An Indo-European language and a member of the Indo-Iranian group of languages (Western Iranian branch), spoken by c. 10 million people mainly in Kurdistan, a cultural region in southwestern Asia, encompassing sections of southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, western Iran, Armenia, Georgia and northeastern Syria.
The earliest texts date from the 13th century. Modern Kurdish is spoken in many dialects and there is no recognized standard form. The main dialects are Kurmanji (Turkey, Armenia and Syria) and Sorani (Iraq and Iran). The language is also written in a variety of scripts - Arabic, Roman, Cyrillic and Armenian.
CLASSIFICATION = Indo-European family, SCRIPT = Roman and Arabic