Kurmanji, also called Northern Kurdish, is the most widely spoken variety of Kurdish, with estimates commonly running to 15 million speakers or more. Its territory covers southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, northern Iraq and northwestern Iran, together with a long-established Kurdish community in Armenia and a large diaspora in Western Europe, Germany above all. Kurdish belongs to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family, making it a relative of Persian rather than of Turkish or Arabic. Kurmanji is usually written in the Hawar alphabet, a Latin-based script devised in the 1930s, whereas Sorani, the other major Kurdish variety, uses a modified Arabic script. The two differ enough in grammar and vocabulary that speakers can struggle to understand one another; Kurmanji keeps gender and case distinctions Sorani has lost.
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