Sorani

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Sorani (Soranî) is a group of Central Kurdish dialects and as such is part of the Iranian languages. It is spoken by a total of approximately 10 million people in Iraq and Iran. It is the most widespread speech form of Iraqi Kurds, and is the language of a plurality of Kurds in Eastern Kurdistan (also referred to as Iranian Kurdistan).

In Iran: 60% of the Iranian Kurds. Located south of the Urmia Lake that stretches roughly to the city of Kermanshah.
In Iraq: 55% of the Iraqi Kurds. Most of them in the vicinity of Hewlêr (Arbil) and Silêmanî (Sulaymaniyah).

Sorani is usually written in the Arabic script, from right to left, in contrast to the other main Kurdish language (or dialect), Kurmanji or Kurmancî, which is spoken mainly in Turkey and in all other parts of Kurdistan and is usually written in the Roman alphabet.

Major subdialects of Central Kurdish dialects are:

A line can be drawn to divide Soraní-speaking areas into a Persianized southeastern section and a more orthodox northwestern section, running from Bíjar to Kifrí, (See the map). The ergative construction in the Persianized Soraní has begun to disappear, while it is being retained in the non-Persianized northwestern section. Also, under the influence of Arabic and Neo-Aramaic languages, the northwest section of Soraní has acquired two fricative sounds (vocalized pharyngeal fricative 'ayn, and hâ), absent from other Kurdish languages, and in fact Indo-European languages.

Soraní is a recent labelling after the name of the former principality of Soran. In Silêmanî (Sulaymaniyah), the Ottoman Empire had created a secundary school (Rushdíye), the graduates from which could go to Istanbul to continue to study there. This allowed Soraní, which was spoken in Silémaní, to progressively replace Hewramî as the literary vehicle. 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 Soraní on the grounds that the name of one dialect, Sonarí, spoken in the region Soran should not be extended to cover a group of dialect (E. M. Rasul, Núserí Kurd, No. 4, Nov. 1971).

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References

Dr. A. Hassanpour: Nationalism and Language in Kurdistan 1918 - 1985. Mellen Research University Press, USA, 1992
Jemal Nebez: Toward a Unified Kurdish Language. NUKSE 1976
Prof. M. Izady: The Kurds. A Concise Handbook. Dep. of Near Easter Languages and Civilization Harvard University, USA, 1992

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