Grammer/ Rêziman 1
A The personal pronouns
The pronouns of Kurmanji corresponding to English I, you etc. have two forms, which we will call Direct and Oblique. Their uses will be explained below. The forms are the following:
Person Direct Oblique
I ez min
you tu te
he/she ew wî (him), wê (her)
we em me
you hûn we
they ew (e)wan
Usage
The Direct forms are used for all subjects in the present tenses, for example:
Ez kurd im ‘I am a Kurd’
The Oblique forms are used everywhere else, for example, to express the possessor of something:
Navê min Ehmed e. ‘My name is Ehmed’
B Expressing ‘to be’ in the present tense
In the simple present tense, there is no independent word for is, are, am in Kurdish. Instead, endings are added to the last word of the sentence that indicate the person involved. For example, to say ‘I am a Kurd’ in Kurdish we say literally ‘I Kurd-am’. These endings are actually written separately as though they were independent words, but they are really unstressed short forms pronounced as though they were part of the preceding word. They have slightly different forms depending on whether the preceding word ends in a vowel or consonant. The forms of these endings are as follows:
After consonant: After vowel:
Ez kurd im ‘I am a Kurd’ Ez ji Diyarbekirê me ‘I am from D.’
Tu kurd î ‘You are a Kurd’ ... yî ‘You are ...’
Ew kurd e ‘He / She is a Kurd’ ... ye ‘He / she ...’
Em kurd in ‘We are Kurds’ ... ne ‘We are ...’
Hûn kurd in ‘You are Kurds’ ... ne ‘You are ...’
Ew kurd in ‘They are Kurds’ ... ne ‘They are ...’
Negative Form
Ez ne kurd im ‘I am not a Kurd’ Ez ne ji Diyarbekirê me ‘I am not from D.’
Tu ne kurd î ‘You are not a Kurd’ ... yî ‘You are ...’
Ew ne kurd e ‘He / She is not a Kurd’ ... ye ‘He / she ...’
Em ne kurd in ‘We are not Kurds’ ... ne ‘We are ...’
Hûn ne kurd in‘You are not Kurds’ ... ne ‘You are ...’
Ew ne kurd in ‘They are not Kurds’ ... ne ‘They are ...’
Grammar / Rêziman 2
A The verb ‘to be’ in the present tense again: negated forms
You will remember from lesson 1 that to express ‘to be’ in the present tense, a set of endings is used, as in the following examples:
ez nexweş im ‘I am ill’ (nexweş = ‘ill, sick’)
tu têhnî yî ‘You are thirsty’ (têhnî = ‘thirsty’)
To make the negative form of such sentences, the negation particle ne is positioned before the complement (whatever is negated), and stressed. The negation marker ne can not come right before or after the copula. For example:
Ez ne nexweş im. (I am not sick) Em ne nexweş in. (We are not sick)
Tu ne têhnî yî. (You are not thirsty) Hûn ne têhnî ne. (You are not thirsty)
B Gender
All nouns in Kurmanji have gender, either masculine or feminine. It is important to know the gender of a noun because it affects the form of the case marker, and of the Ezafe marker (see D below).
Nouns that denote persons, or higher animals, have the gender corresponding to their meaning. For example, the nouns ap ‘uncle’, bav ‘father’ and mêr ‘man’ are all masculine because they denote male beings. Xwişk ‘sister’ and bûk ‘bride’ on the other hand are feminine, because they refer to feminine beings. But for nouns denoting objects, you just have to learn the gender with the noun. For example, çav ‘eye’ is masculine, but mal ‘house’ is feminine. There is not a general rule organizing gender for these nouns; however some rules can be formulated, for example:
- the names of cities, countries and towns are feminine
- abstract nouns ending in –î are feminine
- infinitives used as nouns are feminine
- nouns ending in vowels are feminine
- the infinitives from verbs are feminine
- Numbers and colors are masculine etc.
- The names of items of women’s clothing are generally feminine, items of men’s clothing are generally masculine
-
Words borrowed from other languages are most commonly assigned feminine gender when they denote objects rather than living beings.
C The indefiniteness suffix
A bare noun in Kurmanji can have a definite reading, or a very general reading, depending on the context. For example, hesp can mean either ‘the horse’, or perhaps ‘horses in general’. There is no definite article in Kurmanji corresponding to English the. But if we want to talk about ‘a horse’, we add the suffix -ek to the noun: hesp-ek ‘a horse’, jinek ‘a woman’, gundek ‘a village’, mamostek ‘a teacher’ etc.
