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"KURDISH LANGUAGE"
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Kurdish (Sorani) dictionary & phrasebook : romanized Sorani-English, English-Sorani
This ... phrasebook uses the official Sorani Latin alphabet to aid instant communication\"--P. [4] of cover.
Book
Improved Recognition of Kurdish Sign Language Using Modified CNN
The deaf society supports Sign Language Recognition (SLR) since it is used to educate individuals in communication, education, and socialization. In this study, the results of using the modified Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) technique to develop a model for real-time Kurdish sign recognition are presented. Recognizing the Kurdish alphabet is the primary focus of this investigation. Using a variety of activation functions over several iterations, the model was trained and then used to make predictions on the KuSL2023 dataset. There are a total of 71,400 pictures in the dataset, drawn from two separate sources, representing the 34 sign languages and alphabets used by the Kurds. A large collection of real user images is used to evaluate the accuracy of the suggested strategy. A novel Kurdish Sign Language (KuSL) model for classification is presented in this research. Furthermore, the hand region must be identified in a picture with a complex backdrop, including lighting, ambience, and image color changes of varying intensities. Using a genuine public dataset, real-time classification, and personal independence while maintaining high classification accuracy, the proposed technique is an improvement over previous research on KuSL detection. The collected findings demonstrate that the performance of the proposed system offers improvements, with an average training accuracy of 99.05% for both classification and prediction models. Compared to earlier research on KuSL, these outcomes indicate very strong performance.
Journal Article
Enhancing pragmatic competence in Kurdish EFL learners: The impact of a learner-centered approach
The study investigates how a learner-centered learning approach (LCL) can help raise pragmatic competence in Kurdish learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Pragmatic competence in using languages appropriately in societal contexts is not well-developed in Kurdish learners because of traditional grammar-based teaching practices. The study attempted to investigate how LCL could foster effective usage of English in natural communication contexts. Survey employed a quantitative research design using an adapted Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and formal questionnaires administered to 98 EFL learners and 12 teachers. Learners were taught LCL-based methodology for a defined period and included group activities, peer consultation, and context-based language activities. Statistical analysis established a significant improvement in students’ pragmatic competence subsequent to the intervention (Mean = 34.63, SD = 8.41) compared to pre-intervention ratings (Mean = 24.27, SD = 7.11), with a large effect size (Cohen’s d = 1.99). Further statistical analysis investigated correlations between students’ communicative strategies and attitudes and demographics (grade and gender). Teachers’ ratings provided additional insights regarding perceived effectiveness and difficulties in using LCL. Implications include the advantage to incorporating learner-centered pedagogies to enable pragmatic competency gain in EFL settings and the value in offering recurrent teacher professional development. These findings suggest that classroom application of LCL approaches can meaningfully contribute to English pragmatic gain among Kurdish speakers.
Journal Article
Investment and the inaudible mother tongue: Carving out a space for Kurdish in the soundscape of an Istanbul kebab restaurant
Firmly grounded in local sociopolitical constraints, language policies at Istanbul's Kurdish-run eating establishments often place Kurdish employees’ cultural identity construction at odds with their workplaces’ economic viability. In the face of rigid structures that cement the dominance of Turkish, the Kurdish managers highlighted in a previous study exercise limited agency to enact language policies that align with their pro-Kurdish ideologies, rendering Kurdish largely invisible. This article revisits these themes by examining a nearby Kurdish-run restaurant with a language policy that violates this norm. Applying Darvin & Norton's (2015) model of investment, analyses of observations and interviews consider identity, ideology, and economic capital vis-à-vis employees’ perceived valuation of Kurdish as a workplace language. Results suggest that capital ownership emboldens the audible articulation of Kurdish identities, which emerge from pluricentrically oriented ideologies, fostering resistance to local language policy norms. (Investment, language policy, capital, Kurdish, ideology, pluricentricity)
Journal Article
Voice Onset Time (VOT) in Bahdini Kurdish
This study investigates the voice onset time (VOT) of stops in Bahdini Kurdish, which are characterized by a three-way laryngeal contrast of voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated and voiced stops. Thirty native speakers read a forty-word list three times, which included three examples of each stop in pre-vocalic onset position. Words were chosen based on specific contextual factors to account for place of articulation, laryngeal state, following vowel height, and length contrasts. The findings show that VOT distinguishes stop categories in Kurdish, with voicing lead indicating voiced stops, short lag for voiceless unaspirated stops and long lag for voiceless aspirated stops. Results of the linear mixed-effects model show that laryngeal state, place of articulation, following vowel height and length had significant effects on VOT. The gender of the participants, however, showed no significant effect on VOT. In line with most research on the effect of place of articulation on VOT, in voiceless aspirated stop categories, bilabials had the shortest VOT, followed by dentals and velars. Voiceless unaspirated bilabials had the shortest VOT values, followed by dentals, uvulars and then velars. Voiced stops do not show such a pattern. These results are compatible with other research on Indo-Iranian languages with three-way laryngeal categories.
