godsend for anyone interested in Kurmanci. I wish I had had it when I was starting out! The same writer has also produced a very good Kurdish-English/English-Kurdish dictionary, also available from Amazon in the UK. If you’re at all interested in Kurmanci Kurdish, you should get both books immediately.

There’s really not much else available for Kurmanci in English in terms of grammars, but you don’t need much else if you work your way through Rizgar’s book. There is the very expensive (75 dollars!) and massive Kurdish-English dictionary by Michael Chyet, which is a big investment but does have a good many words you won’t find elsewhere. (Maddeningly, it also neglects a lot of fairly common words and expressions. So I would buy the Rizgar books and then, when sure you’re serious and looking for something more, buy the Chyet dictionary.)

In French: If you know French, there is “Le Kurde Sans Peine”, by Kamuran Bedir Khan, produced by the Kurdish Institute of Paris and available from Amazon in France or from the Alapage online bookstore (http://www.alapage.tm.fr) 206 pages long, it has lots of practice material, although it’s marred by a fair number of typos. Another resource in French is “Manuel de Kurde: Kurmanji”, by Joyce Blau and Veysi Barak, 225 pages, which is a bit more grammar-oriented but also a bit more systematic. A cassette is available for it as well. The standard reference grammar for Kurmanci, “Grammaire Kurde”, by Emir Djeladet Bedir Khan and Roger Lescot, is a treasure-chest, and is likewise available via the above online bookstores. So there are three marvelous resources available if your French is up to snuff.

In German: There are two excellent textbooks. One is “Rojbas: Einfuehrung in die Kurdische Sprache” (207 pages), by Petra Wurzel, which has a separate exercise-key and vocabulary volume (80 pages). Very systematic and clear, if your German is good. The other is “Lehrbuch der Kurdischen Sprache” by Usso B. Barnas and Johanna Salzer. 265 pages, and a separate cassette is also sold. Both these textbooks are good if you know German. There’s also a large Kurdish/German dictionary (“Kurdisch-Deutsches Woerterbuch: Kurmanci” by Feryad Fazie l Omar. 721 pages. The Bedir Khan –Lescot reference grammar cited above is also available in German translation as “Kurdische Grammatik” (330 pages). All of these should be available via Amazon Germany or other large online booksellers in Germany.

In Turkish: None of the above were available when I first started working on Kurdish, and so I used a slim book in Turkish, “Dersen Zimane Kurdi”, by “Baran” (actually Kemal Burkay). This is now available online as a PDF file of 122 pages. Go to the Roja Nu website (http://www.rojanu.org) and at the left you’ll see a URL for “Kurtce Dil Dersleri”; click that and you’ll get a free copy to print up. This is a handy little guide for beginners, with the only real drawback being that the genders of nouns are not provided, so you don’t know whether the words you’re learning are masculine or feminine. (All of the other books cited above do specify the genders.) The same reference grammar cited above is also available in two slightly different Turkish Phrases as “Kurtce Gramer” and “Kurtce Dilbilgisi”, while the French textbook noted above “Le Kurde Sans Peine”, is also available in Turkish as “Kolay Kurtce”. All can be ordered online from the Pandora Kitap Hizmeti bookstore in Istanbul (http://www.pandora.com.tr) As for dictionaries, there’s the Kurdish-Turkish/Turkish-Dictionary (913 pages) by “Izoli”, available from Pandora, and now there is a giant Kurdish-Turkish (2,132 pages) and a somewhat less giant Turkish-Kurdish (1,278 pages) dictionary by Zana Farqini, both published by the Istanbul Kurdish Institute. Obtaining these latter might be a problem; I got Pandora to send them to me, and I presume they would do the same for anyone who inquired via e-mail, although they’re not listed in their online catalog.

So as you see, there’s plenty of material out there to learn Kurdish…

[Fortuna]

Fantastic posting daristani, thanxs for that Im sure it will be most useful for me and others that wish to learn a new language.

[heval]

There are other variants of Kurdish spoken further south in both Iran and Iraq, which are not normally written, and there is also Zaza/Dimili, spoken in Turkey, which really isn’t Kurdish.

I highly contest this statement. It is rather amusing that you refer to "other variants of Kurdish spoken further down south" (which I am guessing was your reference to Hewrami and Gorani). The fact that these dialects are highly related to Zazaki in grammar and in regards to root words in their vocabulary is something often ignored by statements like yours. It is rather contradictory that you consider those "variants of Kurdish spoken further down south" as Kurdish, and not the related Zaza-dialect.

[daristani]

Heval, you are free to contest my comment that Zazaki is not Kurdish. You certainly won't be the only Kurd who disagrees with this judgment, although I presume you're aware that most professional specialists in Iranian languages in fact do not count Zazaki as a Kurdish dialect. All the major grammars of Zazaki {Karl Hadank, Ludwig Paul, Zilfi Selcan} consider Zazaki to be non-Kurdish in a linguistic sense.

