Kurdish dialects

Kurdish
Kurdî / کوردی
Native to	Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia
Region	Kurdistan, Anatolia, Khorasan
Ethnicity	Kurds
Native speakers	C. 20–30 million (2000–2010 est.)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Northwestern Kurdish
Dialects	Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) Central Kurdish (Sorani) Southern Kurdish (Palewani)
Writing system	In use: Hawar alphabet (Latin script; used mostly in Turkey and Syria) Sorani alphabet (Perso-Arabic script; used mostly in Iraq and Iran) Not used: Cyrillic alphabet (former Soviet Union)
Official status
Official language in	Iraq  Iraqi Kurdistan
Recognised minority language in	Armenia
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ku
ISO 639-2
ISO 639-3	– inclusive code Individual codes: ckb – Central Kurdish kmr – Northern Kurdish sdh – Southern Kurdish
Glottolog	kurd1259
Linguasphere	58-AAA-a (North Kurdish incl. Kurmanji & Kurmanjiki) + 58-AAA-b (Central Kurdish incl. Dimli/Zaza & Gurani) + 58-AAA-c (South Kurdish incl. Kurdi)
Map of Kurdish-speaking areas of the Middle East
Geographic distribution of Kurdish and other Iranian languages spoken by Kurds   Northern   Central   Southern   Zaza   Gorani   mixed areas
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 Iraq

Kurdish (Kurdî, کوردی) is a continuum of Northwestern Iranian languages spoken by the Kurds in Western Asia. Kurdish forms three dialect groups known as Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji), Central Kurdish (Sorani), and Southern Kurdish (Palewani). A separate group of non-Kurdish Northwestern Iranian languages, the Zaza–Gorani languages, are also spoken by several million Kurds. Recent (as of 2009) studies estimate between 8 and 20 million native Kurdish speakers in Turkey. The majority of the Kurds speak Northern Kurdish ("Kurmanji").

The literary output in Kurdish was mostly confined to poetry until the early 20th century, when more general literature began to be developed. Today, there are two principal written Kurdish dialects, namely Northern Kurdish in the northern parts of the geographical region of Kurdistan and Central Kurdish further east and south. Central Kurdish is, along with Arabic, one of the two official languages of Iraq and is in political documents simply referred to as "Kurdish".

The Kurdish languages belong to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. They are generally classified as Northwestern Iranian languages, or by some scholars as intermediate between Northwestern and Southwestern Iranian.Martin van Bruinessen notes that "Kurdish has a strong south-western Iranian element", whereas "Zaza and Gurani [...] do belong to the north-west Iranian group".