D The Ezafe construction
The Ezafe is a vowel that links all kinds of attributes to a noun, for example adjectives, possessors or prepositional phrases. In standard orthography it is written as part of the noun. Kurdish is like French or Spanish in that the noun comes first, and then it is followed by the attribute. We refer to the initial noun as the head noun. A typical Ezafe construction from the texts is the following:
navê min
Head noun Ezafe particle Possessive modifier
The bare form of the head noun is nav ‘name’, and the Ezafe here is ê. The modifier can also be an adjective, as in zarokê nexweş ‘the sick child’.
The Ezafe particle takes different forms according to the gender and the number of the head noun. In the example above, the head noun is masculine and singular. If the head noun is feminine, then the ezafe has the form -a: xwîşka min ‘my sister’
If it is plural, the ezafe is -ên hevalên me ‘our friends’ (me=Oblique form of 1st pers. pl pronoun)
If the noun ends in a vowel, a -y- is put before the Ezafe:
birayên min ‘my brothers’
The Ezafe also takes a different form after the indefiniteness suffix (see C above). This gives us four different possibilities for the Ezafe in the singular:
1. Feminine, no indefiniteness suffix: Form of suffix
mala me (our house) behra Wanê (Lake Van) -(y)a
2. Feminine, with indefiniteness suffix:
sêveke sor (a red apple) jineke bedew (a beautiful woman) -e
3. Masculine, no indefiniteness suffix:
çemê Ferat (the Euphrate River) deriyê dar (the wooden door) -(y)ê
4. Masculine, with indefiniteness suffix:
mêrekî bilind (a tall man) kevirekî belek (a colorful stone) -î
Three further points about the Ezafe:
D.1 The free or demonstrative Ezafe
First, the Ezafe can also be used without a head noun. In this case, it always takes an initial -y. It means something like English ‘one ...’ as in my one, or the red one. Consider the following example:
birayê min 12 salî ye. Yê te? ‘My brother is 12 years old. And your one?
(i.e. and your brother)?
D.2 Multiple Ezafes
One noun can be modified by several modifiers, and in that case, each modifier will require its own Ezafe:
Kitêba birayê min ‘My brother’s book’
Kitêba hevalê birayê min ‘The book of my brother’s friend’
Kitêba xwîşka hevalê birayê min ‘The book of the sister of my brother’s friend’
D.3 Possessors in the Oblique case
The Possessor in an Ezafe construction always goes into the Oblique case (see next lesson for more details on this). You have already learned the Oblique case of the personal pronouns (see Lesson 1). This means that whenever a pronoun is a possessor in an Ezafe, it takes the Oblique form (bavê min ‘my father’, bavê wê ‘her father’ etc.). We will learn about the Oblique case of nouns in later lessons.
Grammar / Rêziman 3
A Expressions of existence (‘there is / there are’)
To say that something exists, or is, Kurmanji uses the existential verb hebûn. In fact, it is really a combination of a particle he- plus the verb bûn (‘to be’), but most descriptions of Kurdish treat it as a verb in its own right, and we will follow that tradition here. But it is useful to remember that it is based on the verb bûn, because this makes it easier to understand the conjugation. In the present tense, the familiar forms of the copula endings (see Grammar in lesson 1) are simply added to the particle he-, yielding:
Ez he-me ‘I am, exist’ Em he-ne
Tu he-yî ‘you are, exist’ Hûn he-ne
Ew he-ye etc. Ew he-ne
In practice, only the third person forms heye and hene are used frequently. They generally mean ‘there is’ and ‘there are’ respectively:
Li bazarê gelek tişt hene. ‘At the market there are many things.’
Vira jinek heye. ‘There is a woman here.’
The negative form is tune/nîne:
Vira jinek tune / nîne ‘there is no woman here’
B Expressions of possession
Kurdish, unlike Persian, does not have a verb corresponding to English have. To say ‘I have two brothers’, or something similar, different constructions are used in Kurmanji. They are based on the existential verb hebûn discussed above. To say ‘I have two brothers’, two possibilities are available:
Possibility 1 (with Izafe):
Du birayên min hene literally: ‘two brothers of me exist’
Possibility 2 (without Izafe, the possessor comes at the beginning of the sentence and is in the Oblique case):
Min du bira hene literally: ‘for me two brothers exist’
Both of these constructions can be found in Kurmanji; different books and descriptions prefer different ones. We have chosen the second one here, which is more commonly used in the south of the Kurmanji speech area, particularly in North Iraq around Zakho and Dohuk. But the other possibility is absolutely acceptable, and in many textbooks it is preferred.
