Hozan Karkondi: Kurdish ranks eighth worldwide with 918,123 words

The Kurdish language is receiving growing attention in current cultural and linguistic discussions due to its long historical heritage and broad expressive potential. In this context, poet Hozan Karkondi said Kurdish belongs to the Indo-European language family, specifically its northwestern Iranian branch.

He noted that the language has endured for thousands of years despite the absence of independent political entities to protect it throughout successive historical periods.

Karkondi said the strength and purity of Kurdish stem from the nature and geography of Kurdistan itself. He explained that the richness and diversity of Kurdish vocabulary are directly linked to Kurdistan's varied landscape, including towering mountains, flowing rivers and vast plains. This natural environment, he said, has shaped a flexible and evolving language capable of generating new words to describe emotions and phenomena with precision.

He pointed out that Kurdish linguistic richness is reflected in figures. Based solely on its Kurmanji and Sorani dialects, Kurdish ranks eighth worldwide on Wiktionary, with 918,123 words, surpassing major regional and international languages such as Arabic, Turkish and Persian. This, he said, demonstrates the flexibility of Kurdish grammar and its extensive word-forming capacity.

He explained that this numerical distinction reflects the flexibility of Kurdish grammatical structures and their remarkable derivational capacity, making it the language of an entire people whose existence cannot be reduced or erased.

Karkondi continued that the Kurdish people in Rojava experienced systematic cultural marginalisation before 2011. The former regime worked to ban, suppress and undermine the Kurdish language in the fields of art, culture and media, aiming to isolate the Kurdish people and prevent the world from learning about their identity and language.

However, after 2011, the region witnessed a historic transformation and a major opportunity for Kurds, as their aspirations became reality through the establishment of an integrated educational and cultural infrastructure. This included schools, universities and academies offering education in Kurdish for the first time, alongside the launch of television channels, printing presses and publishing houses. These developments opened the way for a new generation to learn its mother tongue with awareness and freedom.

The poet highlighted the prominent role of Kurdish poetry, saying that poetry relies entirely on linguistic richness and a wide vocabulary. This gives Kurdish poetry its distinctive aesthetic qualities and makes it an ideal means of introducing people around the world to Kurdish culture, folklore and history.

Karkondi also pointed to a historical paradox: neighbouring languages, including Arabic and Turkish, have been influenced by Kurdish and borrowed or adopted many Kurdish words, sometimes attributing them to their own languages. He considered this evidence of the vast Kurdish vocabulary.

Message to the Younger Generation and Intellectuals: Recovering Lost Words

At the end of his remarks, Karkondi addressed the younger generation, urging them to make use of the historical opportunities available today by reading, writing and thinking in Kurdish to strengthen its position among the world's languages.

He stressed that Kurdish presence is not confined to a specific geographical area, as Kurds now live across the world, making the suppression of their language impossible.

He also emphasised the need for writers and intellectuals to make serious efforts through articles, poetry and songs to recover lost Kurdish words, document them and introduce the world to the true face of the ancient Kurdish identity.

a.k

ANHA