Kurdish grammar facts for kids

Kurdish grammar is like the rules of a game for the Kurdish language. It shows how words change and fit together to make sentences. You add small parts (called prefixes at the beginning and suffixes at the end) to words to change their meaning or how they relate to other words.

How Sentences Work: The Split-Ergative System

Kurdish has a special way of showing who does what in a sentence, called a split-ergative system. Imagine you have a sentence like "The boy eats an apple."

• In the present tense (like "The boy eats"), Kurdish works like English: the person doing the action (the boy) is the main focus.
• But in the past tense (like "The boy ate the apple"), it changes! The focus shifts to the thing the action happened to (the apple). This is a bit unusual compared to many languages, but it's how Kurdish works.

Nouns: Names of Things

Nouns are words for people, places, things, or ideas (like "friend," "city," "book," "happiness").

How Nouns Change

• When you say a Kurdish noun by itself, it can mean "a thing" or "some things" – you don't always need to add a plural ending.
• In some Kurdish dialects, like Kurmanji, nouns change their endings depending on their job in the sentence. For example, the ending might change if the noun is the one doing the action, or if it's the one receiving the action.
• In Sorani Kurdish, nouns don't change their endings in the same way based on their job.
• To make most nouns plural in Sorani, you add a suffix (an ending). In Kurmanji, the verb often shows if the noun is plural.
• Gender: Kurmanji has three grammatical genders for nouns: masculine, feminine, and neuter. This means words for things (not just people or animals) are treated as if they are male, female, or neither. You usually have to learn which gender each noun is. Sorani Kurdish doesn't have grammatical gender for nouns.
• Definite vs. Indefinite: In Sorani, you can add a special ending to a noun to show if it's "the" specific thing (definite, like -aka) or "a" general thing (indefinite, like -ēk). Kurmanji doesn't mark this in the same way.
• Adjectives (words that describe nouns, like "big" or "red") usually come after the noun they describe and agree with it.

Showing What Belongs to Whom: Ezafe

Kurdish uses something called Ezafe to show possession, like saying "the king's place" or "my place." It's a small connecting sound, often -y, that links the owner to the thing they own.

• jēgā-y pāsā = the king's place (literally: "place of king")
• jēgā-y min = my place (literally: "place of me")

Pronouns: Standing in for Nouns

Pronouns are words like "I," "you," "he," "she," "it," "we," "they." In Kurdish, pronouns change depending on who is speaking, who is being spoken to, and whether it's one person or many.

• Singular (one person):

* I: min (Central Kurdish, Southern Kurdish, Gorani), ez (Kurmanji, Zazaki) * You: to (Central Kurdish, Gorani), ti (Southern Kurdish, Kurmanji, Zazaki) * He/She/It: ew (Central Kurdish, Southern Kurdish, Kurmanji)

• Plural (more than one person):

* We: ême (Central Kurdish, Gorani), îme (Southern Kurdish), em (Kurmanji) * You (plural): êwe (Central Kurdish), îwe (Southern Kurdish), hûn (Kurmanji) * They: ewane (Central Kurdish, Southern Kurdish), ew / ewana (Kurmanji)

Sometimes, pronouns can be separate words, or they can be small parts attached to other words.

Adjectives: Describing Nouns

Adjectives tell us more about nouns. In Sorani, adjectives usually come after the noun they describe. They can be connected using the Ezafe system we talked about earlier.

• pyāw-ī čak = a good fellow (literally: "man of good")

Verbs: Showing Action

Verbs are action words, like "run," "eat," "think." In Kurdish, verbs change their form to match who is doing the action (like "I run" vs. "he runs").

What Verbs Do

• Kurdish verbs have two main forms: a present form and a past form.
• They can show when something happened (tenses: present, past, future).
• They can show if the subject is doing the action or having it done to them (voices: active, passive).
• They can show if an action is ongoing or completed (aspects).
• They can show the speaker's attitude (moods: like telling someone to do something, or wishing something).
• Remember the split-ergative system? For actions in the past, if a verb shows who did something, it often agrees with the object (the thing the action happened to) rather than the subject (the person doing the action).

Verb Endings

Verbs have special endings that show who is doing the action (I, you, he/she, we, you all, they).

• Infinitive: This is the basic form of the verb, like "to know" (zanîn).
• Past participle: This form is used to create certain past tenses, like "known."

Present and Future Actions

• To make a verb positive in the present, you often add dí- to the beginning (like dízanim = "I know").
• To make it negative, you add ná- (like názanim = "I don't know").
• The future tense is formed by adding dê or -ê before the verb. For example, tu ê zanî means "you will know."

Past Actions

• For simple past actions, verbs change their endings. For example, hatim means "I came."
• To make a past action negative, you add ne- (like nehatim = "I didn't come").
• There are different ways to talk about past actions, like actions that happened regularly in the past ("I was coming") or actions that were completed ("I had come").

Word Order

In Kurdish, the usual order of words in a sentence is: Subject - Object - Verb (S-O-V). This means the person or thing doing the action comes first, then the thing the action is done to, and finally the action word itself.

• Example: "The boy apple ate." (Instead of "The boy ate the apple.")
• Words that describe nouns (adjectives) usually come after the noun they describe.