Kurdish (Sorani, Kurmanji, Southern Kurdish)

01The language

Codes

ISO 639-3: ckb, kmr, sdh · macrolanguage kur · Glottocode: cent1972, nort2641, sout2640 · page code: ku

Family

Indo-European › Classical Indo-European › Indo-Iranian › Iranian-Nuristani › Iranian › Central Iranian PBS › Central Iranian PB › Northwestern Iranian › Laki-Kurdish › Kurdish

Script

Arab/Latn, right to left

Interface

Main site, native review pending

Platform phase

Phase 2

Technology support

Partly supported

Shown with

Estedad, IBM Plex Sans

Notes

Served jointly with the Kurdish platform (saeedvaladbaygi/kurds)

Sources Hammarström, Forkel, Haspelmath and Bank. Glottolog 5.3. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (2025) Verified; ISO 639-3 code tables. SIL International, registration authority. (2025) To verify

02Names and perspectives

Where names, classification or identity are debated, each view is shown with its sources. The platform takes no side.

• کوردی kurdî
• Kurdî

• One language or several

  ISO 639-3 treats Kurdish as a macrolanguage (kur) with Northern (kmr), Central (ckb) and Southern Kurdish (sdh). Glottolog lists them as three languages in one Kurdish group. Many speakers and Kurdish institutions see one Kurdish language with several dialects.

  Sources ISO 639-3 code tables. SIL International, registration authority. (2025) To verify; Hammarström, Forkel, Haspelmath and Bank. Glottolog 5.3. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (2025) Verified; Haig and Öpengin. Kurdish: A critical research overview. Kurdish Studies 2 (2). (2014) To verify

• In Iran

  Sorani is spoken in Kurdistan and West Azerbaijan provinces, Southern Kurdish in Kermanshah and Ilam, and Kurmanji in West Azerbaijan and North Khorasan.

  Sources Haig and Öpengin. Kurdish: A critical research overview. Kurdish Studies 2 (2). (2014) To verify

03Where it is spoken, and by how many

Western Iran: Kurdistan, Kermanshah, West Azerbaijan, Ilam, and North Khorasan

04Status

The UNESCO World Atlas of Languages is the United Nations source; its status is shown first and stays to verify until the Atlas can be read. Beside it, the Agglomerated Endangerment Status in Glottolog brings together the Catalogue of Endangered Languages, the UNESCO Atlas and Ethnologue. Ethnologue appears only as a secondary source.

05Legal status

What constitutions say about the language. Quoted from the English translations of the Constitute Project.

• The Constitution of Iran (Article 15) allows regional languages in the press, media and literature teaching, alongside Persian.

  Sources Constitute Project. Constitutions of the world, English translations. (2025) Verified

• The Constitution of Iraq (2005) makes Arabic and Kurdish the two official languages of Iraq.

  Sources Constitute Project. Constitutions of the world, English translations. (2025) Verified

06Varieties and dialects

Dialect groups as Glottolog records them. Names stay as published.

Sources Hammarström, Forkel, Haspelmath and Bank. Glottolog 5.3. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (2025) Verified

07This language’s pages

• Writing

  Scripts, the alphabet chart, romanisation, numerals, keyboards and fonts.

• Linguistics

  Sounds in IPA, pronunciation, grammar and core words compared with neighbouring languages.

• Learn

  A pathway from first steps to fluency, courses, exams and heritage-language programmes.

• Resources and preservation

  Dictionaries, corpora, libraries and media; endangerment and documentation; how to contribute.

08On the Kurdish network

Kurmanji, Sorani, Southern Kurdish, Zazaki and Gorani each have their own pages on the Kurdish platform.

kurds.global/language

09How to help

• Native reviewers: read the Kurdish (Sorani, Kurmanji, Southern Kurdish) pages and mark them reviewed.
• Teachers and authors: help write the first Kurdish (Sorani, Kurmanji, Southern Kurdish) course.
• Sources: point the research team to openly licensed dictionaries, corpora and recordings. Each enters the sources register for review.
• Fonts and keyboards: report any letter that does not display or type correctly.

10Sources

1. Hammarström, Forkel, Haspelmath and Bank. Glottolog 5.3. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. 2025

   Verified CC BY 4.0 Classification, dialect groups and the Agglomerated Endangerment Status (AES), read 2026-10-23.

