How to teach kids Kurdish at home: a guide for parents

Many Kurdish parents abroad worry that their children will lose the language. At school and with friends, children use the local language all day, so Kurdish often lives only at home. The good news is that home is a great place to learn it, and small daily habits add up.

This guide shares simple ideas for raising bilingual Kurdish children, with family words in Kurmancî (Northern Kurdish, written in Latin letters) and Soranî (Central Kurdish, written in an Arabic-based script). Every Kurdish word and sentence here comes from the ZimanGo lessons. Not sure which dialect your family speaks? Our guide to Kurdish dialects helps.

Speak Kurdish at home every day

The most useful step costs nothing: talk to your children in Kurdish, often and from an early age. Speech and language experts say that growing up with two or more languages does not confuse children or cause speech delays. What makes a big difference is how much Kurdish they hear.

Use Kurdish for the moments that repeat every day: waking up, breakfast, getting dressed, bath time and bedtime. Routines work well because children hear the same words again and again, until one day they say them back.

Speak the Kurdish you are comfortable with. Your own natural Kurdish, with its regional words and family sayings, gives a child more than a perfect sentence from a textbook.

And say this sentence often, at any age:

Ez ji malbata xwe hez dikim حەزم لە خێزانمە I love my family

Songs, stories and reading together

Songs are one of the easiest ways in. Sing the Kurdish songs you grew up with in the car, in the bath or before sleep. Children can sing along before they understand every word, and each song gives them whole phrases to repeat.

Stories work the same way. Ask grandparents to tell the tales they heard as children, or invent your own about the family cat. A story told in Kurdish at bedtime can become the part of the day your child looks forward to most.

When you read together, look for picture books in your family’s dialect: Kurmancî books are usually printed in Latin letters and Soranî books in the Arabic-based script. You do not have to read the printed words, either. Point at the pictures and talk about them in Kurdish, and any picture book on your shelf becomes a Kurdish book.

Kurdish labels around the house

Small children love to point at things and hear their names. Turn your home into a picture dictionary: write the Kurdish word on a sticky note and put it on the door, the table or the window. Say the word each time you use the thing.

Write Kurmancî labels in Latin letters and Soranî labels in the Arabic-based script. For older children, the labels are also a first step towards reading Kurdish.

Then turn the labels into a game. Walk through the house together, touch each label and say the word. At the front door, finish the tour with Ev mala min e, “This is my house”. In Soranî the same sentence is ئەمە ماڵی منە.

Family calls with grandparents

Grandparents, aunts and cousins are wonderful Kurdish teachers. A short video call every week gives your child a real reason to speak Kurdish, because the person on the screen wants to hear it.

Practise a few lines together before the call, so your child can open the conversation on their own:

Teach the names for the people on the screen, too. Grandmother is dapîr in Kurmancî, and Soranî uses the same word, written in its own script: داپیر. Grandfather is bapîr, written باپیر in Soranî. Our list of family words in Kurdish adds aunts, uncles and cousins.

Let every relative speak in their own way. When children hear the Kurdish of different family members, they get used to different voices, accents and words.

Mixing languages is normal

Sooner or later your child will start a sentence in Kurdish and finish it in English. This is not a sign of confusion. Mixing words or grammar from two languages is an expected part of growing up bilingual, and speech and language experts see switching between languages as a normal part of speaking more than one.

Many children also understand Kurdish well but answer in the language of school. Keep going. Reply warmly in Kurdish, repeat the Kurdish word they were missing, and carry on with the conversation. Understanding is a strong base, and you can build speaking on top of it with songs, games and calls.

A phrase from the idiom lessons fits every bilingual family: Hêdî hêdî diçim, “slowly, slowly I go”. In Soranî it is هێواش هێواش دەچم.

Both parents have a part to play

Children are more likely to speak Kurdish when they hear it from more than one person. A large study of almost 1,900 families who speak a second language at home found that children had a high chance of speaking the home language when both parents used it at home, even if one of them also used the local language. The well-known “one parent, one language” rule was neither necessary nor enough on its own.

So if you both speak Kurdish, use it with each other as well, not only with the children. Children hear which language the adults choose for their own conversations.

If one parent does not speak Kurdish, they still matter a great deal. They can learn a few words alongside the children, sing along and show that Kurdish is welcome at home. If one parent speaks Kurmancî and the other speaks Soranî, each can simply use their own dialect.

If your own Kurdish feels rusty, you are far from alone. Read our guide for heritage speakers, people who grew up hearing Kurdish at home. You can also refresh your Kurdish while your children learn: ZimanGo teaches Kurmancî and Soranî in 150 short lessons, with audio from ZimanGo’s own Kurdish text-to-speech voices. Even ten minutes a day keeps the words fresh for the next family dinner.