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Some linguistic scholars assert that the term "Kurdish" has been applied extrinsically in describing the language the Kurds speak, whereas some ethnic Kurds have used the word term to simply describe their ethnicity and refer to their language as Kurmanji, Sorani, Hewrami, Kermanshahi, Kalhori or whatever other dialect or language they speak.
Many Kurds are either bilingual or multilingual, speaking the language of their respective nation of origin, such as Arabic, Persian, and Turkish as a second language alongside their native Kurdish, while those in diaspora communities often speak three or more languages.
The use of Kurdish in media and education is prevalent in Iraqi Kurdistan. Seven of the top 10 TV stations viewed by Iraqi Kurds are Kurdish-language stations, [47] and the use of Arabic in Kurdistan schools has decreased to the extent that the number of Iraqi Kurds who speak Arabic fluently has dropped significantly over the past decades. [48]
After the 1987 census, the Iraqi regime started a revenge campaign against those Shabaks who chose to declare themselves Kurdish. [6] The campaign included both deportation and forced assimilation, and many of them (along with Zengana and Hawrami Kurds) were relocated to concentration camps (mujamma'at in Arabic) that were located in the Harir area of the northern Iraq.
An old Kurdish alphabet is documented by the Muslim author Ibn Wahshiyya in his book Shawq al-Mustaham written in 856 A.D. Ibn Wahshiyya writes: "I saw thirty books in Baghdad in this alphabet, out of which I translated two scientific books from Kurdish into Arabic; one of the books on the culture of the vine and the palm tree, and the other on ...
According to the Article 4 of the Constitution, Arabic and Kurdish are the official languages of Iraq, while three other languages: Turkish, Neo-Aramaic and Armenian, are recognized as minority languages. In addition, any region or province may declare other languages official if a majority of the population approves in a general referendum. [11]
Zaza text in Arabic letters, written in 1891 and printed in 1899. Zaza texts written during the Ottoman era were written in Arabic letters. The works of this era had religious content. The first Zaza text, written by Sultan Efendi, in 1798, was written in Arabic letters in the Nesih font, which was also used in Ottoman Turkish. [55]
Due to Syria's long history of multiculturalism and foreign imperialism, Syrian Arabic exhibits a vocabulary stratum that includes word borrowings from Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, Syriac, English, French and Persian. Other forms of Arabic natively spoken in Syria include: the dialect spoken in the Jabal al-Druze (Jabal al-Arab) mountains;