Magin_Edward-thesis

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Kurds from an area other than Sindî’s. Minimally, this example shows that Sindî, for
some reason, chose to vary his language.
(300) ka ‘egîdê wan dilêran evro man=e bê (BS1:22, 23)
where fighter 3OP hero today became.PST-3PL=DIR without
xudan
leader
‘Where’s the fighter of those heroes? Today they became leaderless.’
av-a aras-ê di-pirs-it îru kanê gemîvan
water-EZ.F aras-OBL.F IPFV-ask.PRS-3SG today where sailor
‘The water of Aras is asking: Where’s the sailor now?’
In another poem, shown below in (301), Sindî used the Northern Kurdish word
for ‘life,’ jîn, three times in two lines. Needing to use ‘life’ yet again in the final clause of
line 2, he resorted to using the Arabic equivalent, ‘emir. While ‘emir by itself is two
syllables and jîn has but one syllable, when the ezafe particle is added, the syllable count
for both words is equal: ‘em.rê and jî.na. Hence, Sindî had some other reason for using
‘emir here.
(301) dergeh-ê jîn u hîvî-a girt-y-Ø-e (BS4:1, 2)
door-EZ.M life and hope-OBL.PL close:PST-PRF-be:PST-3SG
dîsa çima
again why
‘The door of life and hopes is closed again, why?’
ma ji jîn-a kurt=e jîn b-it ma ji
INTRG as life-EZ.F short=COP.PRS.3SG life COP.PRS-3SG INTRG from
‘emr-ê me çi ma-Ø
life-EZ.M 1OP what remain.PST-3SG
‘Is it a short life? It's life. What has remained from our life?’
Being an outsider, it is sometimes very difficult to determine which words in a
poem are not from the poet’s common language. As the Kurds in Northern Iraq become
more unified, we can expect to see poets, and writers in general, borrowing more words
from dialects more different from their own. This was confirmed by the poet Hizirvan,
who mentioned that he will sometimes use Sorani words in his poems, Sorani being the
dominant Kurdish language in Northern Iraq. We may also see the opposite effect, a
standardization of the language resulting in a loss of word forms.