matin123 wrote:silaw kak sohrab. omidwarem keh xub hastid. thank you once again for your reply. instead of asking you what languages do you speak, i should have asked you what languages don't you speak!
i didn't mention before but i am jewish. the jews of sine and i'm guessing all jewish kurds learned aramaic as a first language in the home, kurdish of course because they're in kurdistan, and farsi in the schools. you said you studied arabic and biblical hebrew. aramaic is very similar to both. they say arabic and hebrew are decendants of aramaic. also hezret ibrahim spoke aramaic. i'm not sure if it is the exact same as the aramaic spoken today by jewish kurds, but it is close.
as for hebrew, i'm sure you know that when the iranian revolution took place and khomeini came into power
most kurdish jews fled from kurdistan to israel. therefore i have many relatives there and i kind of picked up a little bit of the language.
i was meaning to ask you something else as well. i visited istanbul last summer for a few days and i was surprised by how many kurds there were. i wanted to know more about the situation of speaking kurdish in turkey. i met one fellow kurd there and he would speak with me in kurdish very openly but some others were much more reserved.
i wanted to thank you again for your help and i hope you know that i appreciate it. taking the time to help others is a very good deed. inshallah you will always be successful in whatever you choose to do.
shew shad brarekem
Xaste nebashid junam...
Terrific... I am honored, my brother... It's a great pleasure, kak Metîn! What a thrill... Thank you so much for paticipating in this forum birakem. I have a special place for Jews (and especially Kurdish Jews) in my heart...
Indeed Aramaic and Hebrew are close relatives - as two Canaanite languages... At a point in history, Aramaic became the lingua franca in what is now Israel, Syria, Jordan and the surrounding areas... Aramaic borrowed it's alphabet from the Pheonicians - which the Jews then borrowed from the Aramaic - and naturally altered a bit to fit their own needs... Later, much later indeed, Jewish scholars made a system of vowels to use for the Torah (dots and lines beneath the line - while the "o" sound was put as a dot on top of the letters)...
Hebrew is close to Aramaic, yes - but Arabic is slightly further away... Most scholars agree that they are all of the same root (as Semitic languages: Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian) - but that Arabic developed differently when cut off from the rest on the banks of the Red Sea - and in what today is Yemen, Oman, Djibouti, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and southern Saudi Arabia...
Today there are between 100 and 150 000 Kurdish Jews in Israel - according to some statistics even 160 000 or 200 000... God bless them - they were forced against their will to leave their homeland... Most of these are in Jerusalem - is that where your relatives are too?
Yes, Istanbul... It's said to be the largest Kurdish city...
It's got a population of + 12 million... And of these, about 4 million are Kurdish... Speaking Kurdish in Turkey was forbidden even publically untill Prime Minister Turgut Özal (himself secretly a Kurd - who confessed his Kurdishness in 1991) - removed the ban - and allowed for Kurds to speak their language in their homes (but not publically in reality - people would still harrass you if you spoke Kurdish outdoors)... And they still do... Many Turks - a substantial number - still dislike Kurds and Kurdish language and everything that's related to them... Because they consider them either of lower class or as separatist (yes - just speaking Kurdish in public (some places) is enough to be lynched as some cases have proven)...
Turkey was founded on the 3 principals: One language, One religion and One people = Turkish language, Turkish religion (Hanafi Sunni Islam) and Turkish people...
Kurds who speak Kurdish in public can face prosecution from the police or resident fascists... So be careful with where you speak in Kurdish in Turkey. Istanbul is generally a liberal place where you will mostly find "good muslims" - who consider all Muslims as equals, but Ankara for example, has it's share of fascists... As does Bursa... I'm not saying Istanbul doesn't have them - just that they're less visible and in lesser numbers, because the city is so large and so mixed with so many different peoples that whoever grows up there can't avoid having a few Kurdish, Armenian or even Greek childhood friends... Hence their more liberal nature... Moreover, the poverty in Istanbul pleads survival rather than elitism and discrimination...
That said, most of the poor people in Istanbul are in fact Kurds... Kurds who moved to Istanbul especially between 1940-1995... Kurdish villages were burned and razed by the thousands in these years - massacres in the 20's, 30's, 80's (in every decade in fact, since the creation of the Turkish republic) also lead to a substantial number of refugees and homeless to urbanize and move to metropol Istanbul - which in Turkey has had a status similar to that of Hollywood... Espeically for Kurds who were looking for a hole to hide in - somewhere to be anonymous...
Turkish assimilation policies included changing the names of every river, valley, village, town, city, mountain, plateu, hill, road, street and lake from Kurdish names to Turkish names... Furthermore, Kurdish culture was banned - dancing, singing and even clothes were prohibited as Atatürk tried to "westernize" and "modernize" Turkey...
Kurds in <Turkey> today (including Nort Kurdistan) are victims of everyday racism, military check-points in Kurdistan, ban on Kurdish given names (for children) and other truly embarrassing policies... Such as the prosecution of 53 Kurdish mayors in North Kurdistan who are now on trial for having written Happy New Year (Newroz) cards in Kurdish... And such as Kurdish municipalities using "W" instead of "V" in "Newroz" - which the Turkish government want's the Kurds to spell as "Nevruz" instead of "Newroz"...
After 83 years of cultural prosecution and national denial - it is not so strange that some Kurds still fear reprisals if they dare speak in Kurdish publically...
You know - Sipasî nawêt (don't need thanks) - I am very happy and honored to know you and to be able to help you out, birayê delal...
Anytime!
Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 5:57 am