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To what extent is Badinani/Kurmanji in Iraq written in Arabic script?
Thread poster: Jan Sundström
Jan Sundström
Jan Sundström  Identity Verified
Sweden
Local time: 16:21
English to Swedish
+ ...
Oct 8, 2009

Hi all,

Sorry for posting in the Arabic forum.
I'd like to know more about the usage of Badinani, and especially to what extent it is used in written form (using Arabic script, as opposed to Kurmanji in Latin letters).

I know there is a debate about the name of this language (the article in Wikipedia was even deleted and redirects to Kurmanji), but let's not discuss the name here.

I need to know if official documents sometimes are written in Badinani;... See more
Hi all,

Sorry for posting in the Arabic forum.
I'd like to know more about the usage of Badinani, and especially to what extent it is used in written form (using Arabic script, as opposed to Kurmanji in Latin letters).

I know there is a debate about the name of this language (the article in Wikipedia was even deleted and redirects to Kurmanji), but let's not discuss the name here.

I need to know if official documents sometimes are written in Badinani; like identity cards, agreements, birth/marriage certificates, police reports etc?

Have any newspapers or books ever been printed in Badinani? Is written Badinani tought in schools?

Or is written Badinani purely used at home by older people?

Thanks in advance for the insight... ▲ Collapse
 
Stephen Franke
Stephen Franke
United States
Local time: 07:21
English to Arabic
+ ...
RTL cursive alphabet in Kurdish [Bahdini/"Bahdinani"/Kurmanci] Oct 9, 2009

Greetings.

The RTL cursive alphabet in Kurdish [Bahdini dialect and aka "Bahdinani" or Kurmanci] is based on the Persian alphabet, not the Arabic, and shares its characters. (Kurdish is an Indo-European language closely related to the Persian on the "eastern branch" of the language tree constructed by linguists.)

A good number [I would venture to say 'almost all,' but my sightings are limited to the occasional translations I have done since 1991] of the "official" docum... See more
Greetings.

The RTL cursive alphabet in Kurdish [Bahdini dialect and aka "Bahdinani" or Kurmanci] is based on the Persian alphabet, not the Arabic, and shares its characters. (Kurdish is an Indo-European language closely related to the Persian on the "eastern branch" of the language tree constructed by linguists.)

A good number [I would venture to say 'almost all,' but my sightings are limited to the occasional translations I have done since 1991] of the "official" documents issued by the KRG in NW Iraq [and some of the earlier bilingual documents issued during Saddam's Hussein's regime] are in both the RTL cursive alphabet and the LTR "Latinized" Kurdish alphabet. The current school-age and young adult population of Kurds in Iraq learn and prefer to use the LTR "Latinized" version, partly in efforts toward the de-Arabization of Kurdish and the concomitant "pro-westernization" of that language).

Should you should ever need to do word-processing into the RTL cursive Kurdish alphabet [and surmising that you have multilingual support installed inside MS Word 2000 or later versions], select "FA" in your language bar. If you otherwise select and use the "AR" support, you'll get a number of wrong characters.

Hope this helps in some measure.

Regards,

Stephen H. Franke
San Pedro, California

[Edited at 2009-10-09 21:56 GMT] ▲ Collapse
 
Jan Sundström
Jan Sundström  Identity Verified
Sweden
Local time: 16:21
English to Swedish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Which language used by KRG? Oct 12, 2009

Stephen Franke wrote:
The RTL cursive alphabet in Kurdish [Bahdini dialect and aka "Bahdinani" or Kurmanci] is based on the Persian alphabet, not the Arabic, and shares its characters. (Kurdish is an Indo-European language closely related to the Persian on the "eastern branch" of the language tree constructed by linguists.)

A good number [I would venture to say 'almost all,' but my sightings are limited to the occasional translations I have done since 1991] of the "official" documents issued by the KRG in NW Iraq [and some of the earlier bilingual documents issued during Saddam's Hussein's regime] are in both the RTL cursive alphabet and the LTR "Latinized" Kurdish alphabet.


Thanks a lot for your answer, Stephen.

Maybe it's moot to discuss whether the alphabet should be called Persian or Arabic, since it has common roots. I just noticed some web sites refering to it as Arabic:
http://huss.exeter.ac.uk/iais/undergrad/module_description.php?code=ARA2157
http://northerniraq.info/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1393#p18373

One translator even goes as far as referring to the "Bahdini alphabet":
http://www.kurdtrans.com/

Can you clarify the situation regarding the KRG bilingual official documents?
They are written in latinized Kurmanci + RTL Bahdini? Or is the RTL language used by KRG rather Sorani?
 


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To what extent is Badinani/Kurmanji in Iraq written in Arabic script?






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