Sorani: Central Kurdish Language
The Central Kurdish dialect, called Sorani, is spoken by Kurds in parts of Iraq and Iran.
The Sorani dialect is the dialect most often spoken in Erbil. The second is the Kurmanji dialect, spoken in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia and the Lebanon. It has an estimated 8 — 10 million speakers and has been written in the Latin script since the 1930s.
To be a bit more specific, while Sorani and Kurmanji have many of the same grammatical structures, the Kurmanji versions of these grammatical structures often include additional points of complexity, such as grammatical gender. As such, Sorani is probably easier to learn than Kurmanji.
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.
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.
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.
Learning Kurdish can be hard in terms of grammar and learning resources, especially if you don't speak any middle-eastern language. The Kurmanji dialect can be easier for speakers of European languages because it uses the Latin alphabet, while the Sorani dialect uses the Arabic script.
Both of them share highly similar origins with regard to social relationships and linguistic affinities. Basically both languages were utilized by Aryan community and they are categorized as Iranian and Zagros family languages. Kurdish and Farsi languages were spoken by both Aryan race people as their homelands.
The city is predominantly Kurdish and has minorities of local Turkmen and Assyrians, as well as Arabs.
The origin of the word Erbil
In classical times the city became known by its Aramaic name, Arbela. In Old Persian the city was called Arbairā. Today, the modern Kurdish name of the city, Hewlêr, appears to be a corruption of the name Arbel by a series of metatheses of consonants.
English Language
Although Arabic and Kurdish are the official languages of Iraq, people living in bigger cities like Erbil, Sulaymaniyah understand and speak English.
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.
But while the Kurds are a crucial part of Iraq's political makeup, they are an ethnic group, not a distinct religious sect within Islam. Kurds are more appropriately compared to Arabs, the largest ethnic group in Iraq, or other regional ethnic groups such as Assyrians or Turkmen.
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.
On the other hand, Kurdish is a Northwestern Iranian language like Balochi, Mazandarani and Gilaki. No. As a native Persian/Farsi speaker, I cannot understand Kurdish. I can pick out some words or phrases due to common lexicon but the grammar, phonology, and morphology is very different.
Makarenka pointed out there are many mutual similarities between the two peoples, such as in their folklore, histories, and languages and claims there are more than two thousand related words between Russian and Kurdish.
Kurdish is a Northwest Iranian language (and as such affiliated to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language phylum), related most closely to Persian and transitional varieties spoken along the Iraq-Iran border, such as Hawrami, Gurani, Luri and others, as well as to Dimli (Zazaki), which is spoken in ...
Language. The majority of people who identify as Kurds speak Kurmanji, meanwhile a minority of them speak Turkish or Zazaki as their mother language.
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.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
HLA-A*02-B*51-DRB1*11 is present in Iraq and Georgia Kurds. Haplotypes common to Iran and Iraq Kurds are HLA DRB1*11—DQB1*03, HLA DRB1*03—DQB1*02 and others in a lower frequency.
From politicians and activists, to entrepreneurs and musicians, a range of well-known figures hail from the Kurdistan region. From creating the world's leading Greek yogurt brand to heroically protecting the rights of Kurdish people, prominent Kurdish figures have deeply impacted every society they've touched.
Outside the traditional Kurdistan region, a sizable isolated community of Kurds live in north-eastern Iran, about 1000 km away from Iranian Kurdistan. They are referred to as the Kurds of Khorasan and speak the Kurmanji dialect unlike Kurds in western Iran.