2. ISO 639-3 code tables. SIL International, registration authority. 2025

   To verify Codes cross-checked through Glottolog records; the code tables themselves were not read.

3. Haig and Öpengin. Kurdish: A critical research overview. Kurdish Studies 2 (2). 2014

   To verify

4. UNESCO. World Atlas of Languages. 2025

   To verify Not reachable when checked on 2026-10-23. Its status for each language is to verify.

5. Eberhard, Simons and Fennig (eds.). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 28th edition. SIL International. 2025

   Secondary source Cited only as Glottolog reports it (its AES source). Ethnologue itself was not read.

6. Constitute Project. Constitutions of the world, English translations. 2025

   Verified Articles on official languages, read 2026-10-23.

11Research and sources

Recent and relevant work on this page’s subject, from approved open scholarly sources. Metadata and links only. Titles stay as published. Not yet reviewed.

1. Next word prediction based on the N-gram model for Kurdish Sorani and Kurmanji

   Hozan K. Hamarashid, Soran A. Saeed, Tarik Ahmed Rashid · 2020 · Neural Computing and Applications

   ArticleOpenAlexCrossrefDataCitearXivOpen accessCC-BY-4.0

2. Can Linguistic Distance help Language Classification? Assessing Hawrami-Zaza and Kurmanji-Sorani

   Hossein Hassani · 2021 · arXiv

   PreprintDataCitearXivOpen accessCC-BY-4.0

3. KASET – Kurmanji and Sorani Kurdish Speech and Transcripts

   Dana Delgado, Kevin Walker, Stephanie Strassel et al. · 2024 · Linguistic Data Consortium

   DatasetDataCite

4. Mabast dataset for Sorani Kurdish dialect semantic text classification.

   Hasan IE, Al-Atroshi SJA · 2026 · Data Brief

   ArticleEurope PMCOpen access

5. Calibrating Kurmanji and Sorani

   Michael L. Chyet · 2018 · Routledge Handbook on the Kurds

   ChapterCrossref

6. A descriptive and comparative study of adverb construction in Kurdish (Sorani and Kurmanji) and English.

   Ahmad Ahmadyan · 2025 · Biannual Journal of the Kurdish Language & Literature Studies

   ArticleDataCiteOpen accessCC-BY-4.0

7. Adyan: automated annotating named entity recognition dataset for sorani kurdish language.

   Wahid CH, Nabi RM · 2025 · Data Brief

   ArticleEurope PMCOpen access

8. Dasinya: A dataset and preprocessing pipeline for the Badini Kurdish dialect.

   Saeed VA, Jacksi K · 2026 · Data Brief

   ArticleEurope PMCOpen access

9. Making Kurdish Visible: Digital Language Practices, Identity, and Belonging among Kurdish Youth in Türkiye

   mehmet sirin filiz, ziyattin YILDIRIMÇAKAR, Naif Ergün · 2026 · Zenodo

   DatasetZenodoCC-BY-4.0

10. Polysemy of Particle in Kurdish Language

    Bayan Mala Hamadameen, Talib Husen Ali · 2023 · Zanco Journal of Humanity Sciences

    ArticleDOAJOpen access

11. Sorani Kurdish versus Kurmanji Kurdish: An Empirical Comparison

    Kyumars Sheykh Esmaili, Shahin Salavati · 2013

    ArticleOpenAlex

12. Supplementary Data for "Language Attitudes and Perceptual Recognition in a Context of Non-State Standardization: Evidence from Kurmanji Kurdish"

    ziyattin YILDIRIMÇAKAR · 2026 · Zenodo

    DatasetZenodoOpen accessCC-BY-4.0

Sources, licences and fetch dates: arXiv (Metadata CC0 1.0; papers under their own licences), 2026-10-23; Crossref (Metadata facts, any use; abstracts may be publisher-owned and are never shown), 2026-10-23; DataCite (CC0 1.0 (DataCite metadata)), 2026-10-23; DOAJ (Metadata CC0 1.0 (DOAJ); articles under their own open licences), 2026-10-23; Europe PMC (Metadata reusable; full text under each article’s licence), 2026-10-23; OpenAlex (CC0-1.0 data; metered API (free key)), 2026-10-23; Zenodo (Metadata CC0 1.0; each record under its own licence), 2026-10-23.