Some further examples of the second possibility:
Min xwîşkek heye. I have a sister.
Te du pisîk hene. You have two cats.
Wê ezmûnek heye. She has an exam.
Wî pere nîne. He does not have money.
Te pirsek heye? Do you have a question?
Li bazarê penîr tune. There is not cheese at the bazar.
C The Reflexive Xwe
The reflexive pronoun xwe has different meanings and usages. It always has the same form, regardless of how it is used.
1. It can be used as possessive pronoun in an Izafe construction:
Ew ji dersên xwe hez dike She likes her courses.
Ez li gel malbata xwe dimînim. I stay with my family.
Tu li mefta xwe digerî? Are you looking for your keys?
2. It can be used as reflexive pronoun as in:
Xelk ji xwe re li bazaran danûstandinê dikin.
The people do shopping for themselves in bazaars.
Ez xwe dibînim li rûyê te.
I see myself in your face.
Dayika min bi xwe mamoste ye
My mother is (a) teacher herself.
3. The reflexive xwe can only be used when it refers to the subject of the sentence it occurs in, and in this context, it must be used. Compare the following:
Ez ji dayika xwe hez dikim I love my mother (xwe refers back to the subject Ez)
Tu ji dayika min hez dikî You love my mother (xwe cannot be used here,
because the subject of the sentence is Tu ‘you’, not the same person as the possessor in dayika min ‘my mother’ In contexts like this, a form of the Oblique personal pronoun (see Lesson 2) is used.
Grammar / Rêziman 4
A) Prepositions, Postpositions
In Kurmanji there are prepositions, postpositions and circumpositions. Some simple prepositions are li ‘at, in’; ji ‘from’; ser ‘on’; bin ‘under’. Common pospositions are va, da, ra. These pospositions are usually used as the final elements of the circumpositions.
While studying the examples below keep in mind that the postpositon da usually adds a meaning of stationary position; while ra adds some sense of togetherness; and finally va adds some sense of getting away from. Moreover, pay attention that the nouns and pronouns following the prepositions are in oblique case with a couple of exceptions.
Some common prepositions with examples would follow as:
Ba/nik/cem/rex ‘to, towards’ Ew herroj diçe rex hevalên xwe.
Bi ‘with, by means of’ Ez bi bisîkletê diçim dibistanê.
Bi …ra ‘with’ Bisekine! Ez jî bi te ra têm bazarê.
Bo ‘for; to’ Ji kerema xwe bo min çayekî dagire.
Di ....da ‘in’ Elî nida di sinifê da rûdine.
Nav …de ‘inside of, among’ Tu çi dikî nav avê da?
Navbeyna …da ‘between’ Welatê me navbeyna Ferat û Dîcleyê da ye.
Heta ‘until’ Ez heta saet nehê şevê kar dikim.
Ji ‘from, of’ Derya ji Qoserê ye.
Ji …re ‘to’ Ez ji te ra dibêjim lê tu ji çu kesî ra nebêje.
Ji…ve ‘from; since’ Ji saet heftê sibehê va dixebitim. (I have been working since 7 in morning.)
bilî ‘except for; other than’ Malbata wan da bilî wî tu kes kar nake.
Ji bo ‘for’ Hemî hewla min ji bo wî ye. (All my effort is for him.)
Li ‘in, at’ Baran li Swêdê dijî.
ber ‘in front of’ Zû were! ber meytebê hêviya te me.
dijî ‘against’ Em dijî neheqiyê têdikoşin. (We struggle against injustice)
Ligel ‘with; along with’ Kuncî jî ligel zarokan dileyîze.
gorî ‘according to’ gorî wî em neheq in. (According to him, we are wrong)
pêş ‘in front of’ Demhat pêş Rûkenê rûdine.
rex ‘beside’ Malên wan rex hev in. (Their houses are next to each other.)
ser ‘on, over’ Bîne, deyne ser masê.
Wekî/mîna ‘like; as’ Rast e, ez jî wekî te difikirim.
Piştî ‘after’ Piştî saet heftê êvarî vedigere malê.
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