alfabeya kurdî
The Kurdish (Kurmanji) Latin alphabet has 31 letters: 8 vowels and 23 consonants. Created by Celadet Bedirxan in the 1930s, it marks long vowels with a circumflex: ê, î, û.
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This page shows Kurmanji, the Kurdish spoken in Turkey, Syria and parts of Iraq and Iran, written in the Latin alphabet known as Hawar. Sorani Kurdish, spoken mainly in Iraq and Iran, uses an Arabic-based script that is not covered here.
Ê, î and û are letters of their own, listed after e, i and u. They are long, clear vowels, while e, i and u are short. The difference changes words, so the circumflex is never optional.
Plain i is a very short, weak vowel, a little like the i in “bit” or the a in “about”. In fast speech it can almost disappear. Î is always long and clear, like ee in “see”.
Unlike Turkish, Kurmanji uses q, w and x in ordinary words: q is a k made deep in the throat (qehwe, coffee), w is as in English (wêne, picture), and x is the ch of Scottish “loch” (xanî, house).
Vowels are named by their sound (a, e, ê, i, î, o, u, û). Consonants are named by adding ê: bê, cê, çê, dê and so on.
Spoken Kurmanji distinguishes some sounds the standard alphabet does not write, such as breathy and plain p, t, k and ç, and some throat sounds found mainly in Arabic loanwords. Some writers add extra signs (such as ḧ and ẍ) or an apostrophe for these, but the standard 31 letters do not.
Letter inventory checked against Unicode CLDR.