Kurmanji and Sorani: what is the difference?

“Kurdish” is not one single standard language but a group of closely related varieties. The two largest are Kurmanji (sometimes called Northern Kurdish) and Sorani (Central Kurdish). Yari’s games use both, so here is a short guide to how they relate.

Where they are spoken

Kurmanji has the most speakers. It is the main Kurdish variety in Turkey and Syria, in the Duhok (Badinan) area of northern Iraq, in parts of north-western and north-eastern Iran, and among Kurdish communities in Armenia, Georgia and the European diaspora.

Sorani is spoken mainly in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, including the cities of Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, and in western Iran. It is widely used in education, publishing and media in those areas.

Other Kurdish varieties exist too, such as Southern Kurdish, and related languages like Zazaki and Gorani are spoken by many Kurds. This guide focuses on the two big ones.

Two scripts

The most visible difference is the writing. Kurmanji is usually written in the Latin-based Hawar alphabet. Sorani is usually written in a modified Arabic script that, unlike Arabic, writes all the vowels. That is why a single song in KêGot can show its title twice: once as Ey Reqîb and once as ئەی ڕەقیب.

Grammar differences

• Gender and case. Kurmanji keeps grammatical gender (masculine and feminine) and a separate form for nouns and pronouns in certain positions, called the oblique case. Sorani has largely lost both.
• Pronouns. “I” is ez in Kurmanji and min in Sorani. Kurmanji also uses min, but only in the oblique case, for example in navê min (“my name”).
• “The”. Sorani marks definite nouns with an ending (often -eke), while Kurmanji generally has no word for “the” and relies on context.
• Attached pronouns. Sorani makes heavy use of short pronoun endings attached to words; Kurmanji tends to use separate pronouns.

Shared vocabulary, shifted sounds

A great deal of everyday vocabulary is shared, sometimes with regular sound changes. A well-known example is Kurmanji v matching Sorani w:

Can speakers understand each other?

Partly. Speakers who meet for the first time often find the other variety hard to follow, especially in fast speech, because of the grammatical differences above. Understanding improves quickly with exposure, and music plays a big part in that: many Kurds know songs in both varieties long before they study the grammar.

How Yari handles both

In KêGot you can choose Sorani songs, Kurmanji songs, or a mix, and switch which script the lyric lines are shown in. Peyvok and our word list use Kurmanji in the Latin alphabet.