Kurdish alphabets


The Kurdish languages are written in either of two alphabets: a Latin alphabet introduced by Jeladet Ali Bedirkhan in 1932 and an Arabic alphabet-based Central Kurdish alphabet. The Kurdistan Region has agreed upon a standard for Central Kurdish, implemented in Unicode for computation purposes.
The Hawar is used in Syria, Turkey and Armenia; the Central Kurdish in Iraq and Iran. Two additional alphabets, based on the Armenian alphabet and the Cyrillic script, were once used in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Hawar alphabet

The Kurmanji dialect of the Kurdish language is written in an extended Latin alphabet, consisting of the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin Alphabet with 5 letters with diacritics, for a total of 31 letters :
In this alphabet the short vowels are E, I and U while the long vowels are A, Ê, Î, O and Û.
When presenting the alphabet in his magazine Hawar, Jeladet Ali Bedirkhan proposed using for غ, ح, and ع, sounds which he judged to be "non-Kurdish". These three glyphs do not have the official status of letters, but serve to represent these sounds when they are indispensable to comprehension.
Turkey does not recognize this alphabet. Using the letters Q, W, and X, which did not exist in the Turkish alphabet until 2013, led to persecution in 2000 and 2003. Since September 2003, many Kurds applied to the courts seeking to change their names to Kurdish ones written with these letters, but failed.
The Turkish government finally legalized the letters Q, W, and X as part of the Turkish alphabet in 2013.

Kurdish Latin alphabet

Some scholars have suggested to add minor additions to Bedirxan's Hawar alphabet to make it more user-friendly. The additions correspond to sounds that are represented in the Central Kurdish alphabet, but not in the Hawar alphabet. These scholars suggest this extended alphabet be called the Kurdish Latin alphabet. The suggested additional characters are Ł, Ň, Ř and Ü. The velar Ł/ł which appears mostly in Central Kurdish is for non-initial positions only; in Kurdish velar Ł never comes in initial position. The initial position in any Kurdish word beginning with r is pronounced and written as a trill Ř/ř. The letter Ü/ü is a new letter, which is sometimes written ۊ in the Central Kurdish alphabet, and represents the close front rounded vowel Close front rounded vowel|' used in the Southern Kurdish dialects. The velar nasal consonant Velar nasal|' is also a Kurdish phoneme which never comes in initial position, and it is written as Ň/ň. The Kurdish Latin alphabet consists of 35 letters in total.

Sorani alphabet

is mainly written using a modified Arabic alphabet with 33 letters introduced by Sa'id Kaban Sedqi. Unlike the Arabic alphabet, which is an abjad, Central Kurdish is almost a true alphabet in which vowels are mandatory, making the script easier to read. Central Kurdish does not have a complete representation of Kurimanji Kurdish sounds, as it lacks short i. Written Central Kurdish also relies on vowel and consonant context to differentiate between the phonemes u/w and î/y instead of using separate letters. It does show the two pharyngeal consonants, as well as a voiced velar fricative, used in Kurdish. Reformed Central Kurdish does have glyphs for the Kurdish short "i" and it is able to successfully differentiate between the consonant "w" from the short vowel "u" by representing "w" with a . It is also able to successfully differentiate between the consonant "y" from the long vowel "î" by representing "î" with a and the long vowel "û" can be represented with a or instead of double و.
A new sort order for the alphabet was recently proposed by the Kurdish Academy as the new standard, all of which are letters accepted included in the Central Kurdish Unicode Keyboard:
عشسژزڕردخحچجتپبائـ
1716151413121110987654321
ێیووۆوەھنمڵلگکقڤفغ
3433323130292827262524232221201918

Note - The above sequences are read from right to left. For pronunciations see comparison table below.
The alphabet is represented by 34 letters including وو which is given its own position. Kurds in Iraq and Iran use this alphabet. The standardization by Kurdistan Region uses wikt:ک instead of wikt:ك for letter Kaf, as listed in the Unicode table on the official home page for the standard. However, the latter glyph is still in use by various individuals and organizations.
Some letters which was proposed by in Baghdad, those letters are یٙ long Kurdish Yah with short straight line above it, and وٙ for long Waw with short straight line above it, these two letters was used before in books and magazines. but now it is not used.

