—Kurmanji Kurdish— A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings

elative clauses with an antecedent preceded by wek or mîna ‘like.’
wek peza ku ço li serî ketibe like a sheep on whose head a stick has
landed
(4) The past subjunctive form of two verbs, karîn ‘to be able’ and zanîn
‘to know,’ is normally used as the present subjunctive.
Însan naxwazin ku kesên din bizanibin
ew tiştên weha dixwîne.
Em dixwazin bizanibin. We want to know.
People don’t want others to know that
they read such things.
Ev girîng e ku mirov bizanibe … It’s important that one know that…
Ez ne bawer im ku tu kes bikaribe
bibêje ku rewşa ziman û edebiyata
kurdî baş e.
Kêm berhemên gel û miletên din yên
evqasî kevin hene ku mirov bêî alîkariya
ferhengan bikaribe jê têbigihê.
Ji bo ku bikaribim razêm, min di serê
xwe de plana ku ezê çawa û bi çi awayî
bikaribim wî benderuhî bikujim,
çêdikir.
KURMANJI KURDISH
I don’t believe that anybody could say
that the style of Kurdish language and
literature is good.
There are few works belonging to other
such ancient groups and nations that
one could understand without the help
of a dictionary.
In order that I be able to sleep, I was formulating
a plan in my head how and by
what means I would be able to kill that
creature.
§ 23. The Future Perfect Tense. The future perfect is formed, like the future,
by adding ê to pronominal subjects or wê to nominal subjects, and the
verb is in the past subjunctive. Effectively only two verbs, zanîn and karîn,
occur in this tense, and they are used for a past modal of ‘know’ and ‘can,’
like the English modal ‘would know’ and ‘would be able’ (and not like the
English future perfect ‘I will have known’), as in the following conjugations:
zanîn karîn
ezê bizanîbim emê bizanîbin ezê bikarîbim emê bikarîbin
tê bizanîbî hunê bizanîbin tê bikarîbî hunê bikarîbin
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