Sorani grammar

This article is about Sorani Kurdish grammar.

orani

Sorani Kurdish is written with the Arabic alphabet, it has 8 vowels:î [i] , û [u] , i [I] , u [ʊ] , e [e] , o [o] , a [æ] ,â [ɑ] .

Nouns

A Kurdish noun in the absolute state,i.e. without any ending of any kind, gives a generic sense of the noun. It isalso the “lexical” form of the noun, i.e. the form in which a noun is given ina vocabulary list or dictionary. The absolute state is normally used for thegeneric sense, as in قاوه رهشه "qâwa rasha"(coffee is black). [http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/Sorani/sorani_1_grammar.pdf]

Verb

Tense

The main tenses

:Min nan axom (Present):"I am eating the meal"

:Min nanim xuard (Past):"I ate the meal"

:Min arom nan axom (Future):"I am going to eat the meal"

The Past Perfect Tense (Intransitive)

For intransitive verbs with past stems ending in a consonant (like hatin > hat-), the past perfect tense,which is functionally equivalent to the English past perfect (‘I had come,you had gone’), is formed from the past stem + i + the past tense of bûn ‘tobe.’ Verbs with past stems ending in a vowel (like bûn > bû) form the past perfect tense from the simple stem + the past tense of bûn.

:hâtibûm "You Came for me":hâtibûyan " You came for them":hâtibûy(t) "You came for him/her"

References

* Sorani Kurdish— A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings W. M. Thackston