Vowels

Central Kurdish has 8 vowels, whilst only 7 are represented by letters:
#LetterIPAExample
1اOpen front unrounded vowel|با
2ەسەر
3وClose back protruded vowel|كورد
4ۆClose-mid back rounded vowel|تۆ
5ووClose back protruded vowel|دوور
6یClose front unrounded vowel|شین
7ێClose-mid front unrounded vowel|دێ

Similar to some English letters, both و and ی can become consonants. In the word وان the و is consonant. Similarly, in the word یاری, the ی is a consonant. Central Kurdish stipulates that syllables must be formed with at least one vowel, whilst a maximum of two vowels are permitted.

Historical alphabets

Cyrillic script

A third system, used for the few Kurds in the former Soviet Union, especially in Armenia, used a Cyrillic alphabet, consisting of 40 letters.
It was designed in 1946 by Heciyê Cindî:
А аБ бВ вГ гГ’ г’Д дЕ еӘ әӘ’ ә’Ж ж
З зИ иЙ йК кК’ к’Л лМ мН нО оӦ ӧ
П пП’ п’Р рР’ р’С сТ тТ’ т’У уФ фХ х
Һ һҺ’ һ’Ч чЧ' ч’Ш шЩ щЬ ьЭ эԚ ԛԜ ԝ

Armenian alphabet

From 1921 to 1929 the Armenian alphabet was used for Kurdish languages in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Then it was replaced with a Yañalif-like Latin alphabet during the campaigns for Latinisation in the Soviet Union.

Uniform adaptation for Kurdish

In 1928, Kurdish languages in all of the Soviet Union, including the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, were switched to a Latin alphabet containing some Cyrillic characters: a, b, c, ç, d, e, ә, f, g, г, h, i, ь, j, k, ʀ, l, m, ɴ, o, ө, w, p, n, q, ч, s, ш, ц, t, u, y, v, x, z, ƶ. In 1929 it was reformed and was replaced by the following alphabet:
A aB bC cꞒ ꞓÇ çD dE eƏ ə
Ə́ ə́F fG gƢ ƣH hĦ ħI iJ j
K kĶ ķL lM mN nO oÖ öP p
Ṕ ṕQ qR rS sŞ şT tŢ ţU u
Û ûV vW wX xY yZ zƵ ƶЬ ь

Yekgirtú

The Yekgirtú alphabet is a recent devised writing system by Kurdish Academy of Language. It has many advantages compared to the Kurmanji and Central Kurdish alphabets. It is adapted for all Kurdish dialects and not exclusive to just one, and is therefore called Yekgirtú, which means "unified."
The Kurdish Academy of Language realises that there are too many shortcomings with current Kurdish writing systems. These include workability, cross dialectal usage, and a lack of International IT-based Standards and representation for Kurdish. To avoid the communication obstacles presented by the existence of various Kurdish writing systems, KAL has introduced a standard Kurdish Unified Alphabet based on International ISO-8859-1 Standards. This modern Kurdish alphabet contained some minor changes in the existing Latin based alphabet and adopting new signs. The new signs were introduced to improve the flexibility of the writing system in Kurdish. This effort was undertaken as part of KAL's broad endeavour to revive and promote the use of the Kurdish language for the benefit of young Kurds. The system devised and presented here by KAL is simple and adequate for the purpose of communicating via the Internet and any electronic media.
The development of the Unified Kurdish Alphabet has proceeded along three lines. First one letter has been designated for each sound. Second, no diacritical marks have been allowed that are difficult to convey via the Internet without the use of specialised programs. Specifically, all characters in the unified alphabet have been chosen carefully from the ISO-8859-1 "Latin 1" system for West European languages in order to ensure that the Kurdish characters follow one single global standard only. Loanwords need to naturalise and comply with common global Kurdish spelling rules whilst local exceptional pronunciations are also justified. The Kurdish Unified Alphabet contains 34 characters including 4 digraph cases and 4 characters with diacritics. It represents 9 vowels and 25 consonants:

Yezidi

The Yezidi script was used to write the Kurmanji language. The script was found in historical manuscripts Maṣḥaf Raš and Ktébī Jǎlwe̱h. In 2013, the Spiritual Council of Yezidis in Georgia decided to revive the Yezidi script. Yezidi is written from right to left. The modern version of Yezidi is an alphabet and does not use ligatures.
The Yezidi script was added to Unicode version 13.0 in March 2020. 47 characters are located in the Yezidi block:

Comparison of Kurdish alphabets