Hewramî (Gorani): the language of the Hawraman mountains

Hewramî (Gorani), also spelled Hawrami or Hewrami, is the home language of the Hawraman mountains on the border between Iran and Iraq. It is a small language today, yet for centuries it was one of the great languages of Kurdish poetry. This guide explains where Hewramî is spoken, how it relates to Kurdish and why its poets still matter.

The word lists below give the same ideas in Kurmancî (Kurmanji) and Soranî (Sorani), taken from the ZimanGo lessons. They are a bridge for readers who already know one of the two big Kurdish dialects.

Where is Hewramî spoken?

Hawraman, also written Hewraman, Awroman or Uraman, is a mountain region in the Zagros. It lies on both sides of the Iran–Iraq border: in the Kurdistan and Kermanshah provinces of Iran, and in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq around the city of Halabja.

On the Iranian side, the best-known places are the town of Paveh, Nowsud near the border, and the stepped village of Hawraman Takht. People often divide the region into two parts: Takht, the high mountains, and Luhon, the land of valleys. Each part has its own way of speaking Hewramî.

Nobody knows exactly how many people speak Hewramî, so every figure is an estimate. Published estimates range from about 20,000 to about 90,000 native speakers, and from about 200,000 to 300,000 for all Gorani varieties together.

Many families have moved from the mountain villages to bigger cities, and fewer children grow up speaking Hewramî. UNESCO lists the language as definitely endangered.

The landscape shapes daily life in Hawraman. Here are the words for it in the two big Kurdish dialects:

Hewramî, Hawrami or Gorani?

You will meet several names for this language. Hewramî, or Hawrami in English spelling, is named after the Hawraman region. Gorani, sometimes spelled Gurani, is the wider name that linguists use for a whole group of related varieties.

Hewramî is the best-known and best-described member of that group. Other Gorani varieties are spoken further west and south, for example Bajalani in northern Iraq and Kandulayi in a few villages near Kermanshah. In everyday speech, many people use Hewramî and Gorani as two names for the same language.

The name Gorani also has a musical echo. In Soranî, and in Hewramî too, the everyday word for song is گۆرانی goranî. Kurmancî uses a different word, stran.

A classical language of poetry

For several centuries, Gorani was one of the main written languages of Kurdish poetry. Written Gorani verse goes back to around the 14th century. Poets used a shared literary form of the language, even when they spoke a different dialect at home.

Its golden age came under the Ardalan princes, whose court sat in Sanandaj in today’s Iran. There, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, Gorani was the language of court poetry alongside Persian. Gorani is also the language of many sacred texts of the Yarsan faith, also called Ahl-e Haqq.

Three poets show how rich this tradition is:

• Mistefa Bêsaranî (1642–1701), a poet and religious scholar named after the village of Bêsaran, who wrote about God, nature and love.
• Xanay Qubadî (Khana Qubadi, born around 1700), best known for his long love story in verse, Şîrîn û Xesrew (Shirin and Khosrow).
• Mewlewî Tawgozî (Mawlawi Tawagozi, 1806–1882), a Sufi scholar from western Iran. His collected poems, written mainly in Gorani, made him one of the best-known Kurdish poets of the 19th century.

Around 1800 the balance began to shift. Poets at the court of the Baban princes in Sulaymaniyah had first written in Gorani, but they turned to Soranî, and Soranî grew into the main written Kurdish of the region. Read more in our guide to Kurdish literature.

These words help when you read about this poetry:

Helbest dilê min vedike شیعر دڵم دەکاتەوە Poetry opens my heart

Is Hewramî a Kurdish dialect?

This question has two honest answers. Many linguists who compare Iranian languages place Gorani in a branch of its own within the Northwestern Iranian family. Many group it with Zazakî (Kirmanckî) under the name Zaza-Gorani. They point to grammar, such as verb endings, that differs from Kurmancî and Soranî in regular ways.

Other scholars treat Hewramî as a Kurdish dialect. They point to a large shared vocabulary, sounds that are very close to Soranî and centuries of shared history. Many speakers see themselves as Kurds and call their language a form of Kurdish.

How Hewramî sounds and works

If you know some Soranî, many sounds of Hewramî will feel familiar. Like Soranî, it has a heavy, dark l and a rolled r. You can hear the heavy l in the Soranî greeting سڵاو silaw.

One sound often surprises learners. After a vowel, d can soften into something close to the th in English “this”. Some neighbouring Kurdish dialects have the same soft d.

Today Hewramî is usually written in the Arabic-based Kurdish alphabet, and its written form is based mostly on the speech of Paveh. Hewramî writers note a few sounds that the usual Kurdish alphabets cannot show well, and some have proposed extra letters for them.

Grammar is where Hewramî differs most from Soranî. Soranî has no grammatical gender. Hewramî, at least in the speech of Paveh, can still mark nouns as masculine or feminine, and nouns change their ending depending on their role in the sentence. Many speakers today no longer use the difference between masculine and feminine.

Kurmancî speakers may find this part familiar, because Kurmancî has both features too. In Kurmancî, gund (village) is masculine and berf (snow) is feminine. Kurmancî nouns also change their ending: Kurdistan becomes Kurdistanê in Ez ji Kurdistanê me (I am from Kurdistan). More on this in Kurmancî vs Soranî.

The Hawraman cultural landscape

Hawraman is famous for its villages. Houses climb the steep slopes in steps, so the flat roof of one house becomes the yard of the house above. Around them, families grow gardens and orchards on dry-stone terraces and move their herds up and down the mountains with the seasons.

In 2021, UNESCO added the Cultural Landscape of Hawraman/Uramanat to its World Heritage List. The listed area lies in Iran and covers twelve villages in two valley areas: one around Hawraman Takht in Kurdistan province, and one in Luhon in Kermanshah province.

Hawraman Takht is also known for Pir Shalyar, a winter festival named after a revered local figure. Every year in midwinter, around the start of February, villagers and guests come together for shared food, songs and daf drumming.

Çanda me dewlemend e کلتوورمان دەوڵەمەندە Our culture is rich

Keeping Hewramî alive

Hewramî lives on in homes, in songs and in the poems of Bêsaranî and Mewlewî. Writers, teachers and researchers keep working to pass it on. Researchers have also started to build digital collections of Hewramî texts.

Em mîrata xwe diparêzin /ɛm miˈrata xwɛ dɪpaˈrɛzɪn/ میراتەکەمان دەپارێزین We protect our heritage

In ZimanGo, the app interface is already available in Hewramî, and Hewramî lessons are coming soon. Until they arrive, you can start with Kurmancî or Soranî, the two dialects you can learn today, and build a base that will help you with Hewramî later.