Talk:Kurdish phonology

Vowel section cleanup

Currently, the presentation of vowels is very confusing. It seems as though some of the vowels in the table are either allophones or dialectal variants, but it's not exactly clear which are which. We should simplify the table and clarify its presentation. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:50, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

@Aeusoes1: [ʉː] is clearly an allophone of /yː/ and [æ] looks like an allophone of /a/. I'm not sure about the rest. Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:58, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

I know for a fact that it is unlikely that any Kurdish language have [ɪ]. When describing the letter 'i' for Northern Kurdish, it is usually described as being identical to the Turkish ı (page 3, in French). Turkish "ı" is [ɯ] and this I can agree on, since I speak both languages. But then we have articles for the other Kurdish languages, which are using the phoneme [ɪ] instead. So either there is indeed a (small) phonemic difference between the languages or some people mixed up the two, and wrongfully classified "i" as being [ɪ]. Nevertheless, I decided to include the latter.. --Ahmedo Semsurî (talk) 18:20, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

@Ahmedo Semsurî: Please don't confuse phonemes with allophones. The former should be enclosed within slashes /like this/, the latter within brackets [like this]. There can't be such thing as 'the [ɪ] phoneme'. Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:22, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

It's also not a good idea to glean phonetic information from interlanaguage comparisons like that. Saying that a sound in Kurdish is like the sound of Swedish represented by ⟨u⟩ is not firm ground to then say that this sound is phonetically identical to it. These are approximations and we would want more detailed and accurate phonetic studies. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 19:09, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

I like the recently added table, but the table above is still a mess. There are way too many unused cells (I could probably represent this information in a 6 by 3 table, rather than a 10 by 7.. It also doesn't make sense to have some empty cells grayed out and some not.

From the additional table, the sense I get is that there are 9 vowel phonemes in all dialects but that Southern Kurdish has an additional sound spelled ⟨ü⟩ and Central Kurdish has an /æ/ that contrasts with /ɑː/ but is spell the same. Is that about right? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:37, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

I made a small correction; Letter ⟨a⟩ can be pronounced as either /aː/ or /æ/ in Central Kurdish. And yes, its correctly understood that Southern Kurdish has an additional vowel. Concerning the first table, we could start by removing the "near-front" row. --Ahmedo Semsurî (talk) 18:01, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

@Ahmedo Semsurî: You're still confusing phonemes with allophones. Judging from your post, [æː] is a possible phonetic realization of /aː/ and therefore not a phoneme. [ʊ] and [ə] aren't phonemes either but allophones of /u/ and /a/. Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:36, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB:The source used in the page treat them as phonemes, so I did the same. There must be a difference between them being allophones and facultative phonemes? --Ahmedo Semsurî (talk) 18:53, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

@Ahmedo Semsurî: That's not true in the case of [ə], as the source clearly considers it to be an allophone of what it writes /æ/. The dialect presented in the source presumably has a tense-lax distinction among vowels, rather than a long-short one. Instead of /u/ and /uː/, the source writes /ʊ/ and /u/. It's the same distinction presented in a different manner. Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:05, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

I have searched, high and low, for any kind of source or indication, anywhere, for the notion that the "i" you mention (not the [iː] one, that is), which appears in many romanizations of Kurdish (but not in the arab-derived Kurdish alphabet), actually has any sound at all, or any kind of purpose or meaning, whatsoever. I can never encounter anyone, in real life or video/audio-file, who pronounces any kind of sound, where the "i" is. It isn't pronounced as [ɪ], sure, but neither is it pronounced as [ɯ]. Neither sound, can be heard, in words which have the letter. In other words: it isn't pronounced, at all. Nor is it there, due to some now obsolete pronunciation in the past (as is often the case, when the letters of a word, doesn't match the pronunciation), nor does there appear to be any kind of grammatical reason, or anything like that. I cannot find any reason, for why the letter even exists, in the first place. I've even searched through Turkish words with "ı" (i without the dot) in Wiktionary (those that have sound-files) and the only ones where the letter has any effect on the pronunciation, where some where it was next to an L or R. In all other cases, no sound could be heard, where the dot-less "i" was. The sound that could be heard, corresponded to how it would sound, without the letter. (except, as I said, when an L or R was involved, for some reason. This is, however, not true in Kurdish)--213.113.49.72 (talk) 21:54, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

