Kurdish alphabets

The Kurdish languages are written in either of two alphabets: a Latin alphabet introduced by Celadet Alî Bedirxan in 1932 (Bedirxan alphabet or Hawar after the Hawar magazine) and a Persian alphabet-based Central Kurdish alphabet. The Kurdistan Region has agreed upon a standard for Central Kurdish, implemented in Unicode for computation purposes.[1]

Kurdish restaurant sign in England, with sign written in Arabic script and English

The Hawar is used in Syria, Turkey and Armenia; the Central Kurdish in Iraq and Iran. Two additional alphabets, based on the Armenian alphabet and the Cyrillic script, were once used in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Another script, the Yezidi script which is specific to Kurdish people, was used to write in the Kurmanji dialect (also called Northern Kurdish).

Hawar alphabet

The Kurmanji dialect of the Kurdish language is written in an extended Latin alphabet, consisting of the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin Alphabet with 5 letters with diacritics, for a total of 31 letters (each having an uppercase and a lowercase form):

Hawar alphabet
1234567891011121314151617181920 2122232425262728293031
Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)
ABCÇDEÊFGHIÎJKLMNOPQRSŞT UÛVWXYZ
Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters)
abcçdeêfghiîjklmnopqrsşt uûvwxyz

In this alphabet the short vowels are E, I and U while the long vowels are A, Ê, Î, O and Û (see the IPA equivalents in the Help:IPA/Kurdish table).

When presenting the alphabet in his magazine Hawar, Celadet Alî Bedirxan proposed using ⟨ḧ ẍ '⟩ for غ‎, ح‎, and ع‎, sounds which he judged to be "non-Kurdish" (see page 12,13). These three glyphs do not have the official status of letters, but serve to represent these sounds when they are indispensable to comprehension.

Turkey does not recognize this alphabet. Using the letters Q, W, and X, which did not exist in the Turkish alphabet until 2013, led to persecution in 2000 and 2003 (see , p. 8, and ). Since September 2003, many Kurds applied to the courts seeking to change their names to Kurdish ones written with these letters, but failed.[2]

The Turkish government finally legalized the letters Q, W, and X as part of the Turkish alphabet in 2013.[3]

Kurdish Latin alphabet

The Kurdish Latin alphabet was elaborated mainly by Celadet Bedirxan who initially had sought the cooperation of Tawfiq Wahbi, who in 1931 lived in Iraq. But after not having received any responses by Wahbi for several months, he and his brother Kamuran Alî Bedirxan decided to launch the Hawar alphabet in 1932.[4] Celadet Bedirxan aimed to create an alphabet that provides a letter for each sound and for each sound a letter. As the Kurds in Turkey already learned the Turkish latin alphabet, he created an alphabet which would specifically be accessible for the Kurds in Turkey.[5] Some scholars have suggested to add minor additions to Bedirxan's Hawar alphabet to make it more user-friendly.[6] The additions correspond to sounds that are represented in the Central Kurdish alphabet, but not in the Hawar alphabet. These scholars suggest this extended alphabet be called the Kurdish Latin alphabet. The suggested additional characters are Ł, Ň, Ř and Ü. The velar Ł/ł which appears mostly in Central Kurdish is for non-initial positions only; in Kurdish velar Ł never comes in initial position. The initial position in any Kurdish word beginning with r is pronounced and written as a trill Ř/ř. The letter Ü/ü is a new letter, which is sometimes written ۊ‎ in the Central Kurdish alphabet, and represents the close front rounded vowel [y] used in the Southern Kurdish dialects. The velar nasal consonant [ŋ] is also a Kurdish phoneme[7] which never comes in initial position, and it is written as Ň/ň. The Kurdish Latin alphabet consists of 35 letters in total.

Kurdish Latin alphabet
1234567891011121314151617181920 212223242526272829303132333435
Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)
ABCÇDEÊFGHIÎJKLŁMNŇOPQRŘS ŞTUÛÜVWXYZ
Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters)
abcçdeêfghiîjklłmnňopqrřs ştuûüvwxyz
Short vowels: E, I and U.
Long vowels: A, Ê, Î, O, Û and Ü (see the IPA equivalents in Help:IPA/Kurdish table).

