Indo-European · ISO 639-3 kur · ku
Kurdish Language Kurdî
Kurdish is an Indo-European language spoken by about 21 million people in 10 countries. It is written in the Latin, Perso-Arabic and Cyrillic scripts.
Where Kurdish is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Kurdish
About the Kurdish language
Kurdish (Kurdî) is spoken by about 21 million people. It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the Indo-Iranian group within the Indo-Iranian branch.
Where is Kurdish spoken?
Kurdish is used in 10 countries. The largest communities live in Türkiye (4.6 million), Iraq (4.2 million), Syria (1.9 million), Germany (555,186) and Iran (494,966).
Share of the population that speaks Kurdish: Türkiye 5.5% (4.6 million), Iraq 10% (4.2 million), Syria 8% (1.9 million), Germany 0.7% (555,186), Iran 0.6% (494,966) and Armenia 3.3% (98,233).
Kurdish is not a national official language anywhere.
Writing system and status
Kurdish is written in the Latin, Perso-Arabic and Cyrillic scripts.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Panjabi, Western Panjabi, Marathi and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 ku, ISO 639-3 kur.
Frequently asked questions about Kurdish
How many people speak Kurdish?
Where is Kurdish spoken?
What language family does Kurdish belong to?
What is Kurdish called in Kurdish?
Is Kurdish an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.