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. 

At the frontiers of language learning

This post is about my experience thus far of trying to learn Sorani Kurdish here in Kurdistan. The reason I say frontier is because there is very little in the way of learning resources for learning Kurdish and they are dotted around in several other foreign languages. I'm going to try to explain why and what it's like learning in such a situation.

One week in Iraqi-Kurdistan

So I have now been living in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi-Kurdistan, for one week. These are some of my thoughts and experiences so far.

A Short History of Kurdistan-Iraq

Today I booked my flight to go from London to Sulaymaniyah, the second city of Kurdistan-Iraq (or Iraqi Kurdistan). I'm planning to go and teach English there for a year whilst learning Sorani Kurdish. I'm nervous about such a big culture shock, but also excited about immersing myself into Kurdish society, afterall I wrote my final dissertation on K-I, so it's somewhere that's interested me for a while - and the free one-person flat and tidy salary don't hurt. With this in mind, here is a short history of the area that I spent a year researching about.