Kurdish alphabets

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):

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, Jeladet Ali Bedirkhan 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]

Central Kurdish (Sorani) is mainly written using a modified Arabic alphabet with 33 letters introduced by Sa'id Kaban Sedqi. Unlike the Arabic 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 Kurimanji Kurdish sounds, as it lacks short 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 Kurdish short "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 recently proposed by the Kurdish Academy as the new standard,[6] all of which are letters accepted included in the Central Kurdish Unicode Keyboard:[7]

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.[7] However, the latter glyph is still in use by various individuals and organizations.

Some letters which was 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 was used before in books and magazines. but now it is not used.

The Yekgirtú (Yekgirtí, yekgirig) alphabet is a recent devised writing system by Kurdish Academy of Language.[12] It has many advantages compared to the Kurmanji and Central Kurdish alphabets. It is adapted for all Kurdish dialects and not exclusive to just one, and is therefore called Yekgirtú, which means "unified."

The Kurdish Academy of Language (KAL) realises that there are too many shortcomings with current Kurdish writing systems. These include workability, cross dialectal usage, and a lack of International IT-based Standards and representation for Kurdish. To avoid the communication obstacles presented by the existence of various Kurdish writing systems, KAL has introduced a standard Kurdish Unified Alphabet (Yekgirtú) based on International ISO-8859-1 Standards. This modern Kurdish (IS) alphabet contained some minor changes in the existing Latin based alphabet and adopting new signs. The new signs were introduced to improve the flexibility of the writing system in Kurdish. This effort was undertaken as part of KAL's broad endeavour to revive and promote the use of the Kurdish language for the benefit of young Kurds. The system devised and presented here by KAL is simple and adequate for the purpose of communicating via the Internet and any electronic media.

The development of the Unified Kurdish Alphabet has proceeded along three lines.[12] 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:[13]

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

The Yezidi script was used to write the Kurmanji language (also called Northern Kurdish). The script was found in historical manuscripts Maṣḥaf Raš and Ktébī Jǎlwe̱h. In 2013, the Spiritual Council of Yezidis in Georgia decided to revive the Yezidi script.[14][15] Yezidi is written from right to left. The modern version of Yezidi is an alphabet and does not use ligatures.[14]

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

• Kurdish typography
• Help:IPA/Kurdish

• KAL – A table of the various Kurdish alphabets
• Omniglot: Kurdish language, alphabet and pronunciation
• Kurdish Unicode Fonts