Sorani alphabet
Venn diagram showing Kurdish, Persian and Arabic letters

Central Kurdish (Sorani) is mainly written using a modified Persian alphabet with 33 letters introduced by Sa'id Kaban Sedqi. Unlike the Persian alphabet, which is an abjad, Central Kurdish is almost a true alphabet in which vowels are mandatory, making the script easier to read. Central Kurdish does not have a complete representation of Kurmanji Kurdish sounds, as it lacks i. Written Central Kurdish also relies on vowel and consonant context to differentiate between the phonemes u/w and î/y instead of using separate letters. It does show the two pharyngeal consonants, as well as a voiced velar fricative, used in Kurdish. Reformed Central Kurdish does have glyphs for the "i" [ٮ‎] and it is able to successfully differentiate between the consonant "w" from the short vowel "u" by representing "w" with a [ڡ‎]. It is also able to successfully differentiate between the consonant "y" from the long vowel "î" by representing "î" with a [ؽ‎] and the long vowel "û" can be represented with a [ۉ‎] or [ۇ‎] instead of double و‎.

A new sort order for the alphabet was proposed some time ago by the Kurdish Academy as the new standard,[8] all of which are letters accepted included in the Central Kurdish Unicode Keyboard:[9]

ع‎ ش‎ س‎ ژ‎ ز‎ ڕ‎ ر‎ د‎ خ‎ ح‎ چ‎ ج‎ ت‎ پ‎ ب‎ ا‎ ئـ‎
1716151413121110987654321
ێ‎ ی‎ وو‎ ۆ‎ و‎ ە‎ ھ‎ ن‎ م‎ ڵ‎ ل‎ گ‎ ک‎ ق‎ ڤ‎ ف‎ غ‎
3433323130292827262524232221201918

Note - The above sequences are read from right to left. For pronunciations see comparison table below.

The alphabet is represented by 34 letters including وو‎ which is given its own position. Kurds in Iraq and Iran use this alphabet. The standardization by Kurdistan Region uses ک‎ (Unicode 06A9) instead of ك‎ (Unicode 0643) for letter Kaf (22 in above table), as listed in the Unicode table on the official home page for the standard.[9] However, the latter glyph is still in use by various individuals and organizations.

Some letters were proposed by (Kori Zanyari Kurd) in Baghdad, those letters are یٙ long Kurdish Yah with short straight line above it, and وٙ for long Waw with short straight line above it, these two letters were used before in books and magazines, but not anymore.

Vowels

Central Kurdish has 8 vowels, whilst only 7 are represented by letters:[10]

# Letter IPA Example
1 ا‎ aː با‎ (air)
2 ە‎ ɛ سەر‎ (head)
3 و‎ u کورد‎ (Kurd)
4 ۆ‎ oː تۆ‎ (You)
5 وو‎ uː دوور‎ (far)
6 ی‎ iː شین‎ (blue)
7 ێ‎ eː دێ‎ (village)

Similar to some English letters, both و‎ (u) and ی‎ (i) can become consonants. In the words وان‎ (Wan) and یاری‎ (play), و‎ and ی‎ are consonants. Central Kurdish stipulates that syllables must be formed with at least one vowel, whilst a maximum of two vowels are permitted.

Historical alphabets

Cyrillic script

A third system, used for the few (Kurmanji-speaking) Kurds in the former Soviet Union, especially in Armenia, used a Cyrillic alphabet, consisting of 40 letters. It was designed in 1946 by Heciyê Cindî:[11]

А а Б б В в Г г Г’ г’ Д д Е е Ә ә Ә’ ә’ Ж ж
З з И и Й й К к К’ к’ Л л М м Н н О о Ӧ ӧ
П п П’ п’ Р р Р’ р’ С с Т т Т’ т’ У у Ф ф Х х
Һ һ Һ’ һ’ Ч ч Ч’ ч’ Ш ш Щ щ Ь ь Э э Ԛ ԛ Ԝ ԝ

Armenian alphabet

From 1921 to 1929 the Armenian alphabet was used for Kurdish languages in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.[12]

Then it was replaced with a Yañalif-like Latin alphabet during the campaigns for Latinisation in the Soviet Union.

Soviet Latin alphabet

In 1928, Kurdish languages in all of the Soviet Union, including the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, were switched to a Latin alphabet containing some Cyrillic characters: a, b, c, ç, d, e, ә, f, g, г, h, i, ь, j, k, ʀ, l, m, ɴ, o, ө, w, p, n, q, ч, s, ш, ц, t, u, y, v, x, z, ƶ. In 1929 it was reformed and was replaced by the following alphabet:[13]

A a B b C c Ꞓ ꞓ Ç ç D d E e Ə ə
Ə́ ə́ F f G g Ƣ ƣ H h Ħ ħ I i J j
K k Ķ ķ L l M m N n O o Ö ö P p
Ṕ ṕ Q q R r S s Ş ş T t Ţ ţ U u
Û û V v W w X x Y y Z z Ƶ ƶ Ь ь

Yekgirtú

The Yekgirtú alphabet is a recent devised writing system by Kurdish Academy of Language.[14] It is adapted for all Kurdish dialects and not exclusive to just one, and is therefore called Yekgirtú, which means "unified."

