Soranî

Infobox Language
name=Sorani
nativename=سۆرانی
familycolor=Indo-European
states=Flag|Iran
Flag|Iraq
region=Middle East
speakers=7-15 million
fam2=Indo-Iranian
fam3=Iranian
fam4=Western Iranian
fam5=Northwestern Iranian
fam6=Kurdish
iso1=ckb

Soranî (Kurdish: سۆرانی) is the name of a Kurdish dialect that is spoken in Iran and Iraq and such is a member of the Iranian languages. Soranî belongs to one of the main Kurdish dialects that make up the Kurdish language.

Name

To refer to southern Kurmanji dialects as "Soranî" is a recent naming by linguists after the name of the former principality of Soran.Mackenzie writes that the present Kurdish standard called Soranî is in fact an idealized version of the Silêmanî dialect, which uses the phonemic system of the Píjhdar and Mukrî dialects. Objections have been made to the name Soranî on the grounds that the name of one dialect, Soranî, spoken in the region Soran should not be extended to cover a group of dialect (E. M. Rasul, Núserí Kurd, No. 4, Nov. 1971).

History

Ottoman Times

In Silemani(Sulaymaniyah), the Ottoman Empire had created a secondary school (Rushdíye), the graduates from which could go to Istanbul to continue to study there. This allowed Soranî, which was spoken in Silémaní, to progressively replace Hewrami as the literary vehicle.

Modern

Since the the fall of the Bathist regime in Iraq, there has been more opportunity to publish work in the Kurdish language In Iraq than in any other countries in recent times. [ [http://www.cal.org/co/kurds/klang.html Iraqi Kurds ] ] as a result Sorani Kurdish has become the dominant written form of Kurdish. [http://languages.refugeecouncil.org.uk/top_navigation/Language_profiles.htm]

Alphabet

Sorani Kurdish is written in a modified Arabic script; This is in contrast to the other Kurdish dialect, Kurmanji which is spoken mainly in Turkey and is usually written in the Latin alphabet.

However, since the recent decade, official TV in Iraqi Kurdistan mostly use Latin script for Sorani.

Demographics

The exact number of Sorani speakers is a hard thing to find but it is generally thought Sorani is spoken by a total of approximately 7-15 million people in Iraq and Iran. [ [http://www.knn.u-net.com/kurd4.htm Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iraq ] ] It is the most widespread speech form of Kurds in Iran and Iraq.

:Around 3-7 Million of the Kurds in Iran. Located south of the Urmia Lake that stretches roughly to the city of Kermanshah.:Around 3.5 million of the Kurds in Iraq. Most of them in the vicinity of Hewlêr (Arbil) , Sulaymaniyah (Silêmanî) , Kerkuk and Diyala governates.

Colloquial subdivisions

Following includes a traditional internal subdivisions of Soranî however nowadays due to media and communications most of them are regarded as an accent of standard Soranî:

* Mukrî; it is the language spoken in south of Lake Urmia with Mehabad as its center including cities: Bokan, Sardasht, Piranshahr, Oshnowiya, Naxede. A region traditionally called Mukrian.
* Erdelanî, the region coresponding to modern "Kurdistan province of Iran"
* Germíyanî, Kirkuk area
* Xoşnaw
* Píjhder
* Wermawe
* Hewlêrî, It is spoken around in the city of Hewlêr (Arbil) in Iraqi Kurdistan. Its main particularity is changing consonant /l/ into /r/ in many words.

As an official language

A recent proposal was made for Soranî to be the official language of the Kurdistan Regional Government. This idea has been favoured by Soranî-speaking Kurds but it has disappointed Kurmanjis. [ [http://www.kurdishacademy.org/?q=node/194 Kurdish language issue and a divisive approach | Kurdish Academy of Language ] ]

Grammatical features

In Sorani the basic word order in a sentence is: subject:-verb-object (SVO) .There are also no pronouns to distinguish between masculine and feminineand no verb inflection to signal gender. [ [http://www.blss.portsmouth.sch.uk/hsc/soranierr.shtml Kurdish Sorani language developmental features ] ]

After publishing "The Persian Today Corpus" "(The Most Frequent Words of Today's Persian"), as a main program, th writer, Iranian Kurdish-language scholar, Hamid Hassani, is supposed to prepare a "Soranî Kurdish Language Corpus", consisting of one-million words.

orani and Kurmanji(Northern Kurdish) comparison

ee also

*Kurdish language
*Kurdish alphabet
*Sorani grammar
*Northern Kurdish
*Southern Kurdish
*Soran Emirate

Notes

References

* cite book
last=Hassanpour
first=Dr. A.
authorlink=
coauthors=
title=Nationalism and Language in Kurdistan 1918 - 1985
publisher=Mellen Research University Press
date=1992
location=USA
url=
doi=
id=
* cite book
last=Nebez
first=Jemal
authorlink=
coauthors=
title=Toward a Unified Kurdish Language
publisher=
date=1976
location=NUKSE
url=
doi=
id=
* cite book
last=Izady
first=Prof. M.
authorlink=
coauthors=
title=The Kurds. A Concise Handbook
publisher=Dep. of Near Easter Languages and Civilization Harvard University
date=1992
location=USA
url=
doi=
id=

External links

* [http://web.archive.org/web/20050207021239/www.ibs.org/bibles/kurdish/index.php the New Testament in Soranî]