Kurdish - voron

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Kurdish - voron

Postby voron » 2016-03-22, 13:19

I'm currently learning Kurdish using this book named Hînker (Teacher):
http://www.kitapyurdu.com/kitap/hinker- ... 57079.html
(you can find it in PDF on certain websites)

There is one difficulty I'm having with Kurdish compound verbs. They seem to govern their objects in 3 different ways, and one has to remember which one is used with each verb.

1) An ezafe is formed between the non-verbal component of the verb and the object

This is well described in Thackston's grammar
Depending upon the semantics of a given compound, many compound verbs can be extended to include any and all matter that complements the nonverbal part of the compound. For instance, compound verbs like alîkarî kirin ‘to help’ and behs kirin ‘to discuss’ can be extended through a construct (or multiple constructs) as in the following examples:

Ew jî alîkariya kovara Enstîtuya kurdî ya Parîsê dike.
He also helps out on the journal of the Paris Kurdish Institute.

An easier example:
He is helping me - Ew alîkariya min dike.

An example from Hînker:
http://i.hizliresim.com/QBVlng.png

Diya min carinan qala zaroktiya xwe dike. - Sometimes my mother tells about her childhood.
qal kirin - to tell

2) The object takes the normal accusative, and the non-verbal component is unmodified
This is also described in Thackston
Close compound verbs of the hildan ‘to raise’ and vekirin ‘to open’ type
do not admit extension through a construct. They take normal direct objects
before the verb.

It is the most straightforward way.
I am opening the door. - Ez derî vedikim.

3) Both the non verbal component and the object take the accusative :?:
It is not described in Thackston and I am not sure if I'm interpreting it correctly, so I'm asking for your guys' comment on this.

Example 1:
In this tale "Red Riding Hood" we can see the following sentence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb92r3wDcU8&t=0m52s
Di nav daristanê de rastî kulîlkên gelek xweşik hat. - In the forest, she came upon very beautiful flowers.
rast hatin - to come across, encounter

If I understand correctly:
rastî is in the accusative (also the 'less' standard -î accusative is used, not the 'more' standard null-ending accusative for masculine nouns)
kulîlkên gelek xweşik is also in the accusative

and the subject is the implied "she".

Example 2:
(From Hînker) http://i.hizliresim.com/nMO2Y0.png
Em gazî Rojdayê bikin. - Let's call Rojda
gazî kirin - to call

This example is even more weird because gazî stays unmodified (it's feminine so it should be gaziyê in the accusative), and only Rojda takes the accusative.

I saw other examples that I can't find at the moment. I'll post them if I remember.
Last edited by voron on 2016-03-23, 7:24, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby Limagne » 2016-03-22, 19:49

IMHO, gazî Rojdayê is a simple ezafe structure. You should not reason in terms of 'accusativeness'. Try to look at the problem from the 'noun phrase' angle.

The -î suffix is attached to the nominal element of compound verbs, followed by the object in the oblique case.

Berî çendekê me behsî babetekî kir.
Serok Barzanî nameyeke eşkere pêşkêşî serokên cîhanê kiriye

Nouns ending in a vowel can take the regular ezafe (-ya, -yê).

Min Bêrîya te kir.
Jan Bøhler serokê DNA (Partîya karkerên Norwej) yê bajarê Oslo piştgirîya Serxwebûna Kurdistanê dike.

Or not...

Niha ez dipirsim, gelo we çima gazî min kir.

The ezafe construction also explains why the object of these compound verbs takes the oblique case in the past tenses.

Hope that helps!

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby voron » 2016-03-22, 22:15

Yes, ezafe would make perfect sense, but...

The -î ending is not the construct state ending! It should be:
-(y)ê for the masculine nouns
-(y)a for the feminine nouns

I have a possible explanation about what's going on. I took the following example from the dictionary definition of the word akademîk.
akademîk: tiştê ku têkildarî akademiyê ye
academic: something related to academia

Akademiyê has the semantics of the dative case here, just like when we put a noun after a verb, it has a directional meaning:

têkildarî akademiyê - related to academia
rastî kulîlkên xweşik - a bump into beautiful flowers
gazî Rojdayê - a call to Rojda
Cf. çum(ê) Muşê - I went to Muş

Makes sense? These are noun phrases but with the agreement type different from ezafe, a 'dative' agreement type, with the special -î ending on the head, and the oblique case on the dative component.

I googled around your examples a bit:
Berî çendekê me behsî babetekî kir.

Behsa ... kir (normal ezafe) is infact far more common, so behsî is probably a mistake.
PDKê behsa guhertinên pêwîst kir - PDK talked about necessary changes.

