How are you in Kurdish? Tu çawa yî? and how to reply

Right after hello comes the next question: how are you? Kurmancî (Northern Kurdish, usually written in Latin letters) asks Tu çawa yî?. Soranî (Central Kurdish, usually written in an Arabic-based script) asks چۆنی؟. Below you will find the question, a few everyday variants, the answers and a short dialogue. Every Kurdish line comes from the ZimanGo lessons.

New to Kurdish greetings? Start with how to say hello in Kurdish, then come back here.

How to ask “how are you?”

Tu çawa yî? چۆنی؟ çonî How are you?

In Kurmancî, tu means “you” when you talk to one person, çawa means “how” and yî means “are”. So Tu çawa yî? is literally “you how are?”. In some regions you will hear çawan instead of çawa.

Soranî says the same thing in a single word. چۆن means “how”. The ending on چۆنی؟ adds “are you”, and people often type the word in Latin letters as choni.

You will also meet a longer Soranî form with a final t: چۆنیت؟ çonît. Both forms are correct. With the word for “you” in front, the question becomes تۆ چۆنیت؟.

Other ways to ask

Once you know the main question, these variants keep a conversation going. Kurdish can drop the word for “you”, because the ending already tells you who is meant.

In these two questions, Kurmancî puts îro (today) after tu. Soranî puts ئەمڕۆ (today) at the very front.

How to answer

The everyday answer is short and friendly:

Ez baş im باشم başim I am fine

Ez means “I”, baş means “good” and im means “am”. Add a thank you and you sound even warmer. Here are more answers for different kinds of days:

Gelek means “very” in Kurmancî. Soranî uses زۆر in the same place. Soranî also has a second way to say “I am happy”: دڵخۆشم.

Want to describe your mood with a single word? These feeling words come up again and again:

Why Soranî fits it into one word

The biggest difference between the two dialects here is where “am” and “are” go. Kurmancî writes them as a small separate word after the describing word. Soranî attaches them to the end of the word.

Read the Soranî column and the endings stand out: -m means “I am”, and -î or -ît means “you are”. A final -e means “is”, as in کارت چۆنە؟ (how’s your work?). That is why one Soranî word, باشم, is three words in Kurmancî.

Kurmancî has its own small rule. After a consonant, “I am” is im and “you are” is î. After a vowel they become me and yî. Because çawa ends in a vowel, the question uses yî.

Compare Ez baş im (I am fine) with Ez birçî me (I am hungry). In the same way, tu xemgîn î (you are sad) ends in î. The same rule works for other feeling words, so westiyayî (tired), which ends in a vowel, takes me. More in Kurdish grammar basics and Kurmancî vs Soranî.

Asking back

The easiest way to ask back is to answer first and then return the same question. In Kurmancî, say Ez baş im, te spas and follow it with Tu çawa yî?.

In Soranî, answer with باشم، سوپاس. Then ask back with چۆنی؟.

A short dialogue

Here is how the pieces fit together when two friends meet. A asks first, B answers and asks back.

Swap in any answer from the tables above and you have a new conversation each time. The next step is introducing yourself: see how to say “my name is” in Kurdish.

ZimanGo teaches both Kurmancî and Soranî, and you can practise these lines out loud with our own Kurdish speech recognition.