a-practical-kurdish-grammar

30 A PRACTICAL KURDISH GRAMMAR
^ aLIj (pishila-me) female-cat.
J a Jy (kotir-a-ner) male-dove.
ig» o^ji (kotir-a-me) female-dove.
; (^j\j (qaz-i-ner) gander (lit. male-goose).
. ^:^(qaz-i-me) goose (lit. female-goose).
^j\ ^ (mirawi-ner) drake (lit. male duck)
- (_$\_j^ (mirawi-me) duck (lit. female-duck).
65. You will notice in the examples given above, that when
the final letter of the noun is a consonant, the vowel letter
'a' or fC 'Î' is used as a connective between the noun and
the gender suffix.
66. Instead of ^;^^^]^ (&öl-a-sag) and ^t^îSii (del-
a-sag), we may also employ the gender suffi.xes j^ (ner) and
^ (me) and say J iSCj> (sag-a-ner) and ^ (me-kar) 'female-donkey'. This,
however, is not exactly used, but something practically the
same, namely S U (ma-kar).
Another example is met with in the word QsJ \^(ma-n-ga)
'cow' (lit. 'female ox'). The U (ma) is undoubtedly the same
as the gender suffix ^j* (me), but prefixed to the word
^ (ga) 'ox'. In both cases a vowel change from 'e' to 'a'
may have taken place.