—Kurmanji Kurdish— A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings

The oblique case is used for (1) direct objects of present-tense verbs:
Ez miróv dibînim. I see the man.
Ez mirován dibînim. I see the men.
Ez jínê dibînim. I see the woman.
Ez jinán dibînim. I see the women.
(2) complements of prepositions:
ji miróv from the man
ji mirován from the men
ji jínê from the woman
ji jinán from the women
di odéyê de
di odê´ de
in the room
(3) the second member of a construct chain (see below §4):
gundên kurdan villages of Kurds
(4) agents of past-tense transitive verbs (see below §18.2).
In the case of nouns coordinated by the conjunction û ‘and,’ only the last
member of a series shows a case ending if there is one.
Tu kitêb û kovaran dibînî? Do you see the books and journals?
Ji bo rojên bê, ez plan û bernaman
çêdikim.
SUBSTANTIVES
I’m making plans and programs for
the coming days.
There are a few nouns that contain the vowel a, usually in the final syllable,
like ba ‘wind,’ bajar ‘city,’ ziman ‘language,’ mar ‘snake,’ welat
‘country,’ and agir ‘fire,’ that may show an internal change of the a to ê for
the oblique case, i.e. bê, bajêr, zimên, mêr, welêt, and êgir. The use of the
internal oblique is optional.
§ 2. Demonstrative Adjectives and Her ‘Every.’ When functioning as
attributive adjectives, the nominative demonstratives are ev ‘this, these’ and
ew ‘that, those.’ They modify both singular and plural nouns and show no
differentiation between masculine and feminine. In the oblique, however, ev
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