kurmanji_complete

PHONOLOGY
(4) When there are no prefixes on finite verbal forms, the final syllable
of the verb stem is stressed, as in axíftine [A»xIftInE] ‘they have spoken.’
(5) The infinitive is stressed on the final syllable, as in axiftín [AxIf»tIn]
‘to speak.’
Orthographic variants. Some writers prefer to use the Turkish undotted ‘ı’
for ‘i’ and the dotted ‘i’ for ‘î.’ They write dizanim as dızanım and zanîn as
zanin.
Doubled consonants. Doubled consonants are quite rare in Kurdish, and
almost all the doubled consonants of Arabic and Persian loanwords are
reduced to a single consonant, e.g. تﺪـــﻣ muddat > mudet, ﻼـــﻣ mullâ > mele,
ﻪـﺴﺳ ـ ﺆـﻣ
mu’assasa > muesese, and تﺪـﺷ shiddat > şidet. The few double consonants
that survive are in learned borrowings like ummet ‘religious community,’
welle ‘by God,’ seff ‘class,’ and muswedde ‘draft copy.’
The furtive i. Kurdish does not tolerate all final consonant clusters. When
an intolerable final consonant cluster appears, it is broken by the vowel i,
called the ‘furtive i,’ which disappears when a vowel-initial enclitic or suffix
is added to the word. Words like aql ‘mind, intelligence,’ esl ‘origin,’
emr ‘age,’ and emr ‘order’ are aqil, esil, emir, and emir 1 when by themselves
or when followed by a consonant-initial suffix (aqil ‘mind,’ kêmaqil
‘foolish,’ ew kêmaqil bû ‘he was foolish,’ and aqilmend ‘intelligent’). When
followed by a vowel-initial enclitic or suffix the i is dropped, as in aqlê te
‘your mind,’ ew kêmaql e ‘he is foolish,’ kêmaqlî ‘foolishness,’ bi eslê xwe
‘in one’s origin, originally,’ emrê min ‘my age’ and emra serdar ‘commander’s
order.’ The furtive i is indicated in the vocabulary by an italicized
i, e.g. aqil, esil, emir, fêhim. Kurdish writers are not in agreement on the
1
Aqil ‘mind’ (with furtive i), from the Arabic ﻞ ـــﻘـــﻋ, is to be distinguished from the
homograph aqil that means ‘intelligent, reasonable’ (from the Arabic ﻞ ـﻗﺎـS).
The latter
is stable as aqil even in compounds (aqilane ‘intelligently’). There are two words
spelled emir, emir (a variant of umr ﺮ ـﲻ)
‘age’ and emir (from the Arabic ﺮ ـﻣا)
‘order’;
they both contain furtives i’s.
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