KURDISH LANGUAGE

West Iranian language spoken in Kurdistan; it ranks as the third largest Iranian language group, after Persian and Pashto, and has numerous dialects. There are two main dialect groups. The northern groupspoken from Mosul, Iraq, into the Caucasusis called Kurmanji; in Turkey, Hawar (Turkized Latin) characters are used in the written form. The central group, called Kurdi, or Sorani, emerged as the major literary form of Kurdish. It is spoken within a broad region that stretches roughly from Orumiyeh, Iran, to the lower reaches of traditional Kurdistan in Iraq. In Iraq, Kurdi is the official form of Kurdish. Subdialects of Kurdish include Kermanshahi, Leki, Gurani, and Zaza.