Kurdish Alphabet (Kurmanji)

Kurmanji is written in the Hawar alphabet, named after the magazine Hawar that Celadet Alî Bedirxan began publishing in Damascus in 1932: A B C Ç D E Ê F G H I Î J K L M N O P Q R S Ş T U Û V W X Y Z. That is 31 letters, and the orthography is mostly phonetic, though some pronunciation features are not shown in writing. Twenty-six are the familiar A to Z; the other five carry a mark, the cedilla on Ç and Ş and the circumflex on Ê, Î and Û, and each has its own place in the alphabet, straight after its plain letter.

Several plain letters do not sound as they do in English. C is the j of jam (cîran, neighbour), J is the s of measure (jin, woman), X is the rough kh of Scottish loch (xweş, nice), Q is a k said deep in the throat (qelem, pen), and W is always the English w (welat, homeland). There are no silent letters.

Sorani, the Kurdish of Iraqi Kurdistan and western Iran, is usually written in Arabic script, and the sounds line up almost letter for letter: ç چ, ş ش, ê ێ, î ی, û وو, x خ, j ژ, q ق. The Sorani Kurdish collection has that alphabet.

Kurdish letters Ê, Î, Û, Ç and Ş: what they sound like

Kurmanji has five tense, usually long vowels and three short lax vowels; the circumflex marks ê, î and û, while a and o are also tense but unmarked. E is short, like the a in English bat; Ê is long, like bait without its y-glide: ker is a donkey, kêr a knife. I is a short central vowel /ɨ/; Î is the long ee of see: dil is heart, dîl a captive. U is the short u of put; Û is the long oo of moon: kur is a son, kûr deep. Leaving the hat off is not a small slip but a different word.

Ç is the ch of church (çav, eye; çay, tea) and Ş is the sh of ship (şev, night). Plain C and S never take those sounds: şîr is milk, sîr garlic.

One detail trips up Turkish settings: in Kurdish the capital of i is a plain I, and there is no dotless ı. Phones and programs set to Turkish turn i into İ when they capitalise, so a heading such as DILÊ MIN (my heart) can come out as DİLÊ MİN; set the language to Kurdish or type the capitals yourself.

How to type Kurdish letters on a keyboard and phone

Windows: with Num Lock on, hold Alt and type on the number pad: Alt+0199 Ç, Alt+0231 ç, Alt+0202 Ê, Alt+0234 ê, Alt+0206 Î, Alt+0238 î, Alt+0219 Û, Alt+0251 û. Ş and ş have no Alt code of this kind; in Word type 015E or 015F and press Alt+X, or add the Turkish Q keyboard, which has Ç and Ş keys. With the United States-International layout, press ^ and then e, i or u for ê î û, and ' then c for ç.

Mac: press Option+i, then the vowel, for ê î û (Option+i then Shift+E gives Ê), and Option+c for ç. For ş, add the Turkish Q input source and switch to it with Control+Space. iPhone and Android: hold down e, i, u or c on the ordinary keyboard and slide to ê, î, û or ç; ş is on the Turkish keyboard, and some Kurdish keyboard apps put all five letters on the main keys.

On web pages the letters can be written as HTML entities: Ç ç Ê ê Î î Û û, and Ş ş for Ş ş. Mark Kurmanji text with lang="ku" (or kmr) so that spell checkers and screen readers treat it as Kurdish.

Kurdish punctuation, numbers and money

Kurmanji uses ordinary Latin punctuation, placed as in English: Tu çawa yî? (how are you?). Kurdish text is quoted with the guillemets « », and many writers online use the curly quotes “ ”; both are on this page.

Numbers are written with the usual digits 0 to 9. Counting to ten: yek, du, sê, çar, pênc, şeş, heft, heşt, neh, deh; five of those words need a special letter.

Kurmanji speakers use local currencies: the Turkish lira ₺ in Türkiye, the Syrian pound in Syria, the Iraqi dinar in Iraq and the Iranian rial in Iran; those in Germany and other euro-area countries use euros €. The Syrian pound has no sign of its own and is written SYP or £S.

Where Kurmanji is spoken, and the Kurdish flag emoji

Kurmanji, or Northern Kurdish, is the most widely spoken Kurdish language. CLDR's figures for Kurdish in the countries below add up to about 7 million speakers, a conservative total that other counts put much higher: roughly 4.6 million in Türkiye 🇹🇷, around cities such as Diyarbakır (Amed), Van and Mardin and in Istanbul; about 1.9 million in Syria 🇸🇾; over half a million in Germany 🇩🇪, home to the largest Kurdish community abroad; and smaller communities in Armenia 🇦🇲, many of them Yazidis, and Azerbaijan 🇦🇿. In Iraq's Duhok province the Badînî dialect of Kurmanji is spoken too, often written in Arabic script there.

Related collections: Sorani (Central Kurdish), Southern Kurdish and Kurdish in Arabic script; Turkish, which shares Ç and Ş; Zaza, spoken alongside Kurmanji around Diyarbakır and Tunceli; and Persian, a more distant relative in the Iranian family.

Unicode has no Kurdistan flag emoji: country flags use two-letter region codes, while its recommended subdivision-flag sequences are England, Scotland and Wales. People build the red, white and green flag with its golden sun from other emoji instead: ❤️🤍💚☀️, 🟥⬜🟩☀️, or the sun ☀️ or text sun ☼ alone. Some paste 🇹🇯, the flag of Tajikistan, because its bands are similar, though its emblem is a crown and stars. Newroz, the new year on 21 March, comes with the greeting Newroz pîroz be!, bonfires 🔥, picnics in the mountains ⛰️ and the hand-in-hand govend dance 💃🕺.