Essays

Kurdish Words Connected to English

What are words of Kurdish origin in English language?

What are cognate between English and Kurdish?

Words in English Connected with Kurdish Language

Kurdish, the most widely spoken language in Kurdistan, is in the Indo-European family of languages. Kurdish is the language spoken by the Kurd nation who dwells in Middle East. During my career as an English schoolmaster teaching it for more than forty years, I came across words in English which interfered with my own Kurdish Language. Kurdish and English share a large number of cognates , especially with the Kurmanji Kurdish which is a major branch of modern Kurdish, which belongs to the Iranian group of languages that I belong to it.There are visible connections between words in the English and Kurdish language. To trace these relationships, we have to look at their etymologies, or the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have reached it throughout history. There are Kurdish loanwords in English, i.e., words of English acquired directly from Kurdish or indirectly, by passing from Kurdish into a third language and then into English. Cognates can act as bridges across languages or, at least, stepping stones that help learners link their knowledge of their native language with a new language. They also serve as a reminder of a shared history and the mixing of our cultures.

At first, I thought it was just coincidence because of the great similarity between them but later I became really assured it was not so. It became clear to me that all those words which I had collected and traced are not loan or borrowed words in Kurdish, because there are so many of them nowadays which have newly transferred to Kurdish from other languages but these Kurdish words were so deep rooted in our language either in old songs, proverbs, riddles or folkloric lyrics and other old cultural branches which I have matched them with English in the list below. Here, I am not going to deal with them as a scholar or a specialist linguistically, lexically and etymologically, but I would show that this phenomenon is not a coincidence happened in both languages. This interference might be intentional transfer of such words of the source language Kurdish to the target language English in the past history of mankind. Like most languages, Kurdish has also undergone many changes: most languages had a considerable impact on its vocabulary for so many reasons not worth mentioning at the moment.

As I mentioned before that coincidence might occur in some cases only in a limited number of words, not to extend beyond that limit to reach a number exceeding more than one hundred and fifty words maybe more. We all know the fact that English has borrowed so many words from all other languages directly or indirectly through other languages. Perhaps, this is a key to make this clear for those who would like to trace their etymology from the sources, hence, I will leave this task for linguistic experts to do so. Here are some examples of those words which have taken their way into English through such European old and new languages:

English: Chop

Old French: Coper

Dutch: Kappen

Kurdish: qop

English: sour

German: soure

Latin: suros

Kurdish: sywr

English: shame

German: scham

Kurdish: sherm

English: sign

Old French: signe

Latin: signum

Kurdish: shwin

English: hole

German: hohl

Kurdish: qol, chal

English: short

French: court

Latin: curtus

Kurdish: kort

English: mute

Latin: mutus

Kurdish: met

English: name

German: name

Latin: nomen

Kurdish: nam, nav

English: hair

Old French: haire

German: haar

Kurdish: heri

English: so

Gothic: swa

Old high German: so

Kurdish: wesa

English: war

Old high German: were

Kurdish: weran

These connected words can be classified according to the level of their resemblance with English into three categories:

In the first category, the resemblance between these words is so near and tangible,

which they conform to each other fully to a great extent in spelling, meaning and

pronunciation(with little variation) in vowel sounds in few words:

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In the second category, some of these words accord with each other not so fully because either there is a shift in the starting letter or in the final ones due to the need of the language to such variations:

While the rest words, the last category are connected in the outer shape of the word to each other, but they are entirely almost the same meaning as I mentioned before, therefore; have a striking look at them to observe this differentiation:

Besides those three categories, I excepted the words related to sounds and words concerned with grief, cheer, apology, pain and sorrow and so on because they are much common and almost similar among most languages in the world. For this reason I specified an independent category for them.

In this full table below, I have arranged these Kurdish words according to English alphabet to make it easy for foreign readers. Besides, I have written the Kurdish word in Transliterations from English to show the similarity in shape of both words English and Kurdish to be compared to each other in spelling. Then, I have given the Kurdish words the normal Arabic script for those who are not well-aware of the other two scripts. As I have confirmed before all the words typically do agree with each other in one concise definite meaning stated in most well-known English dictionaries.

Cognate full List of Kurdish and English Words with Transliterations from English to Kurdish words :

Kurdish words connected to English

This research has been written also in Kurdish to my native citizens and I have edited it in my other website under this link :

kurdishlanguageculture

Collected ,compared and translated:

By: Ahmed Ali Hasan

1-2-2018 – Duhok- Kurdistan

ahmed_ali_h@yahoo.com

kurdish words connected to English PDF