The Kurdish alphabet: Latin and Arabic scripts explained

The Kurdish alphabet comes in two main forms. Kurmancî (Kurmanji, Northern Kurdish) is mostly written in Latin letters, much like English or Turkish. Soranî (Sorani, Central Kurdish) is written in an alphabet based on Arabic script, from right to left.

The good news for learners: both alphabets are close to phonetic. Each letter stands for one sound almost all the time, so once you know the letters you can read new words out loud. This guide walks through both, with simple sound hints and example words from the ZimanGo lessons. Not sure which dialect you need? Start with Kurmancî vs Soranî.

The 31 letters of Kurmancî

The Kurmancî alphabet has 31 letters: the 26 letters of the English alphabet plus five with marks, ç, ê, î, ş and û. It is often called the Hawar alphabet, after the magazine that made it popular in the 1930s.

Here is every letter in alphabetical order, with an approximate English sound and an example word.

The marked letters and a few surprises

The five marked letters follow two simple patterns. The little hook under ç and ş turns c and s into the sounds in “church” and “ship”. The hat on ê, î and û marks a long vowel: î is the “ee” in “see” and û is the “oo” in “moon”.

Without the hat, the vowel is short. Compare i in bira (brother) with î in Îro (today), or u in kurt (short) with û in nû (new).

The Soranî alphabet

Soranî is written in an alphabet based on Arabic script. It runs from right to left, and most letters join the next one inside a word, so a letter can change its shape depending on where it stands. Numbers and Latin words inside a Soranî text still read from left to right.

Lists of the Soranî letters differ slightly. Some give 33 letters, others 34, which counts the double وو for the long û as a letter of its own. Both counts describe the same alphabet.

Soranî takes most of its letters from Arabic and adds letters for Kurdish sounds. Four of them, the letters for p, ch, zh and g, are shared with Persian. The others were adapted for Kurdish. The standard spelling also leaves out six Arabic letters, such as the ones for the “th” sounds, which Kurdish does not need.

The two r letters are a good example of why the extra letters matter. A plain r is a light tap, while ڕ is a strong, rolled r, as at the start of the word for day. In the same way, ڵ is a heavier l than the plain one, as in the word for house.

Soranî writes its vowels

Arabic writing usually leaves short vowels out, and readers fill them in from context. Soranî is different: almost every vowel has its own letter, so you can read most words just as they are spelled.

Two of these letters do double duty. و can be the consonant w or the vowel u. In the same way, ی can be y or î, and the word around it tells you which.

A word that starts with a vowel gets a silent ئ in front, which carries the vowel. That is why the word for water is written ئاو.

One word, two scripts

The two alphabets match letter for letter more often than you might think. These everyday words sound much the same in both dialects, which makes them good practice for matching the letters.

Read the Soranî word for five from right to left, and you can match it letter by letter with pênc: p, ê, n, c. In the last three rows, Kurmancî has a v where Soranî has a w, written و. You will meet this pattern in many everyday words.

Why Kurdish has two alphabets

For centuries, Kurdish poets and scholars wrote in Arabic script, the main script of the region. Classics such as Mem û Zîn, the verse love story by Ehmedê Xanî from the late 17th century, were written this way.

In the 20th century, Kurds in different countries took different paths. In 1932, Celadet Alî Bedirxan presented a Latin alphabet for Kurmancî in his magazine Hawar in Damascus. He wanted each sound to have its own letter, and many letters work as in the Turkish Latin alphabet, which Kurds in Turkey already knew. Today it is the usual way to write Kurmancî in Turkey and Syria.

In Iraq and Iran, Kurdish kept the Arabic-based script. In the 1920s, scholars in Iraq such as Taufiq Wahby reshaped it to fit Kurdish sounds and to write the vowels. This is the Soranî alphabet used today, and Kurmancî speakers in Iraq, for example around Duhok, mostly write in it too.

There was once a third script as well. Kurmancî speakers in the Soviet Union, especially in Soviet Armenia, wrote Kurdish in an Armenian-based script in the 1920s, then in Latin letters from the late 1920s, and from the mid-1940s in Cyrillic. Read the full story in our history of the Kurdish alphabet.

Learning and typing the letters

Start with the alphabet of the dialect you want to speak. For Kurmancî, most letters will look familiar, and the real work is the handful of new sounds. For Soranî, learn each letter together with its joined shapes, because that is how you will see it in real words.

Practise by reading short words you already know, like the ones in the tables above. When you want to write Kurdish on your phone or computer, our guide to typing Kurdish shows how to add the letters to your keyboard.

In ZimanGo, both courses start with an Alphabet level: Latin script for Kurmancî and the Arabic-based script for Soranî, taught letter by letter, with tracing so you learn to write each one, too.