Learning Kurdish as a heritage speaker: where to start

Maybe you grew up in Germany, Sweden, the UK or Turkey, and Kurdish was the language of your grandmother’s kitchen. You understand most of what your family says, but when it is your turn to answer, the words come out in German, Swedish, English or Turkish. If that sounds like you, you are a heritage speaker, and you are far from alone.

A heritage speaker is someone who learned a language at home as a child, while school and friends ran in another language. That second language usually takes over. So many heritage speakers understand far more than they can say, and few ever learned to read or write the family language.

This guide shows how to build on what you already have, in Kurmancî (Kurmanji) or Soranî (Sorani).

Start from what you already know

Your years of listening count. You probably know how Kurdish sounds, the melody of a question and many words for home, food and family. Learners who start from zero have to build all of that from scratch.

Try this: take ten minutes and write down every Kurdish word you know, in any spelling. Many heritage speakers find their list is long for home life and short for school, work and the news. That gap shows you where to begin.

Words like these are often on the list:

Kurdish often has two words for one thing. In the lessons you will meet both Diya min and Dayika min for “my mother”. If your family uses a word that is not in your lessons, keep it: it is real Kurdish too.

Learn to read the script

Reading is the skill many heritage speakers missed, and it is often the quickest one to catch up on. Your ears already know the words. Each letter you learn simply links a sound you know to its written shape.

If your parents cannot read Kurdish either, that is common. Many never had the chance to learn it at school. In Turkey, for example, Kurdish was not taught in schools for most of the 20th century, and from 1983 to 1991 a law restricted its use.

Kurmancî uses a Latin alphabet of 31 letters, published by Celadet Alî Bedirxan in 1932: the 26 letters of English plus ç, ê, î, ş and û.

Soranî uses an Arabic-based alphabet, written from right to left, with extra letters for Kurdish sounds, such as the heavy L in سڵاو (hello). If your family comes from Duhok, you may also see Kurmancî written in this script.

Start by reading sentences you can already say. Read them out loud, slowly:

ZimanGo’s Alphabet level teaches both scripts letter by letter, with sounds and letter tracing. For a full tour, see our guide to the Kurdish alphabet.

Speak without shame

For many heritage speakers, the hardest part is not grammar but nerves. You know how Kurdish should sound, so your own mistakes feel loud. Perhaps a relative once laughed kindly at a word, or switched to another language to help you, and you went quiet.

This feeling is so common that researchers who study heritage speakers have a name for it: heritage language anxiety. Your accent and your mixed sentences are not a failure. They are a normal starting point, and the people who love you mostly want to hear you try.

A few short phrases help you keep going in Kurdish:

Use Ev çi ye? whenever you point at something you cannot name. It turns every gap into a tiny lesson.

Turn family time into practice

Your family is the best course you will ever have, and it is open every day. The trick is to turn ordinary moments into listening and speaking practice.

• Ask about the past. Ask a grandparent for an old story and listen for the words you know. A story about the old days might begin like this: Dema ez biçûk bûm (When I was little).
• Cook together. Name every ingredient and every step in Kurdish while you work.
• Collect songs and sayings. Ask for a favourite song or proverb, write it down, then read it back to the person who taught you.
• Call once a week. Speak only Kurdish for the first five minutes of a call with a relative.

Useful words for these moments:

Kurdish family words are more precise than English ones. Kurmancî has one word for your father’s brother, ap, and another for your mother’s brother, xal. Learn the whole family in our list of Kurdish family words.

Pick your family’s dialect

Kurdish sounds different from region to region, and your family’s way of speaking is the most useful one to learn: they are the people you will practise with. Ask where the family comes from and what they call their Kurdish.

• Turkey or Syria: most likely Kurmancî.
• Duhok and the area around it: Behdînî (Badini), a regional form of Kurmancî.
• Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Sanandaj or Mahabad: usually Soranî.
• Other families: some speak Zazakî (Kirmanckî), mainly from eastern Turkey, or Hewramî (Gorani), from the Hawraman mountains on the Iran–Iraq border.

One pair of names often confuses people. Kirmanckî is a name for Zazakî, while Kurmancî is Northern Kurdish. If your family says it speaks Kirmanckî, it most likely means Zazakî.

Your relatives may also use local words or words borrowed from neighbouring languages. That is normal: learn the standard words, and keep your family’s words too. Our guide to Kurdish dialects shows how they all fit together.

Practise a little every day

Short, regular practice works better than long, rare sessions. Memory research has shown this for more than a century: what you review over several days stays with you longer than what you cram into one evening. A few minutes each day is a good start, and our guide to learning Kurdish in ten minutes a day has more ideas.

A simple ten-minute routine:

1. Read for three minutes. Read a few words or one short sentence out loud.
2. Speak for four minutes. Say what you did today in Kurdish, even in very simple words.
3. Plan for three minutes. Pick one sentence to use with your family before the day is over.

If you use ZimanGo, start with the placement test, so you can skip what you already know. Speaking practice with our own Kurdish speech recognition gives you feedback on your pronunciation on your own, before you try a sentence at the dinner table. Kurmancî and Soranî are available now; Behdînî, Zazakî and Hewramî are coming soon.

A saying from the idioms lessons sums it up:

Hêdî hêdî kar bi hêz dibe هێواش هێواش کار بەهێز دەبێت hêwaş hêwaş kar behêz debêt Slowly, work becomes strong