Magin_Edward-thesis

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is spoken or performed. The way syllables are counted seems to be influenced by
poetry’s oral tradition. This particular topic needs much more direct input from poets incountry,
as only they can explain how they determine syllable counts. A complete
analysis of poetic meter was therefore not possible, in large part due to a lack of
performed poetry.
The most common elision of sound occurs when the weak vowel i is excluded
from pronunciation. In fact, with few words beginning with i, some may argue for its
nonexistence in the language. The modified Arabic script of Northern Kurdish does not
even include a letter representing i. Thackston (2006:5) uses the term furtive to describe
the appearance and disappearance of this vowel in the language. He writes,
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 (Thackston 2006:5).
However, it is not just in final consonant clusters that the i vowel is excluded in
spoken Northern Kurdish. For example, the word for ‘want,’ with the continuous aspect
marker di-, often loses the short i when the d can elide with a previous CV syllable to
form a CVC syllable. Such seems to be the case in line 28 of Nalbend’s poem, Ey Ze’îmê
Bê Nivêjê Bê Werar, ‘O Leader Without Prayer and Use,’ shown in (140). Here the first
end rhyme, mezin, completes the first eight syllables of the line, a hemistich, as in in
mezin rhymes with min and jin in the previous line. At the beginning of line 28, me joins
with divêt to sound like me͡ d.vêt. While the i is still written when using the Latin script, it
is not pronounced. If it was pronounced, the number of syllables from me to mezin would
be nine, inconsistent with the eight-syllable line length throughout the poem. For a
breakdown of the syllables in the first hemistich in line 28, see example (141).