There are 3 grammatical genders in Kurmanji: feminine, masculine and neuter. Sorani has no grammatical gender. Languages like Zazaki and Hawramani have likewise 3 grammatical genders.
Kurdish language is male dominated, biased and sexist – all of which is reflected in Kurdish patriarchy. Kurdish patriarchy (and all the norms association with it) typically relegates women to subordinate power positions.
There are two main Kurdish dialects (Kurmanji and Sorani), as well as some peripheral ones (e.g. Pahlewani, Zazaki and Hewrami /Gorani). Kurmanji is the language of the vast majority of Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, and of a few in Iraq and Iran, with an estimated 15-17 million speakers in total.
Kurdish, in general, is divided into three dialect groups, known as Northern Kurdish (or Kurmanji), Central Kurdish (or Sorani), and Southern Kurdish. Estimates put the total number of native Kurdish speakers between 30 and 40 million. Kurdish has a rich history in literature, poetry, and folklore.
Belonging to different language families, the Kurdish and Turkish languages have distinctive linguistic features. While Turkish belongs to the Uralic–Altaic language family, Kurdish is grouped among the western Iranian group of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European fam- ily.
Kurds (Kurdish: کورد, Kurd) or Kurdish people are an Iranian ethnic group native to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northern Syria.
No, the Kurds are not Persian. They are a separate ethnic group. However, their language is an Indo-European language that is related to the Farsi language spoken by Persians. This makes them more closely related to each other than either group is to Arabs.
Traditionally, Kurdish marriages are arranged marriages. Marriage arrangements may be completed even before children are born. For boys and girls, marriage establishes the passage to adulthood.
Today the majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims, and there are Shia, Sufi, and Alevi minorities. Sunni Muslim Kurds are mostly Shafi'is. The percentage for Kurds who are Sunni Muslim is approximately 75% of all Kurds, and the percentage of Kurds who are Shia Muslim is approximately 15%.
Where do they come from? The Kurds are one of the indigenous peoples of the Mesopotamian plains and the highlands in what are now south-eastern Turkey, north-eastern Syria, northern Iraq, north-western Iran and south-western Armenia.
The majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslim, with Alevi Shi'a Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Yezidi communities. Religious divergences as well as varying political viewpoints account for a wide variety of Kurdish perspectives vis-à-vis the state, though political discourse is dominated by the Kurdish nationalist PKK.
Typical Kurdish Food
Common foods include dolma (vegetables stuffed in grape leaves), kofta (spiced meatballs or meatloaf), flatbreads, honey and black tea. As nomads and herders, lamb and chicken have been staple meats in Kurdish cuisine for centuries.
Most probably, Kurd people gene pool majority may be composed of an admixture of North Mesopotamian (Caucasus) and Near East peoples; Central Asia gene input is not discarded [5,9,10,11,12,13]. Kurds have mainly been defined by their ancestry, language and cultural uses.
Traditional Kurdish Dress in Modern Culture
In Iran, Kurdish women subscribe to the traditional islamic dress, which dictates a cloth to be worn over the clothes and a hijab that covers the hair.
There are some languages that have no gender! Hungarian, Estonian, Finnish, and many other languages don't categorize any nouns as feminine or masculine and use the same word for he or she in regards to humans.
Religious Tolerance
The Kurdish people are not Arabs, but rather historically identify with the Medes, an ancient people described in the Bible. In fact, most Kurds were Christians long before they began converting to Islam in the sixth century.
The majority of Kurdish people are Muslim by religion. While the relationship between religion and nationalism has usually been strained and ambivalent with the strong hold of the Islamic leaders in Kurdish society, it has generally been the conservative Muslim Kurds who formed the backbone of the Kurdish movements.
Kurds have had a long history of discrimination perpetrated against them by the Turkish government. Massacres have periodically occurred against the Kurds since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923.
Before Islam, the majority of Kurds followed a western Iranic pre-Zoroastrian faith which derived directly from Indo-Iranian tradition, some elements of this faith survived in Yezidism, Yarsanism and Kurdish Alevism. Kurds were a nation divided between the Byzantine and Persian Empires when Islam first appeared.
The reality star and her sisters have often spoken about their Armenian roots. Kim was excited in 2011 when she learned the results of a DNA test on Lopez Tonight that revealed she was 94 percent Armenian and six percent Native American.
188/1959 sets the minimum age of marriage at 18 years, it allows for the marriage of children between the ages of 15 and 17 if the approv- al of their legal guardians is obtained. The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) raised this age to 167, but it remains below the global standard of 18 years8.
Since the immigration to the big cities in the west of Turkey, interethnic marriage has become more common. A 2013 study estimates that there are 2,708,000 marriages between Turks and Kurds/Zaza.
Kurds in Syria (Rojava)
Many Kurds consider the Kurdish-majority regions of northern and northeastern Syria to be Western Kurdistan (Kurdish: Rojavaye Kurdistane) and seek political autonomy within Syria (akin to Iraqi Kurdistan in Iraq) or outright independence as part of an independent Kurdistan.
Since the conflict began, more than 40,000 have died, the vast majority of whom were Kurdish civilians. Both sides were accused of numerous human rights abuses during the conflict. The European Court of Human Rights has condemned Turkey for thousands of human rights abuses.
Iran never employed the same level of brutality against its own Kurdish population, but has always been staunchly opposed to Kurdish separatism.