PDK is in the oblique case here, as expected (because of ergativity), and behsa guhertinên pêwîst is the subject.

Serok Barzanî nameyeke eşkere pêşkêşî serokên cîhanê kiriye

In this example, though, pêşkêşî ... kir is the common option. Which agrees with my interpretation as the 'dative' agreement type:
pêşkêşî serokên cîhanê - presentation to the world leaders
Last edited by voron on 2016-03-23, 9:43, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby voron » 2016-03-23, 9:27

As for the last sentence, if I had to say it myself, I would have connected pêşkêş and name into the ezafe:

*Serok Barzanî pêşkêşa nameyeke eşkere kiriye serokên cîhanê.
or
*Serok Barzanî ji serokên cîhanê re pêşkêşa nameyeke eşkere kiriye.

It is grammatically consistent right? But as google shows it is a wrong usage.
Last edited by voron on 2016-04-02, 6:05, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby Limagne » 2016-03-23, 19:12

That makes sense. I'll check Blau and Berdirxan's reference grammar to see if I can get more detailed explanations on the topic.

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby voron » 2016-03-24, 21:07

I have skimmed through Bedir-Xan and Lescot's grammar but haven't found anything related.

Limagne if you happen to come across other examples of this '-î type government', please post them here!

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby voron » 2016-03-30, 15:32

One more interesting grammar case.

How do you say "I looked at something"?
Google gives multiple hits for the pattern "min li * nêrî".

Min li te nêrî - I looked at you
Min li malê me nêrî - I looked at our house

With "min" being in the oblique case, this sentence does not have the grammatical subject at all. :hmm:

Are there other verbs like this?

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby voron » 2016-03-31, 6:51

Another case of "-î type government" from my book:
http://hizliresim.com/a3g1M5

Min telefonî malê kir. - I called your home phone ("I telephone to house made")

Telefon is a feminine noun, so normally it would take -a in the construct case and -ê in the oblique case, but here it ends with the '-î' ending which as I suggested in the above posts, links it to the next word with the 'dative type' government.

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby daristani » 2016-04-02, 1:11

I think it's best to treat these cases of -î as non-gendered izafet/ezafe constructions usually used in compound verbs in which the non-verbal part is not a noun. It generally links to the object of the verb.

Examples: hînbûn, "to learn", but in a sentence: Ez dixwazim hînî Kurdî bibim "I want to learn Kurdish"

derbasbûn, "to cross or enter into": Ez derbasî odê dibim "I enter the room"

hînkirin, "to teach": Mamosta zarokan hînî xwendinê dike "The teacher teaches the children to read"

bangkirin, "to call": Wî bangî min kir "He called me"

rasthatin, "to encounter": Ez rastî hevalekî min î kevn bûm "I ran into an old friend of mine"

I don't think it's helpful to see it in terms of a case, whether "dative" or "accusative", but rather as a linking element that links the non-verbal part of a compound verb to the object of that verb.

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby voron » 2016-04-02, 18:40

Hi daristani, I was very happy to read your post. The more Kurdish learners/speakers we have on this forum, the merrier! Why and how have been learning Kurdish?

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby daristani » 2016-04-02, 20:25

I got interested in Kurdish quite a number of years ago; I already knew Turkish and wanted to expand into Kurdish, but finding materials was really hard. I collected all the books I could, hung around a lot with Kurds, and eventually learned to a fair level. I'm still not fluent, and my Turkish is still a lot better than my Kurdish, but I understand "standard" Kurmanji fairly well, having spent so long struggling with the grammar.

By the way, I think that the -î used as an ezafe may well be a contraction of a preposition.

Consider:

hez kirin : to like or love

Ez ji te hez dikim: "I love you", but the alternative form is: Ez hejî te dikim

Also:

ji 100 behtir "more than 100", but the alternative form: behtirî 100

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby voron » 2016-04-04, 11:50

daristani wrote:I understand "standard" Kurmanji fairly well

How about "normal" everyday Kurmanji?

I can get main points of clear text in "standard" Kurmanji as well, but when it gets to talking to people I get baffled that I often understand nothing. I have a friend from Siirt whom I am slooowly starting to understand, but then there is another friend from Muş and I understand almost nothing of what he says.

I really want to be able to understand and speak to people and I guess the only way is to hang around with them a lot. There is also some research about Kurmanji dialects published in the journal "Zend". Reading it may help me a bit to at least be prepared to what differences I should expect.

For example, my friend from Siirt says:
"mi go" instead of "min got"
"min ra" instead of "ji min re" (min ra mesajek hat - I received a message (to me a message came)).

