Translation: Helgurd Sekran National Park to be added to the Iraqi map.

By : Ramal Qesreyi
Translation : Alex Berry 

Sorani gloss

This is a post I've wanted to make for a while, it's a simple gloss of three sentences in Sorani showing a little of how the syntax in this language works. For reference, '-EZ' means ezafe which is the vowel used to link together two nouns or a noun and an adjective.

This is Iraq

Before coming to Kurdistan I had to prepare the speech which I would tell everyone who asked "where/what is Kurdistan?" and the follow up "no, no it's not the same as Iraq, it's completely safe, they don't have terrorist attacks there," after I had told them where it was. One of the weird things about living here is that I forget that I am living in Iraq, after all Iraq is that far off place that was synonymous, to varying degrees of reality, with terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, fear-mongering, invasion, war, torture, sectarian violence, instability, oil and again terrorism. Things aren't much better now and it would be totally crazy of me to go to Iraq, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm not in Iraq.

Hawleri Sorani Kurdish

I've been living in Kurdistan for about two months now and have really got into studying Kurdish. As I have explained in other posts, the Kurdish dialect (or language) that they speak in Iraq and southern Iran is called Sorani. The standard dialect of Sorani is based in the east of Kurdistan, around the towns of Soran, Sulaymaniyah (Slêmanî in Kurdish) and down to Kirkuk. In some ways this is the cultural and linguistic capital of the region. The speakers there sum for a much purer Kurdish without all the Arabic and Turkish loanwords and calques. This is also seen as some sort of standard of Sorani Kurdish and thus is the style that other Sorani speakers will imitate when trying to speak formally or correctly. This can be compared to RP in England.