Southern Kurdish

Southern Kurdish
کوردی خوارین
Native to	Eastern Iraq, Western Iran
Native speakers	3,000,000 in Iran (2000)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Northwestern Kurdish Southern Kurdish
Dialects	Bayray Feyli Garrusi (Bijari) Kermanshahi Kolyai Kordali Malekshahi Sanjabi Laki Kalhori Zangana
Writing system	Hawar alphabet, Perso-Arabic (Sorani alphabet)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	sdh
Glottolog	sout2640[2]
Linguasphere	58-AAA-c

Southern Kurdish (کوردی خوارین; kurdîy xwarîn) is a Kurdish group of languages/dialects predominantly spoken in western Iran and eastern Iraq. In Iran, it is spoken in the provinces of Kermanshah and Ilam. In Iraq it is spoken in the region of Khanaqin (Xaneqîn), all the way to Mandali, Pehle. It is also the dialect of the populous Kurdish Kakayî-Kakavand tribe near Kirkuk and most Yarsani kurds in Kermanshah province. There are also populous diasporas of Southern Kurdish-speakers found in the Alburz mountains.

Native speakers use various different alphabets to write Southern Kurdish, the most common ones are extensions of the standard Kurdish alphabets.

The extension consists of an extra vowel, "ۊ" for the Arabic-based Sorani script and "ü" for the Latin-based Kurmanji script.

Subdialects

The subdialects of Southern Kurdish are:

• Kermanshahi is spoken mostly in western Iran, in and around the city of Kermanshah (Kirmaşan).
• Feyli, referring to the Feyli tribe; also known as Ilami, after Ilam Province. It is spoken in eastern Iraq in the Khanaqin region of Diyala province near the Iranian border, and in western Iran in Ilam province and parts of Kermanshah province, by the Feyli Kurds. Mahaki is a sub-dialect. It is spoken by the tribe of Ali Sherwan (Beyrey) in Ilam, and by almost all Feyli Kurds in Baghdad, Mandali, Badrah, and Zorbatiah in Iraq. It shares many features with Sorani.^[3]
• Garrusi (Gerrûsî) (Bijarî)
• Malekshahi (Melikşayî)
• Sanjâbi (Sincawî) referring to the language of Sanjâbi people. It is closely related
• Laki is spoken in the central Zagros region of Iran, in the provinces of Lorestan (Nurabad, Kuhdasht), Kermanshah (Kangavar, Harsin), Sahneh Darreh Shahr and Holeylan in Ilam Province, and in much smaller numbers in the provinces of Qazvin, Hamedan, and Khuzestan.
• Kalhori (Kelhûrî) referring to Kalhor (Kurdish tribe).

See also

• Kermanshahi
• Kalhor
• Gorani
• Hawrami dialects
• Central Kurdish
• Northern Kurdish
• Laki dialect

Sources

• Kamandar Fattah, Les Dialectes kurdes méridionaux: étude linguistique et dialectologique. Louvain, Peeters, 2000, p. 55-62.

References

External links

Southern Kurdish test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Information regarding Southern Kurdish
• Kurdish Academy of Language describing Southern Kurdish
• Audio recordings of wordlists and narratives in Southern Kurdish, archived with Kaipuleohone
• southern Kurdish Wikipedia