And of course the vocabulary that "normal" people use is miles away from what the standard teaches. My friend doesn't know words like "xwendekar" (student), mamoste (teacher), pênûs (pen) -- instead, he uses "talib", "mualim" and "kalem" (all are Arabic loans). And he burst out laughing when he heard from me "li min bibore" (I'm sorry). Instead he suggested to use something with "kusur" (resembling the Turkish expression "kusura bakma").

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby daristani » 2016-04-05, 0:54

I think my Kurdish is probably a lot like yours, since I learned largely from books, which tend to use a puristic and fairly artificial Kurdish, at least in terms of vocabulary. I use words like 'xwendekar' and the like as well. Once I was in Istanbul talking with a Kurdish publisher and used the word 'pirtûk', and he said that that word was Sorani, and that normal Kurmanji-speakers all said 'kitêb'.

Another time I was with a family in Ankara who speak Kurdish all the time at home; their teenaged daughter remarked that I spoke like the announcers on Med-TV, or Roj-TV, or whatever the main Europe-based Kurdish television channel was at the time. So I realize that my Kurdish is a bit artificial in this regard. (I also took private lessons from a Syrian Kurd who was known among Kurds for using a very pure Kurdish, including, I suspect, words that no Kurds had ever heard used before. When I met people for the first time, they were often able to guess I'd been working with him because of my strange vocabulary. (This is the vocabulary used in publications like Azadiya Welat, etc., but I do realize that it's quite distinct from what villagers use.)

Just about all the textbooks for Kurdish tend to use this "pure" vocabulary, though, so I think it's pretty much of an occupational hazard for anyone learning Kurdish as a foreign language.

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby voron » 2016-04-14, 11:07

I keep wondering if extending the non-verbal part of a compound verb wtih an ezafe is common among native speakers. It seems fairly artificial to me.

For example in this fairy tale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y1yXu1tKB8
there is a sentence:
Dest pê dike xwe dinepixîne - He starts puffing himself up.

If I had to write it for my Kurdish class I would have put an ezafe under the preposition "bi":
Dest bi nepixandina xwe dike.
(The verb is causative from nepixîn - to swell)

However in the fairy tale they just say "He starts he puffs himself up", without using the ezafe.
How common is that?

Another example: If I want to say "I started studying Kurdish a year ago", in the standard language I guess I'd say:
Min dest bi ferbûna kurdî salek berê kir.

I wonder, how would a native say this?
(Also, is the position immediately before the verb the rheme position, just like in Turkish? I put "salek berê" before the verb to make it the rheme but I'm not sure Kurdish does this).

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby voron » 2016-04-14, 11:21

daristani wrote:By the way, I think that the -î used as an ezafe may well be a contraction of a preposition.

That's an interesting observation. If it is so then we may as well say that words with '-î' on them govern a specific noun case.

In the fairy tale that I posted in the previous post there is this sentence:
Tê nêzîkî mangê. - He comes near the cow.

In "nêzikî", the '-î' ending definitely looks like a directional marker. My assumption is that the -î ending in non-verbal elements of compound verbs has the same function.

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby daristani » 2016-04-14, 18:02

Regarding the "artificiality" of some of these constructions, I think that may indeed be the case, but it's also important to keep in mind that most speakers of Kurmanji are influenced by other languages that they study more formally and consume more media in, and so there may be some grammatical interference at play.

Personally, I often get the feeling that Kurdish doesn't have the grammatical resources to express some of the subtle semantic combinations that Turkish does. If one reads parallel Turkish and Kurdish versions of political commentaries, for instance, the Turkish almost always strikes me as being substantially more nuanced than the Kurdish. To what degree this is a function of the languages themselves and to what degree it's a function of the writers' abilities, though, is an open question. (Since I have a better feel for Turkish than for Kurdish, there's also a question of the reader's ability.) But still, when I compare such parallel versions, I often find myself thinking that the nuances in the Turkish text simply aren't there in the Kurdish one.

As an example, the Rudaw website publishes frequent commentaries by Selahattin Celik in both Turkish and Kurdish. I assume, but can't be sure, that he writes both versions himself. But the Turkish versions always seem to make a lot more sense to me, and to contain more of a logical flow, than the Kurdish versions.

On the structure of "Min dest bi ferbûna kurdî salek berê kir", I think I would also put "salek berê" just before the verb, but if answering the question "when did you begin learning Kurdish?", I would just say "Min salek berê destpê kir". On the other hand, if telling my biography in a chronological way, I would probably say "Salek berê, min dest bi ferbûna kurdî kir." But this is the way I would express the same things in Turkish, and so there may be so interference there from either my Englishs or my Turkish; a native speaker might have more insights, or prefer different patterns.

