Translation: A standardised language is the soul of a country

Disclaimer

This article does not in any way represent my own opinion. I have chosen it because it discusses something that interests me and I wanted to practice translating a long text from Sorani Kurdish to English. I also think that this article can give an insight into one of the views held on the matter of standardising the Kurdish language, however, I personally suggest you take most of what is said here with a large dose of salt. The writer of the original text claims to use a scientific method when dealing with the issue of a standardised language, but his arguments are riddled with flaws, inaccuracies and bias. I find myself on quite the opposite end of the argument and regard his suggestions here as even somewhat dangerous. That said, please do read it and maybe learn something about what is quite a big issue in Kurdish culture at the moment. In time maybe I will write my own response to it.

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

By : Ramal Qesreyi
Translation : Alex Berry 

Kurdish and Catalan: A socio-linguistic comparison

When talk of modern day independence movements comes up, Kurdistan and Catalonia always feature heavily. Catalans have recently been seeing a surge in support for independence from Spain, thanks in no small amount to the ever worsening economic situation in that country, but also because of the ever present threat to Catalan language and culture which the central Spanish government represents. Then there is the fact that the Spanish political system was set up by those who inherited power from General Franco's dictatorship without a clear split from the past and, at least in some people's minds, returning to it is only one crisis away. Whilst Kurdistan may be in the same boat in terms of being a nation without a state, the situation itself is quite different. Firstly the 30 million or so Kurds are spread out among four different states, none of which are Kurdish. In Turkey and Iran they are still being oppressed political, economically and culturally, in a way that the Catalans probably haven't experienced for one or even two generations. However, due to the great size and complexity of the entire Kurdish region, I am mostly going to talk about the Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region or South Kurdistan. This region was able to achieve de-facto autonomy after the first Gulf War in 1991 and has enjoyed legal autonomy since helping set up the new federal Iraqi state. What I wish to look at here is the difference between the socio-linguistic situations in Catalonia and South Kurdistan. This means I will be comparing the state of the languages and their outlooks as well as social and governmental attempts to protect them. Finally I will give my own recommendations for what should be done for the best interests of the two languages.

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.