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Kurdish at SOAS Language Centre

Kurdish is an ancient language and is related to other Indo-European languages such as English, German and French. Many of its words have roots that can be traced back to the second millennium BC. It is an inflected language and has both gender and number.

Kurdish belongs to the Western Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages. It is spoken in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and the Caucasus, and by sizable communities elsewhere. 

Kurmanji

The major Kurdish dialect, is spoken by about 70% of all the Kurds.

SOAS Language Centre in London offers these Kurdish (Kurmanji) language courses:

Sorani 

One of two major Kurdish dialects and the official language of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. It is also spoken by the Kurds of Iran. Historically, Sorani was the court language of the principalities of Soran and Baban before their fall in the 19th century. It was also the official language of the Kingdom of Southern Kurdistan in the early 1920s.

Sorani is the language of dozens of satellite TV stations and broadcasting services and more than 150 daily and weekly newspapers, magazines and other periodicals. Sorani has a magnificent corpus of texts containing a wealth of information on Kurdish language, literature, history, politics and all other aspects of the Kurdish life.

We don't currently offer scheduled group courses in Sorani Kurdish but individual 1-1 tuition can be requested.

The Linguistic Element

Linguists and scholars who have studied Kurdish evaluate its importance very highly:

‘A little research proves it to be as worthy of the name of a separate and developed language as Turkish or Persian themselves’.  (E. B. Soane, author of Grammar of the Kurrmanji or Kurdish Language, 1913)

‘Kurdish is one the most interesting languages; lively, harmonious, simple, precise, rich and varied, and easy to learn’. (Paul Beidar, author of Grammaire kurde, 1926)