—Kurmanji Kurdish— A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings

hand that he never said such a thing? If so, present perfect; if not, simple
past.
Other examples of usage are as follows:
Jiyana min gelekî bi şequdeq bihuriya.
Tenê dê bi kurtî bibêjim: Ez di
Sibata 1953’an de, li Hedhedkê hatime
dinê. Pêşî, min xwendina olî li
cem bavê xwe xwendiye. Îcar piştre ez
derketime feqîtiyê û li hin medreseyên
Kurdistanê geriyame.
My life has been spent mostly in misery
and hardship. I will only say in brief: I
was born in February 1953 in Hedhedik.
First I had religious instruction
with my father. Then I became a religious
student and made the rounds of
some schools in Kurdistan.
In this example, the writer’s first verb, bihuriya, is in the simple past tense
as a statement of fact, while English demands the present perfect. Thereafter,
that the writer was born in 1953, studied with his father, became a
religious student, etc. are all relevant to his having had a miserable life,
which is the topic at hand. Therefore he uses the present perfect tense.
Diya min li wir bûye û meriyên wê îroj
li her du hêlên xeta hesin bi cîh dibin.
THE VERB
My mother was from there, and today
her people live on both sides of the
“Iron Line.” 1
In this example the writer says literally, “my mother has been from there”
because the fact that his mother was from there explains why he has relatives
on both sides of the border.
§ 21. The Past Perfect Tense (Intransitive). For intransitive verbs with
past stems ending in a consonant, the past perfect tense, which is functionally
equivalent to the English past perfect (‘I had come, you had gone’), is
formed from the past stem + i + the past tense of bûn ‘to be.’ Verbs with
past stems ending in a vowel form the past perfect tense from the simple
stem + the past tense of bûn. Some writers shorten a final î in the stem to i
(i.e. ez tersibûm ‘I had feared’ for ez tersîbûm). Examples of conjugation
are from hatin and çûn.
ez hatibûm em hatibûn ez çûbûm em çûbûn
1 The “Iron Line,” coined on the model of the “Iron Curtain,” is Turkey’s border
with Syria and Iraq, which divides Kurdistan.
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