Payvand, Iran
Aug 11 2004

Iranian University to Start Teaching Kurdish

In a groundbreaking attempt, Kurdish would be taught at Kurdistan
University, west of Iran, for the very first time come the new
academic year, Iranian Cultural Heritage News Agency reported on
Wednesday.

It is decided that 30 eager students would be allowed to learn the
historical language academically, announced Bahram Valadbeigi, head
of the Kurdistan Institute.

He highlighted the similar roots of Kurdish and Persian languages,
saying `Expanding local languages would definitely boost the official
one.’

The editor of the Kurdish weekly `Ashti’ (reconciliation) also
expressed his gratitude to authorities in Iranian Higher Education
Ministry and hoped the language be taught in other universities as
well.

In Iran, 90 percent of Kurds live in villages, the rest are nomadic.
With a checkered history of acceptance and restriction of Kurdish in
modern Iran, a thriving literature in Iran has been slow to develop.
Since 1984 government policy has been open: Kurdish is permitted in
schools in Kurdish areas; a stream of publications has begun to
appear, and there are long-wave external broadcasts in Kurdish as
well as regional broadcasts on medium-wave radio in Kurdish and other
minority languages.

Kurdish, as a term, is often used to refer to two separate but
closely related language variants: Kurmanji (or Northern Kurdish) and
Kurdi (Southern Kurdish). Kurdi (sometimes Sorani) is spoken in Iraq
(2.8 million people), and in Iran (3 million people), especially in
regions bordering on Iraq and in a small enclave in the northeastern
province of Khorasan.

Kurmanji (sometimes Kurmanci) is mostly confined to Turkey (4
million) and northern Iraq (2.8 million). It is also spoken in Syria
(500,000); Armenia (100,000) in regions bordering Iraq; and in Iran
(100,000) south of Armenia and east of Iraq. There are unknown
numbers of speakers in Georgia and Azerbaijan. Smaller communities
speak the language (about 70 thousand) in Lebanon and in Europe, the
US, and Canada.

Total speakers of Kurdi probably number about 6 million and Kurmanji
speakers about 7 million, although some authorities cite a total of
20 million. Estimates of ethnic Kurds, not all of whom speak Kurdish
today because of assimilation, also are high. Some people who regard
themselves as Kurds speak Gurani and Zaza (or Dimli), closely related
Indo-European languages of a non-Kurdish group.