Many Zaza consider themselves Kurds, while many do not; many, and probably most, Kurds consider the Zaza to be Kurds. I have sat through, and read, many impassioned arguments by proponents of both sides. This controversy has flamed on for years now on the internet and in Kurdish-related publications, with little effect in changing the views of those in either camp. You're free to think as you like, but the scholarly, as opposed to Kurdish nationalist, consensus, however, clearly seems to favor the position that Zazaki is not linguistically Kurdish. (Note this is a judgment on language, and not on culture, politics, etc.)

Here is a short article on the issue by Ludwig Paul, Ph.D. from the University of Goettingen, on the topic:

http://www.iranchamber.com/culture/arti ... guages.pdf


Here's a lengthy Wikipedia article in German on Zazaki, which deals in passing with the question of linguistic affiliation:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zazaki


Finally, while unrelated to the question of the linguistic affiliation of Zazaki, here's a listing I did a year or two ago of various materials for people interested in learning Zazaki. I haven't checked recently, but assume most of the on-line items cited are still available at the addresses given:

ZAZA LANGUAGE MATERIALS
ON-LINE:

Zaza Dil Kursu: 30 page of lessons in Zazaki (Dersim dialect), written in Turkish, as a PDF file:
http://www.zazaki.de/turkce/ZazacaDilKursu-I.pdf


A German version of these lessons:
http://www.zazaki.de/deutsch/Zazaanfanger-I.pdf


Zazaca Kurs: 14 brief lessons written in Turkish:
http://www.dersim.4t.com/kurs_ana.htm


Some articles in German regarding Zazaki:
http://www.zazaki.de/deutsch/zaza-sprache-auswahl.htm


Zaza Language Forum (mostly in Turkish or Zazaki, but with some postings in German or English):
http://f23.parsimony.net/forum49992/


OFF-LINE PUBLICATIONS:

I know of no easily available “textbooks” to learn Zazaki in any language.

There are two large reference grammars of Zazaki, both written in German for philologists, and both rather heavy going unless your German is quite good:

One of these is: Zilfi Selcan: Grammatik der Zaza-Sprache. Nord-Dialekt. Berlin: Wissenschaft und Technik Verlag, 1998. xiii + 730 pages. ISBN 3-928943-96-0.

A lengthy review in English by linguist Geoffrey Haig can be read at:
http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~siamakr/Kur ... /Zaza.html


The other is: Ludwig Paul: ZAZAKI. Grammatik und Versuch einer
Dialektologie. Dr. Ludwig-Reichert Verlag. 366 pages. Wiesbaden,
1998

Both these grammars have bibliographies of earlier works on Zazaki.

There is also a dissertation on Zazaki grammar in English by Terry Lynn Todd, which is rather thin: Trery Lynn Todd: A Grammer of Dimili. Also Known as Zaza. University of Michigan, 1985. Second Edition, August 2002, in Sweden, Iremet Förlag, ISBN Nr.:91-973977-0-9.
Adress: Iremet Förlag: Box 4014, 12804 Stockholm,
SWEDEN.

Finally, there are a number of small Zazaki-Turkish dictionaries that have been published, most rather small and of dubious quality, available through on-line bookstores in Turkey such as Pandora (http://www.pandora.com.tr/). Some of these are:

* Vate Calisma Grubu, Türkce-Kirmanca(Zazaca) Sözlük Istanbul, 2001
* Mesut Özcan, Zazaca-Türkce Sözlük. Istanbul, 1997
* Mehmeht Aydar, Zazaca-Türkce Sözlük. 2003

There are also two reference grammas in written in Turkish, not easily obtained:

Gıramere Zazaki, by Fahri Pamukçu, published by Tij Yayınları in Istanbul in 2001, 432 pages

Türkçe Açıklamalı "Kırmancca (Zazaca) Gramer", by Munzur Çem, published by Deng Yayınları in Istanbul, 357 pages

[heval]

Daristani, you can post a countless number of references as to why you believe that Zazakî is not a Kurdish language and how it is distinct from Kurmancî, but you need to first examine what defines a person as a Kurd. Since much of Kurdish history and ancestry has been highly debated (things such as whether or not Kurds are descendents of Hurrians, Medes and other tribes), the question must also be raised as to where Zazakî-speakers fit into this history. Furthermore, regardless of whether these scholars are politically motivated or not, they certainly have some influence from Iranian scholars who often divide the Kurdish language, since it is easy to do on the basis of dialect.

I never said that Zazakî does not differ from Kurmancî. However, you avoided answering to my claim that Zazakî is equal to the "other variants of Kurdish spoken further down south" in terms of major grammars in a linguistic sense. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the Goranî and Hewramî dialects and the several subdialects of Goranî. According to the linguists, they would probably consider these as un-Kurdish too since they differ from Kurmancî just like Zazakî, and since they share grammatical similarities with Zazakî. However, there is no question that 99% of the speakers will identify as Kurds. The other 1% have mainly disassociated themselves with Kurds because of religious differences with the majority.