Journal Article
Automatic meter classification of Kurdish poems
Most of the classic texts in Kurdish literature are poems. Knowing the meter of the poems is helpful for correct reading, a better understanding of the meaning, and avoiding ambiguity. This paper presents a rule-based method for the automatic classification of the poem meter for the Central Kurdish language also known as Sorani. The metrical system of Kurdish poetry is divided into three classes quantitative, syllabic, and free verses. As the vowel length is not phonemic in the language, there are uncertainties in syllable weight and meter identification. The proposed method generates all the possible situations and then, by considering all lines of the input poem and the common meter patterns of Kurdish poetry, identifies the most probable meter type and pattern of the input poem. Evaluation of the method on a dataset from VejinBooks Kurdish corpus resulted in 97.3% of precision in meter type and 96.2% of precision in pattern identification.
Journal Article
Negotiating Monolingual Official Language Policy at the Nexus of Locally Situated Language Practices and Dominant Language Ideologies in a Language Minority Context
This paper examines how children and teachers negotiate the official Turkish only language policy as they manage their linguistic resources (Turkish and Kurmanji) in one Turkish preschool serving predominantly emergent bilingual Kurdish minority children. Using a critical ethnographic lens to language-in-education policy making (Martin-Jones and Da Costa Gabral, in: Tollefson, Pérez-Milans (eds) The Oxford handbook of language policy and planning, Oxford University Press, 2018), the study investigates how children and teachers navigate locally situated language practices and language ideologies that accord legitimacy and authority to standard Turkish and officially invisibilise Kurmanji in the preschool. Findings indicate that acting as agentive social actors teachers and children do not merely comply to the Turkish only language policy but they also adapt, recast, and contest it in social interaction. They stress the need to rethink the language-in-education policy in the Turkish educational system in ways that recognise and leverage teachers and children’s entire linguistic repertoires and experiences for teaching and learning.
Journal Article
Democratic Confederalism and the Theory of History: Historical Ontologies of Political Alternative in Bookchin, Öcalan, and Graeber
This paper aims to discuss the \"historical ontology of political alternative\" emerging from the work of Abdullah Öcalan by comparing it to the ones of two other authors: Murray Bookchin, who has notoriously influenced his thought, and David Graeber, whose interest for the Kurdish movement and the thought of Öcalan has been significantly overlooked so far. The analysis delves into how the three authors frame the conditions of possibility for the historical emergence of radical political alternatives. Special attention is given to the contrasts between Bookchin and Öcalan in this respect, with special attention to the couple continuity/discontinuity and archaic/modern, to their distinctive views of dialectics and of the articulation between the dialectical poles, and to the roles of consciousness and knowledge in their political and historical reflections. Additionally, it investigates the theoretical and political convergence between Öcalan and Graeber, focusing on the notions, respectively, of democratic civilisation and baseline communism.
Journal Article
From Dengbêj to Modern Writer: Heritagization of the Kurdish Oral Tradition and Revitalization of the Kurdish Language in the Works of Mehmed Uzun and Mehmet Dicle
Based on a textual analysis of the selected works of two writers from Turkey, Mehmed Uzun (1953–2007) and Mehmet Dicle (b.1977), as well as interviews with Kurdish writers and folklore collectors, this study focuses on the links between Kurdish folklore and modern Kurdish literature. Following Gregory Ashcroft's take on heritage, I argue that Kurdish writers’ approach to folkloric motives has evolved through the impact of growing literary experience, inspiration from world literature and deepening knowledge of the Kurdish oral tradition. What is more, Kurdish literature can be treated as an example of cultural and language revitalization, which – according to Justyna Olko – is based on acting in and through the heritage language. Following Doreen Massey's concept of a progressive sense of place, I identify Uzun and Dicle's strategy as linking the local to the universal, suggesting that Kurdish literature should be analyzed within the context of a political geography beyond nationalism.
Journal Article