Kurdish language

Kurdish Kurdî
كوردی, Kurdî, Kurdí, Кöрди[1]
Native to	Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, Serbia, Russia
Ethnicity	55-60 million Kurds
Native speakers	60 million (2021)[2]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Iranian Northwestern Iranian Kurdish Kurdî
Writing system	Kurdish Script
Official status
Official language in	Iraq: status as official language alongside Arabic.  Iran: constitutional status as a regional language  Armenia: minority language[3]  Azerbaijan: minority language in 5 districts[4]
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ku
ISO 639-2	kur
ISO 639-3	kur – inclusive code Individual codes: ckb – Sorani kmr – Kurmanji sdh – Southern Kurdish lki – Laki
Linguasphere	58-AAA-a (North Kurdish incl. Kurmanji & Kurmanjiki) + 58-AAA-b (Central Kurdish incl. Dimli/Zaza & Gurani) + 58-AAA-c (South Kurdish incl. Kurdi) + Luri dialect

The Kurdish language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Kurds in an area called Kurdistan, including parts of the countries Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.^[5] Kurdish has two main dialects and many subs dialects. The two main ones are Kurmanji and Sorani. Kurdish belongs to the same language group as the Iranian languages. Another well-known Iranian language is Persian. They are considered Indo-European languages.

1. ↑ "Kurdish Language – Kurdish Academy of Language". Kurdishacademy.org. Retrieved 2 December 2011.
2. ↑ Only very rough estimates are possible. SIL Ethnologue gives estimates, broken down by dialect group, totalling 60 million, but with the caveat of "Very provisional figures for Northern Kurdish speaker population". Ethnologue estimates for dialect groups: Northern: 37 M (undated; 30 M in Turkey for 2021), Central: 8.75M (2021), Southern: 6 M (2021), Laki: 2 M (2021). Luri:5 m (2021). Zazaki: 3 m (2021). The Swedish Nationalencyklopedin listed Kurdish in its "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), citing an estimate of 20.6 million native speakers.
3. ↑ European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
4. ↑ "Kurdish, Northern". Ethnologue.
5. ↑ "Geographic distribution of the Kurdish language". Archived from the original on 2007-10-18. Retrieved 2007-06-18.