kurdisk

Kurdisk is an adjective and noun used in several languages to denote things relating to the Kurdish people, their language, culture, or the region commonly referred to as Kurdistan. In English the equivalent term is Kurdish; kurdisk appears in languages such as Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian as the native adjective for Kurdish topics.

The Kurdish language, referred to as Kurdish or Kurdî in different scripts, is an Iranian language in the Northwestern branch of the Indo-European family. It comprises several dialects, with Kurmanji (Northern Kurdish) and Sorani (Central and Southern Kurdish) being the most widely spoken. Other varieties exist in different regions. Kurdish is written in multiple scripts: Kurmanji commonly uses a Latin-based alphabet; Sorani is typically written in a Perso-Arabic script; Cyrillic script has historical use among some Kurdish communities in the former Soviet Union.

Geographically, Kurdish-speaking communities live mainly in the area often called Kurdistan, spanning southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, western Iran, and northern Syria, with large diasporas in Europe and the Americas. Kurdish identity has been shaped by cultural production—literature, music, and media—and by political movements advocating rights, recognition, and varying levels of autonomy. In Iraq, the Kurdistan Region has established an autonomous government since 1992.

Kurdisk, then, is a linguistic and cultural descriptor used across languages to reference this people and their language, rather than a distinct ethnicity or language of its own.