Kurdish Orthography

Like other non-Arabic speaking peoples who adopted the Arabic alphabet after the Islamic conquest of the seventeenth century, Kurds have started using a modified version of the Arabic script to suit the phonemic system of their language from the beginning of the last century. The changes introduced before the present century were modest compared to the extensive reform carried out especially since the 1920's. The Arabic version of the Kurdish alphabet with all its practical difficulties is now to a great extent standardized, although spelling remains a serious problem. This section view a historical as well practical usage of existing Kurdish orthographies.

The Alphabets

Codification of the writing system for Kurdish is all introduced cases have proceeded along two lines: (a) the phonemization of the alphabet by adding diacritical marks to the letters of the Arabic alphabet, or adaption from various existing alphabet in Roman and Cyrillic version, and (b) the possible purification or Kurdification of the alphabet by omitting letters that do not represent any phonemes of the Kurdish language. The latter trend partially overlaps with the former.

Phonemization of the Alphabet

The principle one letter for each sound, called phonemization here, lies at the heart of all codification efforts in orthography. its validly has not been questioned by any Kurdish source in recent times yet, even though it has at times been carried to the extreme of attempting to represent some of the allophones. Phonemization is not a new phenomena in language codification process and of a more limited scope has been undertaken by other languages.