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Kurdish resources? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6054 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 9 of 12 18 November 2007 at 10:24am | IP Logged |
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An excellent round-up of the situation re Kurdish.
The status of Zazaki is unclear. Some think it a Kurdish dialect, others a separate though related and Indo-European language. Most Zaza I have spoken to do not accept Kurdish identity. Zazaki does not seem to be mutually intelligible wıth Kurmanji, though many of the dialects accepted as Kurdish are also unintelligible. I think religious as well as linguistic differences come into the identity question. From trying out words culled from Kurmanji dictionaries on Kurmanji speakers, I often find they do not recognise the words. Maybe I am mispronouncing them but it may also be the effect of different dialects and Turkification. Kurmanji is possibly my next language (I also am interested in Arabic and Zazaki) but I have been frustrated by a lack of materials. This thread at least tells me where to look. Edited by William Camden on 19 November 2007 at 3:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Turek Newbie Germany Joined 4960 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: German* | Message 10 of 12 21 September 2010 at 10:55pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, there are different opinions, wether speaker of Zazaki are kurds or not, but it is more a political question, which everyone has to decide for hisself/herself.My roots are also zazaish and I can speak, read and understand a bit Kurmanji, Zazaki and Persian,too.The differences are comparable to English, Swedish and German so far.
Perhaps a hard difference of Persian may be (in relation to Kurmanji and Zazaki), that it has a grammatical simplified form, which has no gender and no use of ergativ forms in the past tenses.There is a obvious relationship, but also clear linguistic differences, which show that these are different languages and not dialects of each other, but apart from that if you know one of them, you have a more simple access to each of both of them, like someone who speaks German, who has also a linguistic advantage, if he or she wants to learn English or Swedish Edited by Turek on 21 September 2010 at 11:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 6926 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 11 of 12 21 September 2010 at 11:52pm | IP Logged |
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An on-line beginner's course in Zazaki, written in German and considerably expanded from the version I referenced in my earlier post, can be found here:
http://www.zazaki.de/deutsch/Zazaanfanger-I.pdf It's in the northern (Dersim) dialect, and reflects the view that Zazaki is not a Kurdish dialect. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 6926 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 12 of 12 21 May 2013 at 3:21pm | IP Logged |
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I'm bringing this long-dead thread back to life to note some resources for studying Kurdish that have recently become available.
First, Dunwoody Press, which publishes a number of readers for both Kurmanji and Sorani, has just published a couple of readers for colloquial Kurmanji and colloquial Sorani, as follow-ons to their earlier readers for formal prose. they're expensive, as are all Dunwoody books, but have a great deal of very useful content for those with a serious interest. Here's the Dunwoody website: http://www.dunwoodypress.com/ If you search for "Kurdish", you get the followng listing: http://www.dunwoodypress.com/search.php?tpl=17&catid=7&searc hname=Kurdish&submit.x=12&submit.y=14 They also have another book which doesn't show up under "Kurdish", presumably because the word "Kurdish" doesn't appear in the title: http://www.dunwoodypress.com/search.php?tpl=17&catid=7&searc hname=advanced+kurmanji+reader&submit.x=10&submit.y=15 You can see PDF samples of some (but not all) of Dunwoody's books here: http://www.dunwoodypress.com/_View+Sample+Pages.html Note that Dunwoody has recently been having problems with their website ordering system and credit card processing; I ordered a couple of the new books and had to do so by e-mail and pay with a check. Hopefully they'll get their system working again soon. Another brand new book for those interested in Sorani has just come out this week, and is available through Amazon; It's entitled Introduction to Sorani Kurdish, and is by Livingston T. Merchant. I haven't yet seen it, but it appears to be a book for beginners, and judging by the sample available at Amazon.com, doesn't take you too far into the language. The author has a blog on Kurdish-related issues, and here's the page announcing the publication of the book: http://zakopion.blogspot.com/2013/05/introduction-to-sorani- kurdish.html As an update re availability of some of the items cited in my long screed at the beginning of this thread, the excellent textbook for Kurmanji, Learn Kurdish/Dersen Kurdi, by Baran Rizgar, no longer seems to be available in book form anywhere. PDF copies can be found online in certain places, such as "Uzbekistan", though. Re Zazaki, the short PDF course in German that I cited earlier in the thread is no longer available online, but has been published as a book, Zonê Ma Zanena? - Zazaki für Anfängerinnen und Anfänger, by Mesut Keskin. Published in Turkey, it can be ordered through the Amazon German site. (176 pages, ISBN-10: 6056321517) In general, decent materials for learning Kurmanji seem to be available in English, French, German, and Turkish, while those for Sorani are quite limited, especially for beginners. The new "Introduction" cited above may make it easier for people to get a start, but my impression is that it won't take you too far. The materials by former Harvard Professor Wheeler Thackston at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/Sorani/, while pretty heavy going, will probably be necessary to go beyond the very basics. Zazaki materials are still quite limited. Some other materials have also been published, but don't seem to be available through commercial channels, such as a large grammar of Kurmanji written in Turkish: Temel Alıştırma ve Metinlerle Kürtçe Dilbilgisi (Kurmanci Lehçes), by Kadri Yildirim. I've been looking for this for some months, but haven't been able to find a way to order it. There are a number of other such resources published in Turkey or elsewhere by individuals or small groups of activists that don't seem to become widely available. Still, the situation is improving. I'll try to add some other resources in the near future. Edited by daristani on 21 May 2013 at 3:22pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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