Kurds
have no state, and have to live on the territory of five states - Iraq,
Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Syria. That is why it is not easy to make
the language prosper, and the number of Kurdish speakers is declining.
Kurdish, however, is called one of the two official language of Iraq. The
general number of speakers - about 20 million people.
Two dialects - Kurmanji and Sorani - do not differ too much. Both use 9 vowels, Sorani has one consonant less than Kurmanji - it lacks v. Practically all consonants of Kurdish have their aspirated or spiranted analogues. The stress is falling on the last syllable. The nouns have all Indo-European categories, which are sometimes lost in other Iranian languages - they are declined in two genders (male, female), cases (nominative, indirect, vocative), numbers (singular and plural). There are two articles, definite and indefinite, like in English. The verb can be conjugated in two types: subjective and objective, while the last one is used only in plural of transitive verbs. Six tenses are also quite Indo-European: present, future, past, past prolonged, perfect, pluperfect.
Several varieties of Sorani lack noun cases and in general are simplified.