You seem to be making the same arguments that these so-called linguists make when you directly interchange the term, Kurdish language, with the Kurmancî branch of dialects. Have you considered that the possible reason for the variation between Kurmancî and Zazakî is due to the Kurds' unusually large number of ancestoral tribes (Indo-Euro and Caucus) and the ongoing tribal divisions that have existed throughout history? The differentiation of dialects occur as nature takes it's course. Of course there are Zazakî speakers who claim they are not Kurds. However, there are also Kurds who claim they are Persian. Were you aware of that? There are a number of reasons why (hint: politics) and they are not linguistic ones.

[daristani]

Heval, I really don't intend to get into an internet argument on this issue, because it simply won't resolve anything.

My original, and very brief, mention of Zazaki not being Kurdish was a linguistic one; I realize as well as anyone that the Zaza as a people are closely affilitated with the Kurds, and I was not commenting on this. My mention of the southern Kurdish dialects didn't in fact refer to Gorani/Hawamani, with which I'm not very familiar, and which - once again LINGUISTICALLY - is generally considered by linguists to be distinct from Kurdish. A paper, available on-line, which discusses this very issue, and the distinction between a linguistic judgment and a political/cultural judgment, is available on the website of Michiel Leezenberg, who addresses the relationship of Gorani/Hawramani with Kurdish in just this context.

His website is at

http://home.hum.uva.nl/oz/leezenberg/papersml.html

and contains some other Kurdish-related papers as well. (It's a Rich Text File which you download as a document. There are other versions available on-line as a PDF file, but these latter don't show the non-standard Kurdish letters properly.)

At one point in his paper, entitled "Gorani Influence on Central Kurdish: Substratum or Prestige Borrowing?", he says: "It seems useful, then, to take Zaza and Gorani as 'Kurdish dialects' in a wider, ethnic sense, though not in the narrow, linguistic sense. At present, the speakers of those dialects by and large consider themselves Kurds."

He thus agrees, I believe, with your point in your latest message about ETHNIC self-identification, while recognizing that on strict linguistic grounds, the languages/dialects of Zazaki and Gorani/Hawramani are not Kurdish. Note that the people making this latter judgment are not "so-called" linguists or plotters in the pay of the Iranians, but rather scholars who seek to apply to Kurdish the same principles used in deciding such issues with regard to other languages. In any event, my only intent in posting the materials for learning Kurdish was to let people know about available books et al, and was narrowly focused on the language issue. Years ago, while living in Germany, I had Zaza friends on both sides of the issue, and I heard the arguments go round endlessly without anyone's position ever changing; accordingly, I suggest we leave the question here. I do think you'll find Leezenberg's paper interesting, however.

Best regards.

[heval]

Daristani - if you don't wish to debate about this then you should refrain from making statements like Zaza is not Kurdish when no one seems to have that answer with proof.

Michiel Leezenberg's article actually partly proves the point that I was making earlier regarding Kurdish history and ancestry and whether or not Kurds are descendents of Hurrians and other tribes in addition to their Medi (Indo-Iranian) ancestors. Leezenberg refers to the era of Median occupancy in Kurdistan as the "Kurdish invasion." Although he never makes any references to the Medes, we can presume that since the mass migration of Median tribes was the only event that can be compared to a so-called invasion, that he is referring to the Medes.

In regards to these references that Leezenberg makes, we can also presume that he considers the Median Indo-Iranian tribes as the ONLY ancestors of the modern-day Kurd. However, this point is highly debated, as I mentioned earlier. Other scholars conclude that Kurdish ancestors consist of other tribes of Caucasian origin (Guti, Subari, Lullu, Kassite, Mitanni/Hurrian, Mani, Urartu and Nairi). So where did their language go? This is a debate that linguistic scholars like Leezenberg are either unaware of or just purposefully ignore. We will leave it up for debate but even Leezenberg implies that Kurmanci and Gorani have "lexically borrowed" elements. So perhaps, the Hurrian language was heavily influenced by Kurmanci, which spawned new dialects.

In addition to all this, these scholars neglect to mention the origin of the Kurdish name and that it was used by foreigners (those outside Kurdistan) thousands of years ago to refer to ALL the tribes in the Kurdistan region, whether they were of Median or Hurrian descent. So by definition, if all these tribes are ancestors to the modern-day Kurd, then everyone who speaks the languages of the ancestors and descends from this region is a Kurd.

[Kulka]

Welcome...

Just ask if you need any help at all... We are more than willing to discuss and help out!

But please - "North Iraq" is South Kurdistan...

Yes!!! Exactly, Diri!!! THIS IS KURDISTAN AND WILL BE FOR EVER!!!