The development of the Unified Kurdish Alphabet has proceeded along three lines.[14] First one letter has been designated for each sound (with the exception of digraph characters such as velar [ll], trill [rr], "jh" and "sh"). Second, no diacritical marks have been allowed that are difficult to convey via the Internet without the use of specialised programs. Specifically, all characters in the unified alphabet have been chosen carefully from the ISO-8859-1 "Latin 1" system for West European languages in order to ensure that the Kurdish characters follow one single global standard only. Loanwords need to naturalise and comply with common global Kurdish spelling rules whilst local exceptional pronunciations are also justified. The Kurdish Unified Alphabet contains 34 characters including 4 digraph cases (jh, ll, rr, sh) and 4 characters with diacritics (é, í, ú, ù). It represents 9 vowels (a, e, é, i, í, o, u, ú, ù) and 25 consonants:[15]

A, B, C, D, E, É, F, G, H, I, Í, J, Jh, K, L, ll, M, N, O, P, Q, R, rr, S, Sh, T, U, Ú, Ù, V, W, X, Y, Z

Yezidi
Yezidi
DirectionRight-to-left
ISO 15924Yezi, 192
Unicode alias
Yezidi
U+10E80..U+10EBF

The Yezidi script was used to write in Kurdish language, specifically in the Kurmanji dialect (also called Northern Kurdish). The script was found in historical manuscripts Meṣḥefa Reş and Kitêba Cilwe. In 2013, the Spiritual Council of Yezidis in Georgia decided to revive the Yezidi script.[16][17] Yezidi is written from right to left. The modern version of Yezidi is an alphabet and does not use ligatures.[16]

The Yezidi script was added to Unicode version 13.0 in March 2020. 47 characters are located in the Yezidi block:

Yezidi[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
 0123456789ABCDEF
U+10E8x 𐺀 𐺁 𐺂 𐺃 𐺄 𐺅 𐺆 𐺇 𐺈 𐺉 𐺊 𐺋 𐺌 𐺍 𐺎 𐺏
U+10E9x 𐺐 𐺑 𐺒 𐺓 𐺔 𐺕 𐺖 𐺗 𐺘 𐺙 𐺚 𐺛 𐺜 𐺝 𐺞 𐺟
U+10EAx 𐺠 𐺡 𐺢 𐺣 𐺤 𐺥 𐺦 𐺧 𐺨 𐺩 𐺫 𐺬 𐺭
U+10EBx 𐺰 𐺱
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 13.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Comparison of Kurdish alphabets
Hawar Kurmancî Yekgirtú (Proposal) Cyrillic Kurmancî Sorani IPA
(isolated) (final) (medial) (initial)
A, a A, a А, а ا‎ ـا‎ — [aː]
B, b B, b Б, б ب‎ ـب‎ ـبـ‎ بـ‎ [b]
C, c J, j Щ, щ ج‎ ـج‎ ـجـ‎ جـ‎ [d͡ʒ]
Ç, ç C, c Ч, ч چ‎ ـچ‎ ـچـ‎ چـ‎ [t͡ʃ]
D, d D, d Д, д د‎ ـد‎ د‎ [d]
E, e E, e Ә, ә ە‎ ـە‎ ە‎ [ɛ]
Ê, ê É, é Е, е (Э э) ێ‎ ـێ‎ ـێـ‎ ێـ‎ [eː]
F, f F, f Ф, ф ف‎ ـف‎ ـفـ‎ فـ‎ [f]
G, g G, g Г, г گ‎ ـگ‎ ـگـ‎ گـ‎ [ɡ]
H, h H, h Һ, һ ھ‎ — ـھـ‎ ھ‎ [h]
(Ḧ, ḧ) H', h' Һ’, һ’ ح‎ ـح‎ ـحـ‎ حـ‎ [ħ]
I, i I, i Ь, ь — — — — [ɨ]
Î, î Í, í И, и ی‎ ـی‎ ـیـ‎ یـ‎ [iː]
J, j Jh, jh Ж, ж ژ‎ ـژ‎ ژ‎ [ʒ]
K, k K, k К, к ک‎ ـک‎ ـکـ‎ کـ‎ [k]
L, l L, l Л, л ل‎ ـل‎ ـلـ‎ لـ‎ [l]
— (l) ll Л’, л’ ڵ‎ ـڵ‎ ـڵـ‎ — [ɫ]
M, m M, m М, м م‎ ـم‎ ـمـ‎ مـ‎ [m]
N, n N, n Н, н ن‎ ـن‎ ـنـ‎ نـ‎ [n]
O, o O, o O, o ۆ‎ ـۆ‎ ۆ‎ [o]
P, p P, p П, п پ‎ ـپ‎ ـپـ‎ پـ‎ [p]
Q, q Q, q Ԛ, ԛ ق‎ ـق‎ ـقـ‎ قـ‎ [q]
R, r R, r Р, р ر‎ ـر‎ — [ɾ]
— (r) rr Р’, р’ ڕ‎ ـڕ‎ ڕ‎ [r]
S, s S, s С, с س‎ ـس‎ ـسـ‎ سـ‎ [s]
Ş, ş Sh, sh Ш, ш ش‎ ـش‎ ـشـ‎ شـ‎ [ʃ]
T, t T, t Т, т ت‎ ـت‎ ـتـ‎ تـ‎ [t]
U, u U, u Ӧ, ӧ و‎ ـو‎ و‎ [u]
Û, û Ú, ú У, у وو‎ ـوو‎ — [uː]
— Ù, ù — ۊ‎ — ـۊ‎ [yː]
V, v V, v В, в ڤ‎ ـڤ‎ ـڤـ‎ ڤـ‎ [v]
W, w W, w Ԝ, ԝ و‎ ـو‎ و‎ [w]
X, x X, x Х, х خ‎ ـخ‎ ـخـ‎ خـ‎ [x]
(Ẍ, ẍ) X', x' Ѓ, ѓ غ‎ ـغ‎ ـغـ‎ غـ‎ [ɣ]
Y, y Y, y Й, й ی‎ ـی‎ ـیـ‎ یـ‎ [j]
Z, z Z, z З, з ز‎ ـز‎ ز‎ [z]
(') ' — ع‎ ـع‎ ـعـ‎ عـ‎ [ʕ]