In terms of the "-î ezafe" and its case, I would think that it would take the oblique case, such as in "ew hat nêzîkî min." "Nêzîk" can also take "ji" before its object, as in:

Kesayetiyek nêzîk ji Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê (PKK) ragehandiye...

Çavkaniyeke nêzîk ji civîna navbera Barzanî û Nûşêrwan Mistefa...

Bi gotina jêderê nêzîk ji parlemana Iraqê...

(Just some examples I got my googling "nêzîk ji")

I think this further strengthens the idea that, in at least some cases, the -î may stand in for a preposition.

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby voron » 2016-04-15, 12:13

daristani wrote:As an example, the Rudaw website publishes frequent commentaries by Selahattin Celik in both Turkish and Kurdish.

Coincidentally, I learnt about this website yesterday, just before reading your comment. It's a great resource, but I think there is one thing lacking. Does it have videos with texts that fully transcribe the video? (The way euronews.com does it for all its languages). I'm looking for texts with audio recordings, do you happen to know any resources that provide them?

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby daristani » 2016-04-15, 17:50

Sometimes the articles at the Rudaw site are largely transcriptions of the videos, but I don't think this is always the case; I think it's rather a situation of their wanting to publish the articles in written form, and using the video as the basis for it.

Sorry, but I'm not aware of any sites that have videos and accompanying transcriptions.

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby voron » 2017-09-08, 17:47

I'm going to do literal translations of some Kurdish fairy tales from youtube. I hope they can be helpful not only to myself but to you guys who are interested in Kurdish, too.

My translation system. I'll try to translate word by word, with the exception of:
1) I'll use definite articles (there is no such thing in Kurdish).
2) I'll use "relative pronoun - noun" word order (in Kurdish it is the opposite: hevalê min - my friend).
3) I'll use "of" to translate the Kurdish ezafe: kitêba zarokan - book of the children.
4) ... maybe something else I'll come up with on the fly.

Given that Kurdish is an Indoeuropean language, the translations should be easy to follow even for those who have little or no knowledge of Kurdish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUm-B1PArd4
Çîrokên Kurdî - Pîrê û Rovî
Tales Kurdish - Old Woman and Fox

Hebû tunebû pîrek û rovîyek hebû.
Pîrê her roj mangeya xwe didot û şîrê xwe dikir bin teştekê û diparast.
Rovîyek jî, her roj, bi dizî dihat mala pîrê û şîrê wê vedixwar.
Pîrê meraq dikir:
Gelo ew kî ye şerê manga min vedixwe?

Rojekê pîrê bivirekî tûj dike destê xwe û dipê.
Rovî dîsa tê ku şîr vexwe.
Pîrê bivir radike û bi hemû hêza xwe li boşa rovî dixe.
Boça rovî qut dibe.
Dibe kaze-kaza rovî, digirî.
There was, there was not, an old woman and a fox there was.
The old woman every day her cow milked, and its milk put under a washtub and hid.
The fox otherwise, every day secretly came to the house of the old woman and her milk drank.
The old woman wondered:
-Hey, it who is, (who) the milk of my cow drinks?

One day, the old woman an axe sharp takes (in) her hand and watches.
The fox again comes so that milk drinks.
The old woman the axe raises and in all her strength on the tail of the fox hits.
The tail of the box cut becomes.
Becomes wretched the fox, cries.


Hebû, tunebû - past tenses of heye, tune, which mean "there is", "there is not". Hebû-tunebû or hebû-nebû is a usual beginning of Kurdish fairy tales.

Verbs:
dotin (doş) - to milk
kirin (k) - to make; to put
parastin (parêz) - to protect
hatin (tê; wer) - to come
vexwerin (vexw) - to drink
payîn (pê) - to observe
rakirin (rak) - to raise
xistin (x) - to hit
girîn (girî) - to cry

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Re: Kurdish - voron

Postby voron » 2017-09-08, 18:01

Some notes about the Kurdish verb system.
Kurdish verbs, much like English verbs, are divided into regular and irregular.

Regular:
With the regular verbs, all forms in all tenses are regularly produced from the infinitive stem.

Irregular:
For the irregular verbs, we should memorize 2 stems: the past tense stem (which equals to the infinitive stem) and the present tense stem.
In the verb list above, the infinitive is given first, from which we can produce all forms in the past tense. The present tense stem is given in the parentheses.

Present tense:
The present tense marker is di-, to which we add the present tense stem, and a personal ending.

Example:
xistin (x) - to hit
The present tense stem consists of just one letter "x".
dixim - I hit
di (present tense marker) + x (present tense stem) + im (1st personal singular ending)
dixî - you hit
dixe - he/she/it hits


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