Questions about Kurmanji
What people most often ask about the Kurdish language, and what to know before starting here. 14 short answers.
Updated
The whole course is free — 15 units, 10 minutes a day, no card, no ads.Start free
What is Kurmanji?
Kurmanji (kurmancî) is the Kurdish variety spoken in Turkey, Syria, northern Iraq, Armenia and across the European diaspora. It is also called Northern Kurdish. It is the most widely spoken Kurdish variety, and the one written in the Latin alphabet.
What is the difference between Kurmanji and Sorani?
They are two Kurdish varieties, close but distinct, and they are not written the same way: Kurmanji uses the Latin alphabet, Sorani an adapted Arabic script. Kurmanji keeps two genders and an oblique case that Sorani has largely lost. A Kurmanji speaker and a Sorani speaker do not understand each other straight away.
Is Kurdish related to Turkish or Arabic?
No. Kurdish is an Indo-European language of the Iranian branch — a cousin of Persian, and a distant relative of English. Turkish belongs to the Turkic family and Arabic to the Semitic family: neither is related to Kurdish, even though words have been borrowed in both directions.
How do you say hello in Kurmanji Kurdish?
Rojbaş — literally “good day”, and it works all day long. Merheba and silav also mean hello. To take your leave: bi xatirê te to one person, bi xatirê we to several; the one who stays answers oxir be. More of them are in the useful sentences.
Try it now
Three questions on what you have just read. One minute, no account — and the whole course is free behind it.
Not that one — try again.
Rojbaş! Your first word, and a well chosen one.
Spas! Two words, and already a conversation.
Ez kurd im. In Kurmanji, “to be” is an ending: -im means “I am”.
Three right answers, one minute.
The course has 1096 of them — and all of it is free.
Carry on for freeThe answers are in the course, and the course is free. Start free
Is Kurmanji hard for an English speaker?
Reading takes an evening: the alphabet is Latin and every letter has one sound. Three things take real work — the ezafe, the vowel that hooks words together; the oblique case, which changes the end of nouns; and the past tense of transitive verbs, where the verb agrees with the object rather than the subject (linguists call it ergativity). The grammar page explains them without jargon.
Which alphabet is Kurmanji written in?
The Latin alphabet, known as the Hawar alphabet, devised by Celadet Alî Bedirxan and published from 1932. It has 31 letters, 8 of them vowels. Five characters are missing from an English keyboard: ê î û ş ç. The details are on the alphabet page.
What is the ezafe?
It is the Kurmanji link: a small vowel added to the end of a noun to hook it to what follows — a possessor or an adjective. -ê for masculine (navê min, my name), -a for feminine (xwişka min, my sister), -ên for plural (hevalên me, our friends). It is also what reveals a noun's gender: the word alone never shows it.
Can you learn Kurmanji for free?
Yes. The whole Kurdi School course is open for free: all 15 units, all 7353 exercises, the stories. The free plan gives four hearts; a mistake costs one, and a heart comes back every eight hours. The Plus subscription unlocks no content — it only removes that wait.
How much does Kurdi School cost?
The course is free. Kurdi School Plus costs 7.99 € a month, or 34.99 € for a year, VAT included, cancellable at any time from your profile, and gives unlimited hearts. Nothing else is paid for, and there are no ads.
Is there audio to hear the pronunciation?
Yes: every sentence in the course can be listened to, and dictation counts like any other exercise.
How long does it take to learn Kurmanji?
Ten minutes a day gets you through a unit in one or two weeks — the whole course in three to seven months, enough to read, introduce yourself, describe your day, report what you were told and follow a folk tale. It does not replace speaking with someone: a language lives out loud, and a written course only prepares you for it.
Where does the course content come from?
The first ten units come from a university Kurmanji course for beginners — its vocabulary, dialogues, grammar and stories — reorganised into a learning path. The last five are written here, and they go where the book stops: the town, health, reported speech, relative clauses, the causative, and Mem û Zîn. The 1058 words and 750 sentences are written by hand; the exercises are derived from them by a deterministic generator and checked by script. The vocabulary and the sentences are published in full.
Do I need to read the Kurdish alphabet before starting?
No. The first unit is the alphabet, and the opening guide shows in five minutes how the language is built, with no hearts at stake. A complete beginner starts there.
Is Kurdi School an app to download?
No: the course opens in the browser, on a phone or on a computer, with nothing to install. All you need is an account so your progress is saved.
Test your level, no strings attached
Ten questions to see where you stand. The result shows right away, with the unit to start from.
Take the test