Kurmanji is the northern variety, written in the Latin alphabet and spoken in Turkey and Syria.
Focusing on Kurdish Kurmanji? We've curated 3 resources that genuinely suit it, 3 of them free. The standouts are Kurdish With Murat, Wîkîpediya (Kurmanji) and Rûdaw (Kurmanji). As everywhere on How to Learn, what teaches you is listed first, free ahead of paid at the same standing, and there are no affiliate links.
3 of these are written for another variety of Kurdish, and say so on the card. Most of a course is simply the language, so the vocabulary and grammar carry over — pronunciation and some everyday usage do not.
Other varieties of Kurdish
Start here Kurdish With Murat youtube.com Four hundred short Kurmanji lessons for English speakers.
3 curated resources for Kurmanji · plus 3 from other varieties, marked
Showing all 6 resources
Four hundred short Kurmanji lessons for English speakers.
About this tool →Themed vocabulary and everyday phrases in Kurmanji, the northern variety written in the Latin alphabet and spoken in Turkey and Syria. The largest English-medium Kurdish course there is, and it is explicit about which variety it teaches — which matters more in Kurdish than almost any other language on this site.
Wikipedia in Kurmanji Kurdish, Latin script.
About this tool →Read about what you already know. Latin-script Kurmanji is much the easier entry for a Western learner, and this is one of the larger bodies of it online.
Daily news in Kurmanji, in the Latin alphabet.
About this tool →Rûdaw is the largest Kurdish news organisation and publishes separate Kurmanji and Sorani editions of the same newsroom. Reading the two against each other is the clearest possible demonstration of how far apart the varieties are — the same story, two scripts, substantially different words.
Sorani Kurdish taught the way Kurdish schools in Iraq teach it.
About this tool →Grammar, poetry and reading lessons following the Kurdistan Region school curriculum, conducted entirely in Sorani. Not aimed at foreign learners and hard as a first resource; excellent as a second one, because it is real classroom Kurdish at teaching pace with the Arabic-script orthography drilled properly.
Wikipedia in Sorani Kurdish, Arabic script.
About this tool →Larger than the Kurmanji edition, and written in the modified Arabic script used in Iraq and Iran. If you have read Persian or Arabic the script will be familiar and the language will not be.
The same newsroom in Sorani, in the Arabic script.
About this tool →Rûdaw's Sorani edition, covering Iraqi Kurdistan most closely. Sorani has grammatical features Kurmanji lacks entirely, including definite marking on the noun, so this is not simply the other edition in a different alphabet.
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