Kurmanji


Kurmanji, also termed Northern Kurdish, is the northern dialect of the Kurdish languages, spoken predominantly in southeast Turkey, northwest and northeast Iran, northern Iraq, northern Syria and the Caucasus and Khorasan regions. It is the most widely spoken form of Kurdish, and is a native language to some non-Kurdish minorities in Kurdistan as well, including Armenians, Chechens, Circassians, and Bulgarians.
The earliest textual record of Kurmanji Kurdish dates back to approximately the 16th century and many prominent Kurdish poets like Ahmad Khani wrote in this dialect. Kurmanji Kurdish is also the common and ceremonial dialect of Yazidis. Their sacred book Mishefa Reş and all prayers are written and spoken in Kurmanji.

Phonology

Phonological features in Kurmanji include the distinction between aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops and the presence of facultative phonemes. For example, Kurmanji Kurdish distinguishes between aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops, which can be aspirated in all positions. Thus contrasts with, with, with, with, and the affricate with.

Dialect continuum

Kurmanji forms a dialect continuum of great variability. Loosely, six subdialect areas can be distinguished:
Among some Yazidis, the glossonym Ezdîkî is used for Kurmanji to signify an attempt to erase their affiliation to Kurds. While Ezdîkî is no different from Kurmanji, these efforts attempt to prove that Ezdîkî is an independent language which includes claims that it is a Semitic language. This has been criticized as not being based on scientific evidence and lacking scientific consensus.
On January 25, 2002, Armenia ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and placed Kurdish under state protection. However, because of the divided Yazidi community in Armenia and after strong criticism from parts of the community, the authorities chose to ratify the charter by mentioning both "Kurdish" and "Yezidi" as two separate languages. This resulted in the term Êzdîkî being used by some researchers when delving into the question of minority languages in Armenia, since most Kurdish-speakers in Armenia are from the Yazidi group. As a consequence of this move, Armenian universities offer language courses in both Kurmanji and Êzdîkî as two different dialects.