The letter "i" in Kurdish languages is very confusing. It is rare that the two phonemes above are used for the letter "i", but it isn't otherwise "silent"; there is still a sound, not the two mentioned before, but I, someone with only slight linguistic knowledge but a Kurmanji native speaker, do not know what it is. It does sound silent, though. 2001:2044:1617:1600:85BC:6245:81CF:D21B (talk) 12:39, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Zaza–Gorani languages aren't Kurdish languages

I'm still unclear as to why the Zaza–Gorani languages are being discussed in an article about Kurdish phonology. I understand they are spoken by ethnic Kurds, but that's a political or social issue not relevant to a linguistic description. An article about the phonology of the Kurdish languages shouldn't include languages that aren't classified as Kurdish.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 01:24, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

@WilliamThweatt: Yeah, you seem to be right about this. I'd support splitting the article. Mr KEBAB (talk) 09:14, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

I will remove them for the page. --Ahmedo Semsurî (talk) 12:16, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Reference section

@Aeusoes1, WilliamThweatt, Mr KEBAB, and Ahmedo Semsurî: The Reference section shows that two named sources, "sorani" and "source6", are defined multiple times with different content. --Thnidu (talk) 23:12, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

@Thnidu: It might be about time to introduce short citations into the article, preferably with the sfnp template. It should prevent chaos in the future. Mr KEBAB (talk) 04:41, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree. I prefer short citations in almost every situation anyway. They're so much more convenient and cleaner. Also, it's easier to convert to them when an article is new(ish) and still manageable.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 02:22, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

What is â?

I've never seen or heard of â, in Kurdish. Ever. There are two "a" sounds: ە‬ typically romanized as "e" (though I've never understood why) and ا typically romanized as "a". I've never heard of a different a-sound, and it doesn't exist in the Kurdish (arab-derived) alphabet, nor in any romanization of Kurdish I've ever encountered.--213.113.49.72 (talk) 21:35, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm replying to a comment from 6 years ago because it might be useful to future readers. I don't know where you read it (there is no mention in the article), but at least in Sorani there is a long "a" and short "a", both written with the Arabic letter alif. "â" is probably to show that it is the long "a". Regarding Kurmanji: there is only one "a", and it is long. I don't know about the other dialects. Guherto (talk) 15:23, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Useless article creating

The phonology tables of Kurmanji were already included in the article of Kurmanji / Northern Kurdish. There is also already a much better phonology part in the Sorani article. Why is the phonology part of kurmanji article removed and placed here and without informing what kind of language or dialect it is making more confusing. Obvious obsession with proving that there is only one Kurdish language. --Rojan98 (talk) 18:11, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

What do you suggest? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 19:53, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

[q] and [qʰ]

The article claims that in Northern Kurdish [q] (unaspirated) contrasts with [qʰ] (aspirated). Althoug there is a phonemic distinction between about [p] / [pʰ], [k] / [kʰ] and [t] / [tʰ], there is absolutely no such thing as [qʰ] in Northern (or any other variety of) Kurdish. I tried to remove the note on [q]/[qʰ] but it my edit was reverted. Best regards, --Ferhengvan (talk) 18:52, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I looked through the two sources cited for the table that cover Northern Kurdish to see if there was reference to an aspirated uvular stop and couldn't find anything verifying this. Anyone care to clarify the matter? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 19:09, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I think the confusion comes from the Rahimpour & Dovaise text which states: "There are nine stop phonemes in Kurdish. They are / p, b, t, d, k, g, q ,s ,? /... Voiceless stops are aspirated in almost all positions. /p/ and /b/ are bilabial, /t/ and /d/ dental-alveolar, /k/ and /g/ velar, /q/ post-velar (or uvular)... The aspiration is more strong in /p/ and less evident in /q/ and / s /. " --Semsurî (talk) 21:12, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

That doesn't sound like a phonemic contrast between voiceless and aspirated. It sounds like aspiration is a feature of voiceless stops. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 21:24, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

We have references in the article pointing at a contrast between aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stop, page 63. Gündogdu states: the stops and affricates in Kurmanji exhibit a three-way contrast between aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stop and a voiced stop, e.g., aspirated voiceless velar stop /k_h/, unaspirated voiceless velar stop /k/ and voiced velar stop /g/.

However it doesn't seem that any of the used references explicitly state that /qʰ/ exists in Kurdish. Should be removed until we find a source saying otherwise. --Semsurî (talk) 21:51, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

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