See also

References
  1. "Kurdistan Regional Government (Kurdish article)". cabinet.gov.krd. Retrieved 2016-03-01.
  2. Karakaş, Saniye; Diyarbakır Branch of the Contemporary Lawyers Association (March 2004). "Submission to the Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights: Working Group of Minorities; Tenth Session, Agenda Item 3 (a)" (MS Word). United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Archived from the original (MS Word) on 2007-06-28. Retrieved 2006-11-07. Kurds have been officially allowed since September 2003 to take Kurdish names, but cannot use the letters x, w, or q, which are common in Kurdish but do not exist in Turkey's version of the Latin alphabet. ... Those letters, however, are used in Turkey in the names of companies, TV and radio channels, and trademarks. For example Turkish Army has company under the name of AXA OYAK and there is SHOW TV television channel in Turkey.
  3. Mark Liberman (2013-10-24). "Turkey legalizes the letters Q, W, and X. Yay Alphabet!". Slate. Retrieved 2013-10-25.
  4. Gorgas, Jordi Tejel (2007). Le mouvement kurde de Turquie en exil: continuités et discontinuités du nationalisme kurde sous le mandat français en Syrie et au Liban (1925-1946) (in French). Peter Lang. p. 303. ISBN 978-3-03911-209-8.
  5. Gorgas, Jordi Tejel (2007), p.305
  6. "Kirmaşanî Alphabet and Pronunciation Guide". Retrieved 2015-11-03 – via Academia.edu.
  7. Fattah, Ismaïl Kamandâr (2000). Les dialectes kurdes meridionaux. Etude linguistique et dialectologique, (Acta Iranica 37). E. J. Brill. ISBN 9042909188.
  8. (in Kurdish) گۆڤاری ئەکادیمیای کوردی، ژمارە (١٦)ی ساڵی ٢٠١٠ (The 2010 Journal of Kurdish Academy, Issue 16), 14-16
  9. Unicode Team of KRG-IT. "Kurdish Keyboard". unicode.ekrg.org. Retrieved 2016-03-01.
  10. "ڕێنووس". yageyziman.com. Retrieved 2016-03-01.
  11. Һ'. Щнди (1974). Әлифба (3000 экз ed.). Ереван: Луйс. p. 96.
  12. (in Russian) Курдский язык (Kurdish language), Кругосвет (Krugosvet)
  13. (in Russian) Культура и письменность Востока (Eastern Culture and Literature). 1928, №2.
  14. Kurdish Academy of Language, Alphabet
  15. Kurdish Academy of Language, Yekgirtú, the Kurdish Unified Alphabet.
  16. Rovenchak, A., Pirbari, D., & Karaca, E. (2019). L2/19-051R Proposal for encoding the Yezidi script in the SMP of the UCS.
  17. Rovenchak, A. (2019). Information on Yezidi UUM and hamza.
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